The Top-Level Domain (TLD) .AM is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Armenia. It is administered by the Internet Society of Armenia, a non-profit organization established in 1992. In addition to serving the needs of the Republic of Armenia, the .AM domain extension has also been adopted and used by AM broadcasting stations and other entities related to AM, which stands for Amplitude Modulation, a type of radio broadcasting.
As a ccTLD, anybody can register a .AM domain name, and it is often used by companies, organizations, or individuals who have a connection to Armenia, want to reach an Armenian audience, or want to highlight a relationship with AM broadcasting. There are no specific restrictions for registration, and domains can be registered for a period of 1-10 years. An excellent example is www.bbc.am, which is redirected to the BBC World Service radio station. This makes sense given that the BBC World Service covers AM frequency.
Despite being a country-specific domain, the .AM extension has also been adopted by many individuals, businesses, and organizations for its creative potential. Names ending with “am” can use the .am domain to create a clever or memorable brand or web address. An example would be Instagr.am that was Instagram’s original domain.
However, the exploitation of .AM by AM radio stations is permitted due to a reserved list of prohibited words and terms that can’t be registered in the .AM domain. There’s a reservation for trademarks as well, to prevent cybersquatting, a practice of registering names, especially well-known company or brand names, as Internet domains, in the hope of reselling them at a profit.
It’s worth noting that, besides the main .AM domain, there’s the secondary level domain .հայ which is for websites in the Armenian language using the Armenian alphabet.
Sources of this information include the Internet Society of Armenia’s homepage, where detailed information about the .AM domain can be found, and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which provides reliable and authoritative data about Internet domains worldwide. This information is also supported by various examples of real-life usage of the .AM domain, such as the BBC’s website and Instagram’s former domain name.
To sum up, the top-level domain (TLD) .AM is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of Armenia. It’s managed by the Internet Society of Armenia and has been also used globally by AM radio broadcasting stations and various businesses and individuals due to its creative potential.
