Differences between .com and .es
To begin with, an internet domain can be defined as a web address that is made up of the name of the organization and the type of company. Also, it is understood as the name that identifies a website. Each domain has to be unique on the Internet, so a single web server can serve multiple web pages from multiple domains, but a domain can only point to one server. Thus, there are generic domains, territorial domains and third level domains. That said, in this article we will present the characteristics of “.com” and “.es” domains, as well as the differences between them.
Domain “.com”
The term “.com” means a top-level domain that is part of the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). It was one of the first top-level domains established when the Domain Name System was first put into practice in January 1985. The name .com comes from the abbreviation of the commercial word, since it was originally designed for domains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the .com domain was opened in an unlimited way, so today it can be used for all kinds of web pages.
On the other hand, the .com domain is a generic domain, that is, a domain that does not fit the environment of a specific country, therefore, they tend to handle more universal information and not intended for a specific name.
Domain “.es”
The ending “.es” refers to a geographic top-level domain for Spain. It is a territorial extension granted by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in 1988. However, this domain is also used by Spanish-speaking countries, not only Spain but also many Latin American countries.
Additionally, the ending “.es” is usually abbreviated as ccTLD, for its acronym in English -country code Top Level Domain- being a domain associated with a specific country, in this case Spain, which is defined by acquiring a site with unique extension belonging to each region. In this sense, for example, in Colombia ccTLD domains usually end with the extension “.co” and in the United Kingdom they usually end in “.uk”. It is worth noting that, in Spain, one of the peculiarities of the “.es” domain is that since October 2007, its pages can include special characters, such as ñ, ç, or accented vowels such as á, é, í, ó, u and u.
Once the previous definitions have been presented, the following differences are pointed out:
- The “.com” domain is a top level domain TLD (Top Level Domain) while the “.es” domain is a geographic top level domain or ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain).
- The domain “.com” is a generic domain that can be used by pages worldwide while the domain “.es” is a territorial domain, that is, associated with a specific country, in this case Spain.
