Domains are a fundamental part of any web page. It is the way that users enter a site from the browser. Now, we must bear in mind that there are different parts that we must identify correctly. In this article we are going to explain what are second-level domains and top-level domains . A comparison to know what each term is.
What is a second level domain
A second-level domain is the name of the site, not including the extension. In other words, it is everything to the left of the point. It is also known as SLD. Of course, sometimes this could also be part of the domain. For example a domain .co.uk. Although it is something different, as we are going to explain.
If we take our website as an example, the second level domain would be this article. It is the name of the website and is what is to the left of the period and the extension. Therefore this is what we know as SLD when we go to register a site and this term appears to us and we do not know what it refers to.
We can also see the term ccSLD . In this case it means country code second level domains. This is exactly what we mentioned about .co.uk, which can also be .org.uk, etc.
In short, we can summarize that a second-level domain is everything that is found between www. and whatever extension. It is different from the top level, which we are going to see next.
What is a top-level domain
We have seen what second level domain means and now we are going to move on to another very present term when we are going to register a page. This is the top-level domain. It is essential for any website.
A top-level domain, or also known as a top-level or TLD , is the. It can be .com, .es, .org, .net … Any of the extensions that we are using for a web page.
If we go back to the redeszone.net example, in this case the top-level domain would be .net. It is the extension of our page and therefore it is the corresponding TLD. Keep in mind that there are two types of top-level domains:
- Generic Top-Level Domains – These are the ones that are three or more letters long. For example we would be before the extensions .com, .org or .net. Although some may be used more than others according to the type of organization, the truth is that they are used generically by all countries. It is also known as a gTLD.
- Geographic top-level domains : in this case we are dealing with top-level domains that correspond to a specific country. It is also known as a ccTLD. They represent a country or territory code. For example we talk about .es, .fr, .it… They are two letters.
Third level domains
One more term that we can find is third-level domains . This is not something that is present in all web pages, but we could see it as something common. Let’s see what it means.
When we talk about third-level domains we are actually referring to what is to the left of the second-level domain. That is, it could be, for example, news.redeszone.net. News in that case would be a third level domain.
We can interpret that they are used to create subdomains within a site. They are well-defined sections within a website that serve to guide visitors and also enter a specific content more directly.
Although there is an important point that we must take into account, and that is that as we saw previously some extensions are of the .co.uk type. In this case, a website called example.co.uk, “example” would be a third level domain as well.
In short, as we see, the terms of first-level, second-level and even third-level domains are different. All of them refer to a part of our domain, but they are different and we must know what each of them is when registering a domain and doing it correctly.