In recent years .io has become more and more popular as a website extension. But what does .io actually mean? And where does the abbreviation come from? We explain that to you in this tipps + ticks article.
That is the meaning of .io domains
.io is a so-called top-level domain (TLD), the last component of a website. Put simply, it ensures that when you open a website you are redirected to the correct web address.
Tip : Read here what a domain is made up of and how it works.
Most countries were assigned their own TLD decades ago, each of which is an abbreviation of the name of the country: For Germany this is .de , for Austria .at etc. Here .io is the domain for the British territory in the Indian Ocean . On paper is .io so it's just an abbreviation for the Indian Ocean.
However, as a domain ending , .io is hardly used at all for its actual meaning, because only the military are stationed in British territory at the moment. However, .io is a phrase that is often used in computer science and stands for “ input / output ”. For this reason, it is widely used for communication between computer systems and the outside world , for example through interfaces. But many start-ups also use the ending as a domain for their websites because of its technical sound. The advantage here is that not as many web addresses are assigned with .io as the ending, as is the case with .com, for example is the case, so that the selection is currently even greater .
Wider awareness has the domain extension .io in recent years, partly from various online games like agar.io received. These games can be accessed directly via the browser without registration and free of charge. Most of them have a relatively simple gameplay that is easy to understand even for beginners. Partly because of this, the games quickly gained popularity from around 2016.
Another reason for the widespread use of .io as a domain ending is its use in so-called domain hacks . This creates a web address that is similar to a word and the .io -Domain is ideal for this in many cases. Examples of such domain hacks are aud.io , rad.io or portfol.io ..