.biz

Status:	Active
country:	International
Manager:	Neustar
Registry Provider:	Neustar
Date Implemented:	2001
Type:	gTLD
More information:

.biz is a generic top-level domain name primarily intended for businesses. The .biz registry is exclusively managed and operated by Neustar.

The extension .biz celebrated its 10 year anniversary at the beginning of 2012. At that time, there were more than 2.2 million .biz registrations.

Neustar's contract to act as the registry for .biz was extended for six months after it expired on Dec. 31, 2012. The contract is held by ICANN, and was renewed in August 2013.

Background

ICANN introduced .biz in 2001 to relieve registration demands on .com, .net, and .org. It was also intended to provide another option for businesses whose preferred names were already registered in the .com domain space. ICANN approved the application of Neulevel, Inc., a joint venture between Neustar and Melbourne IT, to serve as the neutral, third-party provider of global registry services for .biz.

On December 8, 2006, ICANN retained Neustar as the sole registry operator for .biz until 2012. Neustar administers and manages the operations of the .biz registry including the SRS, DNS, and Whois. The company also provides technical and marketing support to all registrars accredited by ICANN, as well as the development of specific policies for the .biz TLD.

During the 32nd ICANN International Public Meeting in Paris, Neustar announced that .biz reached more than 2 million registrants worldwide on June 23, 2008.

On September 8, 2010, Neustar launched the .biz DNS security extensions (DNSSEC), which uses public key cryptography and digital signatures to protect consumers from possible harmful threats in the Domain Name System and the Registry Lock service, giving domain name registrants a two-layer, gated protection from "domain hijacking."

Registration Requirements

There are no special registration requirements to register a .biz domain name except that the domain name must be used by registrants for business or commercial purposes only.

.biz International Domain Names (IDNs)

The .biz registry offers IDN registration in the following 15 languages:

1. Chinese
2. Danish
3. Finnish
4. German
5. Hungarian
6. Icelandic
7. Japanese
8. Korean (Korean Reserve Names)
9. Latvian
10. Lithuanian
11. Norwegian
12. Polish
13. Portuguese
14. Spanish
15. Swedish

Top-Level Domain

Internationalized Domain Name