.gov domain — meaning, who can register and how it works

What does .gov mean?

The .gov extension is short for government, and like .com and .edu it dates back to the original top-level domains defined in January 1985. From the very beginning it was set aside for one purpose: the official online presence of the United States government. That single, narrow purpose has held remarkably steady for four decades, which is why a .gov address carries the weight it does — it has never been a free-for-all.

Administration of .gov has moved over the years. It was long run by the General Services Administration (GSA), but since 2021 the domain has been managed by CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The shift reflected a security mindset: a verified .gov is part of how the public knows an official message, form or alert is genuinely from a government body and not an impersonator.

Who uses .gov?

Only US government, at every level. That spans federal agencies and the executive (whitehouse.gov, irs.gov, usa.gov), state and territorial governments, county and city governments, and federally recognised tribal governments. A tax form, a benefits portal, an election-information page, a city services site — when it lives on .gov, the extension itself is a promise that the operator is a verified government entity.

Just as important is who is excluded. Political campaigns, advocacy groups, contractors, and private companies that work with government cannot use .gov for themselves. International governments do not use it either — they sit on their own country codes. If you are a civic group, a non-profit or a community organisation, .gov is not for you; the right homes are .org for a non-profit identity or .us for an American footprint.

Who can register a .gov domain?

Eligibility is strict and verified. A .gov can be requested only by a genuine US governmental organisation: a federal agency, a state or territorial government, a local government (a city, county, town or similar), or a federally recognised tribal government. An authorised official of that organisation must submit the request, and CISA verifies both the organisation's eligibility and the requester's authority before any name is approved.

For everyone else, the takeaway is simple: you cannot get a .gov, and there is no registrar, price or workaround that changes that. Trying to look governmental when you aren't would be both impossible (the verification stops it) and inadvisable. If your aim is a trustworthy civic or public-interest presence, choose an honest alternative — .org is the conventional pick for community and non-profit work, while .us signals a US connection without implying you are the government.

How much does a .gov cost?

For an eligible US government organisation, a .gov is free — CISA does not charge a registration fee, having removed the previous cost to encourage secure, official domains across all levels of government. But "free" comes with the unavoidable condition that you must qualify. For anyone outside the US government there is no price at all, because the domain is not on sale. If you arrived hoping to compare .gov against other extensions on cost, the meaningful comparison is among the options you can actually register — see our compare TLDs page, or look at .us and .org.

Is .gov good for SEO and trust?

.gov is the gold standard for trust. People treat a .gov address as authoritative by default, and over time these sites have accumulated vast numbers of inbound links from news, reference and research pages citing official data. That credibility is real and earned. What it is not is a magic ranking button: Google and Bing don't award a page higher positions just for ending in .gov. The benefit flows from the behaviour the extension represents — authoritative source, link-worthy content — not from the three letters themselves. And because you can't acquire a .gov unless you're a government, this is firmly a trust story rather than an SEO tactic anyone can adopt. For the wider picture, see our guide on comparing TLDs.

.gov vs alternatives

The closest practical neighbour is .us, the United States country-code domain. Where .gov is locked to verified government bodies, .us is open and is the natural choice for an American organisation that wants a national signal without being a government agency. Beyond that, .org remains the standard for non-profits, advocacy and community projects, and a general brand will usually still default to .com. None of these implies government status, which is exactly the point: if you can't have a .gov, pick the alternative that tells the truth about who you are.