Choosing a .com over a newer generic TLD does not give you a ranking boost by itself: Google treats any TLD that resolves through the IANA DNS root zone as a generic TLD unless IANA lists it as a country code. The exception is geographic targeting — a ccTLD such as .de or .cn is a strong signal that a site is intended for one country, and Google explicitly says some vanity ccTLDs (.io, .ai, .co, .tv, .me) are treated as generic instead.
How do you read a registrar price table without being misled?
Read the renewal column, not the first-year promo. A registration price is often discounted for year one, while the renewal price is what you pay every year afterwards; transfer, redemption and privacy add-ons are separate line items. A comparison table should also tell you when each quote was collected and whether it came from a registrar’s own price list or from an older snapshot.
The IANA Root Zone Database is the authoritative public record of top-level domains delegated in the DNS root zone, maintained by IANA. It tells you that a TLD exists, who manages it and which name servers serve it — but it does not contain retail prices, registration rules for individual registrars, or domain availability.
Check the extension against the IANA delegated TLD list. If the string is not in the public root zone, it is not a normally registrable public TLD — it may be an internal name, a special-use name such as .onion, or a made-up marketing term. For anything that is delegated, also check the registry’s eligibility rules before assuming you can register it.
What is the difference between a TLD, a domain and a subdomain?
A TLD is the rightmost label of the DNS hierarchy, such as .com or .de. A domain is a name registered under a TLD, such as example.com. A subdomain is a label you create underneath a domain you already control, such as tools.example.com — it needs no separate registration and does not appear in the IANA root zone.
Expiry is a staged process, not an instant deletion: the name normally passes through an auto-renew grace period, a redemption or restore stage, and then a pending-delete stage before it can be registered by someone else. The exact number of days at each stage depends on the registry and your registrar’s terms, so the only reliable source for your own deadline is your registrar’s expiry policy.
What replaced WHOIS, and where can you look up a domain owner?
The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) replaced the older WHOIS protocol for generic TLD registration data. It returns structured JSON over HTTPS instead of free-form port-43 text, and ICANN’s Lookup service is a public entry point. Many registrant details are still redacted because of privacy law and registrar policy, so a lookup often confirms dates, status and registrar rather than a person’s name.
ICANN’s Transfer Policy allows a registrar to deny a transfer requested within 60 days of the domain’s creation date, and a 60-day lock also applies after a registrar transfer and after a change of registrant. Other common blockers are an active transfer lock, an unverified registrant email and an outstanding balance. Unlock the name, obtain the authorisation code and confirm the dates before starting.
Use a ccTLD when the business is intentionally tied to one country and you can satisfy that registry’s eligibility rules; use a gTLD when you expect to serve several markets. Google treats ccTLDs as a strong country-targeting signal and generic TLDs as location-neutral, so the choice is really about where you want to be geographically anchored.
DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to DNS records so a resolver can verify that an answer was not forged or altered in transit. It does not encrypt DNS traffic and it does not hide your browsing — that is a different set of protocols. Whether to enable it depends on whether your registrar and DNS provider support it and whether you can manage key rollovers safely.
Why does domain price data go stale, and how should a comparison site say so?
Retail prices change, promotions expire, some registrars block automated reading, and a few publishers only release dated datasets. A comparison site cannot honestly claim every quote is live, so it should publish each offer’s provenance and evidence date, mark older quotes as stale, and state when the whole dataset was last refreshed instead of implying real-time pricing.
How to cite this site
Every article carries its own publication date, and every price figure carries its provenance label (First-party, Snapshot or Stale). When quoting a number, cite the dataset date shown on the homepage or inprices-index.json — not today's date. Definitions of the labels are on thedata sources page.