Finding Government Web Sites
Using Conventional Domain Names

Table of contents:

Federal Web Sites

Oftentimes the easiest way to locate a government web sites is to use intuition to construct the domain name.

    1. Most federal government sites have a prefix of www.
    2. The middle portion of the domain name is the name of the agency, which is usually an acronym, or a shortened version of the name of the executive agency.

      3.  

       

      EX. -www.fbi. Federal Bureau of Investigation

      EX. ---www.gao. General Accounting Office

      EX. ---www.bls. Bureau of Labor Statistics

      EX. ---www.census. Census Bureau

      EX. ---www.state. State Department

      EX. ---www.nih. National Institutes of Health

      EX. ---www.ed. Department of Education

      Some atypical examples:

      EX. ---www.uspto. United States patent Office

      EX. ---www.nih.nlm. National Library of Medicine

      EX. ---www.usdoj. Department of Justice
       

    3. The suffix of the domain name for federal sites is almost always .gov
EX. ---www.fbi.gov

EX. ---www.state.gov

EX. ---www.census.gov

In some rare cases a quasi-official government will have a suffix of .org which is usually reserved for independent not for profit organizations.

EX. ---www.ncjrs.org National Criminal Justice Resource Center (affiliated with the United States Department of justice

EX. ---www.frbchi.org Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago


To review, federal agency domain names usually use the following naming convention:

                                www.fbi.gov

United States Military Web Sites

Military web sites use the same naming convention for the prefix of the domain name (WWW) and for the middle of the name (Army). However, the suffix for military sites including the Department of Defense is .mil. EX. -www.defenselink.mil Department of Defense

EX.---www.army.mil United States Army

EX. ---www.navy.mil United States Navy

 International Organizations The naming convention for international organizations is similar to government agencies. The prefix is usually .www while the middle portion of the name is an acronym or nickname for the organization and the suffix is .org. There is a generic domain for international organizations (.int), however for some reason most internationalorganizations use the .org suffix  
EX. ---www.un.org United Nations

EX. ---www.imf.org International Monetary Fund

EX. ---www.greenpeace.org Greenpeace

EX. ---www.worldbank.org The World Bank

EX. ---www.redcross.org The Red Cross
 
 

 The .org suffix is also used for most not for profit organizations that would not use one of the other available suffixes such as .gov, .mil, .com, .edu, .net, .int, etc. State Government Web Sites

The naming convention for United States State Government web sites is as follows:

                                www.state.wi.us
County government web sites

co.winnebago.wi.us City government web sites ci.madison.wi.us Note: At present, many cities and counties in the United States are not following the established guidelines in coming with domain names for their official sites.

Educational Institutions

Educational institutions generally use the prefix www. The middle part of the name is usually an acronym for the name of the university www.uwosh. The suffix for most educational institutions is edu.

                                                    EX: --www.uwosh.edu (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh)

                                                    EX: --www.uwm.edu (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee)

                                                    EX: -- www.wisc.edu (University of Wisconsin Madison)

Prepared by Michael P. Watkins
Head of Government Documents
Polk Library
University Of Wisconsin Oshkosh



Return to Polk Library Return to UW Oshkosh home page

Comments/suggestions/questions? Email to watkins@uwosh.edu
Information herein is subject to change without notice.
This page was last updated July 2002