The TLD landscape is hard to navigate

The Domain Name System was launched in 1985 with six general-purpose top-level domains:

• .com
• .org
• .net
• .edu
• .gov
• .mil

That was the namespace.

Today, IANA's root zone database lists over 1,590 active TLDs. The mix includes country-code domains, generic TLDs, sponsored TLDs, brand TLDs, and the new generic TLDs delegated since ICANN's 2012 expansion programme.

The scale changes the job for SEOs, digital marketers, and brand protection teams. Your brand probably doesn't own its name across the major extensions. A competitor's footprint can easily extend beyond the .com. Domains change owners, old TLDs get repurposed, and new ones can be registered cheaply.

The Majestic TLD Checker shows you which domains exist for any given prefix and what the backlink data says about each one.

Four ways you can use TLD Checker

1. Brand protection across namespaces

• If your brand is "acme", how many "acme" domains exist across the 1,500-plus active TLDs?
• Which of them have backlinks?
• Which domains have redirects, and where do they redirect?

TLD Checker identifies all the backlink data in a single search.

The TLD Type filter separates ccTLDs from gTLDs. The redirect column indicates which variants currently point elsewhere.

This kind of audit used to require scripts against multiple registries or manual lookups, one TLD at a time. Most teams don't have the time to perform this kind of detailed analysis.

2. Domain acquisition and investment due diligence

Before buying domain-prefix variants for defensive registration, a campaign microsite, or a speculative investment, you want to know their history:

• Has the domain been used?
• Does it have backlinks?
• Were those backlinks earned, or part of a network?
• Is it currently redirecting to something that would compromise your brand if associated with it?

Results are sorted by Citation Flow, highlighting TLDs with the biggest quantitative footprint.

Sort by the Redirect To column to spot domains already forwarded elsewhere.

3. Local SEO and geographic targeting

City and regional TLDs (.london, .nyc, .tokyo, .berlin, .paris) exist for a reason. A geographic TLD can reinforce local relevance for businesses with a physical presence.

Not every city TLD has matured equally, and not every prefix is available or worth claiming. TLD Checker shows you the condition of each local variant: how much link equity exists, whether other businesses use the namespace meaningfully, and how it compares to the .com and the relevant ccTLD.

4. Competitive footprint analysis

The same prefix query against a competitor brand tells you how much of the namespace they occupy, which versions forward to their primary domain, and which TLDs they've abandoned. A prefix like "majestic" returns over 3,500 results that can be filtered and exported to CSV files.

Inside a prefix search: from query to CSV

Search by prefix

Enter the prefix in the search box without a suffix. TLD checker runs the query and searches the Fresh Index, returning every TLD for which a matching domain has crawl data.

Filter to what matters

Two filters narrow large result sets:

TLD Type

Filtering by TLD Type limits results to ccTLDs, gTLDs, sponsored TLDs, or private suffixes. Counts for each category appear before you click, so you can see the shape of the data space before analysing the data.

TLD labels appear in the first column of every row, so you can see how each domain has been categorised.

Domain Level

Filtering by Domain Level isolates top-level or second-level domains and is useful when a brand has a structured naming convention across regional subsidiaries, or when you want to ignore second-level noise.

Sort by what you're investigating

Every column is sortable. Here are some common sorting patterns:

• Citation Flow to surface the TLDs carrying the most backlink weight.
• Trust Flow to find the quality end of the distribution.
• External Referring Domains to identify the most-linked-to variants.
• Redirect to isolate domains currently forwarded elsewhere, useful for spotting brand consolidation, abandoned properties, or unexpected ownership.

See the top sites for any TLD

With 1,500-plus active TLDs, you'll encounter some that you won't recognise. Click the button in the first column. A pop-up shows the top five sites on that TLD from the Majestic Million, with a link to the full list. It tells you whether a TLD is a serious namespace, a niche community, or a low-quality registration ecosystem.

Take the data further

TLD Checker offers two routes for deeper analysis.

Send to Bulk Backlinks pushes the top results into the Bulk Backlink Checker for the full set of domain metrics, without re-entering URLs.

Export CSV downloads the entire result set. For a prefix returning thousands of results, the CSV is where the analysis usually starts.

Frequently asked questions on TLDs and the TLD Checker

Who should use TLD Checker?

TLD Checker is built for three main audiences:

• SEO professionals who can use it as a backlink checker for brand protection audits, competitor research, and identifying which TLD variants of a target prefix carry real link equity.
• Domainers, for domain acquisition research, to evaluate a prefix across the full namespace before bidding, to spot which variants have existing backlink profiles, and to identify domains currently redirecting elsewhere.
• Brand protection teams, to map a brand's presence across the full TLD namespace, identify variants that redirect to unrelated destinations, and flag domains that could be confused with the legitimate brand.

How is TLD Checker different from a WHOIS lookup or a registrar search?

WHOIS lookups and registrar searches tell you whether a domain is registered and who owns it. TLD Checker doesn't check ownership or availability. Instead, it returns:

• The number of backlinks to each domain variant
• How many URLs Majestic has indexed
• Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores
• Whether the homepage currently redirects, and if so, to where

Can I use TLD Checker to find available domains to register?

No. TLD Checker isn't a domain availability tool. It only returns domains that already exist and have crawl data in the Fresh Index. If you need to check availability, use a registrar. TLD Checker comes in before or after that step, when you want to understand the existing footprint or evaluate the backlink profile of a variant you're considering buying.

What's the difference between a gTLD, a ccTLD, and a new gTLD?

• A generic TLD (gTLD) is an extension like .com, .org, or .net, intended for general use without geographic restrictions.
• A country-code TLD (ccTLD) is tied to a country or territory, like .uk for the United Kingdom or .jp for Japan.
• A new gTLD is one of the extensions introduced through ICANN's 2012 expansion programme, covering names like .london, .app, .blog, and many more. TLD Checker labels each result with its category and lets you filter by type.

Why are some TLDs missing from my results?

TLD Checker returns matches from the Fresh Index, which cover domains we've crawled in the recent past. If a TLD variant exists but has no backlinks, no crawled URLs and hasn't been seen recently, it won't appear. This is by design: the tool is intended to show what's active on the web, not every theoretically registered domain.

How does TLD Checker compare to running a manual check across multiple registrars?

A manual check tells you whether each variant is registered and at what registrar. It doesn't tell you whether the domain has authority, where it links to, or whether it redirects. TLD Checker covers the link intelligence dimension that manual checks miss, across the full namespace in a single search. The two approaches answer different questions and are often used together.