Domain name extensions can help businesses to appear more local to prospective customers.

According to Nominet, which runs one of the world's largest internet registries with over six million domain names, using extensions such as .co.uk allows browsers to see clearly where the business is located.

Phil Kingsland, director of marketing and communications for Nominet, said: "We're responsible for the .uk country code and that includes .co.uk, .org.uk, etc.

"Research that we've done shows that the people use these to become more local, because people assume that the business is more local or relevant to them if it has a country code."

He added that this is "beneficial in terms of sales" as UK browsers are more likely to visit a site with a .uk than a .com domain extension.

VeriSign, Inc, the provider of digital infrastructure for the networked world, recently released a Domain Name Industry Brief for the first quarter of 2007.

The brief revealed that total domain name registrations had then reached 128 million, representing a 31 per cent increase over the same quarter in the previous year.

© Adfero Ltd