The administrator of a domain extension sets the rules that domain holders must comply with. As a minimum, these will state that a domain may not be used for illegal purposes and that the administrator has the right to block domain names that do not comply with the rules.

Some extensions have additional conditions. For example, the domain holder must be from the city or region, the website must not harm the administrator’s interests, an active website must be running on the domain name within a certain period of time or every website must be secure.

In most cases, though, our advice will be to impose as few restrictions as possible. Not only because you may exclude unanticipated groups, but also because some sales partners prefer not to carry restricted extensions. Moreover, a good extension is self-regulating: there are not many Rotterdam people with a .amsterdam domain name!