Architects – What’s in the extension?

I remember the time when architects in India started thinking about having a website for their practice. Well, believe it or not, many architects I know were hesitant with the idea of a website itself, as they strongly considered it to be a form of advertisement. The Architect’s Act, 1972 does not allow architects to advertise. Anyway, we are not here to discuss whether a website is a form of advertisement or not. Now that many architects have their websites up and running, we would like to delve into the choice of TLD (Top Level Domain).

.org was among the favourites for architects in India, again, for the reason that .com appeared to be more commercial for architectural practice. But, things are not same now, many architects have embraced the change and have opted for .com TLD. Though, I have not heard of any architect going for .biz TLD. Please share if you know of any.

Recently ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced .archi and .architect TLDs for architects. 

In our opinion, .archi and .architect TLDs are very long. I would have preferred .ar, but the same is also the Country Specific TLD for Argentina, like .in is for India and .us is for the United States of America. 

But how much effect does TLD have on the website? In our opinion, very less. Just make sure that your website name is easy to remember, and type.

There are thousands of architectural firms who are using .com and .org TLD and are highly searchable. TLDs have very little effect on the searchability of a website, and what matters more is the content and frequency at which the website is being updated, design an structure of the website and how much search engines can penetrate into it for reading and storing the information. So, go ahead …com, .archi or whatever that pleases you..but have a website.