Domain name characters and lengths

Domain names are restricted to the 26 characters in the English language, plus numbers.

The only "special" characters outside the basic alpha-numeric sets are hyphens. You may use hyphens in a domain name as a method of separating words.

Domain names can optionally comprise entirely of letters or numbers. They must not begin or end with a hyphen.

One restriction applied to domain names is a limit of 63 characters before the "TLD extension". TLD extensions are the ".com", ".net", or country code like ".com.au" part of the domain name. The "http://www." part of the domain name is not included in the character count.

Domain names are also case-insensitive. Upper-case, lower-case, and mixed-case domain names all point to the one site. While it is conventional to display names in lower-case, mixed-case can highlight word separation. Eg. JohnSimmonsBikes.com

See further domain name FAQs or our FAQ categories for more information.

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