Find That Website!

In a world where it’s getting impossible to talk to a live person on the telephone, many people are turning to find their information on the web. The problem is, without a starting point, how can you find their site? It’s not as hard as you think.

The first step in becoming a successful web surfer is taking the initiative to be your own detective. What is the name of the company? The very first step is typing in their name in the URL bar and turning it into a “.com”. For example, www.companyname.com. Your chances are good that this will turn up the company, even better if it is a well-known company. But what if it doesn’t? Two things could have happened. You could have gotten an error informing you that the site could not be reached. That just means that there is no web site in existence with the name you typed in. Or, you could have been taken to a web site for a company with a similar name to the one you were looking for.

It’s time for some super-sleuthing! Did you spell it right? Does the company you are looking for have more than one word? If you are searching for the website of “Jones and Smith Law Firm Associates” you have a few options to try. Be creative. Chances are, on your first attempt you typed in the following: www.jonesandsmithlawfirmassociates.com. Try www.jonesandsmith.com, www.jaslfa.com, www.jandslawfirm.com, etc. If you feel you have exhausted all possibilities, then maybe it’s time to wonder if they have a web site at all.

There are a few more tricks to finding your web site faster. The first step is to determine the nature of the company in question. Is it a commercial company? Is it a governmental or military department, college, university, or non-profit organization? Let’s examine the actual URL a little closer.

URL actually stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It works exactly like a telephone number. No two people can have the same telephone number. The three w’s in front stand for “World Wide Web”. The middle part is the domain name that the company chose when they registered their name. The last part is called a “top level domain”, and will help you determine where to find their site.

If the company is a commercial site (general business, retail, etc.) then they will have a top-level domain of “.com”. This is short for Commercial. If the company is a governmental department, they will most likely have a “.gov”, or government extension. The same goes for “.mil” (military), “.edu” (educational), and “.org” (non-profit organization). Once you determine what kind of company you are searching for, you will know which extension to try first. An example of this is the IRS. Typing in www.irs.com brings you to a commercial tax preparation company. But type in www.irs.gov, and you will find the official site for the IRS.

Happy surfing!