What’s an official site?

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An official website is one that has been authorized by an authority to represent itself or its properties online. Individuals, companies, governments and other organizations can be such an authority. An official celebrity website, for example, may have been licensed or created by the celebrity. It couldn’t, however, be one that was created by a fan who never asked the celeb to acknowledge it as official.

Any type of domain could be used by official websites. Top-level domains, such as .com, .org, or .edu, are the most common. An official website of a government agency will often identify itself as sanctioned by that government with a specific second-level domain: .gov.ca, for example, is owned and operated exclusively by the Government of Canada. The United States is the only country in the world whose government uses its own restricted top-level domain, .gov, for this purpose.

Another top-level domain controlled by the US government is .edu. It is used by post-secondary institutions that have been accredited by an agency recognized by the United States Department of Education. In other countries, second-level domains are often used to denote higher education institutions. The UK’s .ac.uk is one example.

Official websites vary in terms of purpose. An official website could be primarily commercial, educational, related to news or entertainment, governmental, or have a different or mixed focus. A commercial site belongs to a company that created the site to help sell their products or services, for example. An educational institution’s official website is often both promotional and informative, and several institutions have also integrated learning features into their sites.

Many older types of news sources, such as newspapers, magazines, and television or radio broadcasts, now also deliver news via an official website. Most governments today use official websites to communicate with their citizens and within their departments, to gather information or provide forms, and to organize activities. In the case of a very large organization, it is perhaps more common for the leaders of the organization to try to achieve a number of goals by launching an official website.

In some cases, an official website may be launched simply to provide an air of professionalism. In many countries, people now tend to expect major organizations and public figures to have official websites. Some people might even question the status or value of a business that doesn’t have an online presence.

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