Top-level domain names are not necessarily any more reputable than local ones, according to one industry expert.

Nominet, which runs one of the world's largest internet registries with over six million domain names, says that having a generic domain extension such as .com does not mean a site is anymore trustworthy than a country code.

The firm highlighted that .com is the largest domain extension type at the moment and there are within the region of 50 to 60 million .com sites in existence.

Phil Kingsland, director of marketing and communications for Nominet, said: "[Domain name extensions] tend to have different kinds of reputations and get used for different kinds of applications and that sort of thing.

"It does depend a lot on what you're after, but if you're a local business in the UK .co.uk will be appropriate for you."

He added that a global body will try to find a .com extension but they'll also use a local domain name where they want local representation, citing Amazon, which has amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, as an example.

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

The brief revealed that total domain name registrations reached 128 million in 2007, representing a 31 per cent increase over the same quarter in the previous year.

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