.directory Domain
The Definitive Listing Domain
Register your .directory domain from just £25.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .directory domain?
The .directory domain is purpose-built for listing sites, directories, and catalogues. Business directories, membership registers, and supplier databases all benefit from a domain that tells visitors they'll find a structured collection of entries. It's a signal of organisation and completeness that .com or .net can't match.
Who should register .directory?
Business directories, membership registers, supplier databases, and classified listing platforms.
Why choose .directory?
- Purpose-built for listing sites
- Signals structured, organised content
- Ideal for B2B supplier databases
- Clear expectation of what visitors will find
Who runs .directory, and since when
Registry data from the .directory delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Binky Moon, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2013
- Delegated 13 November 2013
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no restriction on what you list or publish
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £25.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
The SEO problem with running a .directory site
Before the extension, a word about the business model, because it decides whether this domain is worth anything to you. Directory sites are among the hardest things to rank in Google. A page listing other people's businesses, with a name, an address and a phone number submitted or scraped, is the textbook shape of thin content, and Google's helpful content systems have been sharpening against exactly that pattern for years. The extension changes none of that. No extension does.
What a .directory domain gives you is honesty about what the site is. Somebody who sees an address ending .directory in a search result knows what they will get, and that lifts click-through on a listing that already ranks. It cannot rescue one that does not rank in the first place.
The extension is one of the oldest new gTLDs, delegated in November 2013 to a single-purpose company called Extra Madison, LLC and folded into Identity Digital through Binky Moon in March 2018 alongside nearly two hundred others. Nothing about it is restricted. There is no requirement that the site actually be a directory, no editorial standard and no check on what you list.
If you are building a directory that will work, the value is not in the domain. It is in having something on every listing that nobody else holds: opening hours you verified, reviews you collected, prices, photographs you took. A .directory address is a good badge on a site like that. On a list of names and postcodes, it is a badge on a page nobody will ever find.
Is .directory the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.directory works well if
- You are building a listing site where every entry carries something that cannot be copied from public records: your own photographs, verified hours, prices or reviews.
- You run a membership register or supplier database where visitors already arrive knowing they want a list.
- The extension completes the name, so a trade sector followed by .directory reads as a phrase rather than as a bolt-on.
- You want a listings section on its own address, separate from a main brand site that sells something else entirely.
Look elsewhere if
- Your plan is a list of names, addresses and phone numbers. Google has been demoting that pattern for years and no extension offsets it.
- People need to type the address from memory. Ten characters with the dot is a long tail, and it reads as a category rather than as a brand.
- You are a single business rather than an aggregator. The word describes a site format, so it makes a company look like a listings page.
Listing your own services rather than other businesses? A .co.uk keeps the focus on your company and costs less each year. See .co.uk pricing.
.directory vs .com: which should you register?
This comes down to how certain you are about what the site will be in five years.
A .com is shorter, understood everywhere and cheaper each year. It also leaves room to change, and that matters more than it sounds: listing sites often turn into marketplaces, booking platforms or review sites, and a .com follows you there without comment. A .directory does not, because the extension is a public promise about the format.
A .directory wins on availability and on clarity. The name you want is far more likely to be free, and the address explains the site with no tagline attached to it. If the format is settled and the name is the thing you cannot get on .com, that is a reasonable trade to make.
| .directory | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| In the root zone since | 2013 | 1985 |
| What it commits you to | A listings format | Nothing |
| Length | Ten characters with the dot | Four characters with the dot |
| Annual cost | Higher | Lower |
| Name availability | Far better | Poor without hyphens |
.directory domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .directory domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyIt is neutral. Google gives no ranking credit for the words in a generic extension, so .directory will not help you rank for searches containing the word directory. Where it earns its keep is click-through, because a result whose address matches what the searcher wants gets clicked more often. That only helps once the page ranks, and for listing sites the ranking is the hard part.
No. There is no requirement to run a directory, no editorial standard and no check on what the site contains. Identity Digital operates .directory as an ordinary generic extension open to anyone. The registry's acceptable use policy still applies, so a site used for phishing, malware or spam can be suspended or cancelled, but that is about abuse rather than about whether your site is really a list.
Because most of them publish information available in a dozen other places. A listing carrying a name, address and phone number taken from public records adds nothing a searcher could not get from the source, and Google's helpful content systems are built to spot that. The directories that do rank tend to carry something proprietary on every entry: verified opening hours, prices, photographs, or reviews the site collected itself. Plan for that before you plan the domain.
More database headroom than page-serving power, usually. A directory is query-heavy rather than traffic-heavy, so what slows it down is search and filter queries rather than serving HTML. Every 365i plan includes unlimited LVE resources, so PHP processes are not throttled, and shared plans run StackCache in front of the site. Redis object caching, which is the fix for repeated database reads, sits on Managed Cloud Servers rather than on shared hosting.
Included with Your .directory Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Business Domains Extensions
Register your .directory domain today
Secure your .directory domain from just £25.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
