If you have already decided to create your own website and you are starting to select the name of your domain, you might have doubts about the differences between a .com and a .mx domain. If this is your situation, continue reading because this post has the objective to explain the differences between these two extensions.

How is a domain name composed?

A domain is the name with which a website or web page is identified on the Internet, and therefore a characteristic is that it must be unique and must reflect the nature and some characteristics of the site to which it refers.

The domains have two parts, the first one is the name of the web; this part is completely chosen by you and it can be the name of your business or company.

The second part of the domain is the extension, this is precisely the one that will indicate characteristics of the site or page, for example the country it comes from or the line of business it is dedicated to, for example .com, .edu, .net or .org; .mx, .us, or .es.

Types of extensions

It is important to know how domains are classified and how they are given a rank, to understand what would be the scope of our web address and how it will be cataloged.

The first thing you should know is that all Internet domains operate within a DNS (Domain Name System) which is a kind of web address book, and classifies them into territorial top-level domains and generic top-level domains.

Country code top level domains (ccTLDs) are those that specify the country where the information is located or to whom the web page belongs. You can recognize them by the terms that refer to countries such as: .ve (Venezuela), .ar (Argentina), .es (Spain), .cl (Chile) and of course .mx (Mexico). It is important to mention that these domains have a higher hierarchy within the DNS.

While generic top-level domains (gTLD) are the generic and commercial extensions, you can recognize them by acronyms such as: .com (company), .org (organization) or .net (network).

With this we have the first difference between the extensions that we are comparing today, the .com and the .mx, because you can see that while the url ending in .com has a generic top-level domain the domains ending in .mx have a territorial top-level domain and will have more hierarchy against a generic one.

Availability

If you have previously tried to register your domain, you will know that an important step is to verify that it is available, through pages like Hostinger, Google Domains, Godaddy etc.

If you have already done this step, you will have realized how frustrating it can be to not find the domain you want, and in this, there is a difference between .com and .mx extensions.

Because the .mx extension is relatively newer and dedicated to the Mexican market, finding a domain with this extension is much easier than if we look for it with a .com extension, which is used globally by millions of pages.

Domains and SEO

An element that is often forgotten for SEO positioning is the domain itself. It may seem that the domain name has no influence at all on the position of appearance in the search results, but this is not the case. By choosing an ideal domain name consistent with SEO practices you will be assured to a large extent to appear in excellent places within the Google search results page.

The .com extension is an extension used by millions of sites all over the world, so if you use it for your business address you will end up competing for views with millions of sites similar to yours.

On the other hand, if you use the .mx domain you will only compete for views with local businesses. In addition, Google.mx gives a better position to pages with this domain extension. The problem is if you are interested in appearing in search results in other countries, it will be very difficult to appear there.

In conclusion, there are clear differences between these domain extensions. The best thing to do is to use these differences to your advantage, starting with if your website is going to do business only in Mexico it is best to get a domain with .mx extension, so you will have the advantage of being well positioned in Google both in specific local searches as well as in more general searches.

You should also consider that it will surely be easier to choose a domain available with this extension, although it might mean an extra cost.

Tell us, have you registered a .mx or .com domain?