There is a great deal of interest among accounting professionals in registering a website with the new .cpa top level domain, as a recent surge in demand temporarily overwhelmed the AICPA's systems, according to Accounting Today.

Domain names are the three-letter abbreviations at the end of a URL. In the early days of the internet, these domains were generally limited to the now-ubiquitous .com, .org, .gov, .net, .edu, and .mil. As time went on, however, more domains were added, such as the country-specific .us or .uk, or even city-specific domains, such as .nyc. As time passed, more than a thousand ever-more particular domains have been introduced such as .tv for television shows, .bike for bikes, .faith for religious organizations, and, of course, .cpa for certified public accountants.

The AICPA made a bid for the .cpa domain name in 2014, which it ultimately won. The new domain extension will be available to CPAs and their firms and will signal a clear connection to the profession. For example, Firm Name, LLC, could have a website address of www.firmname.cpa. Jane Smith, an employee at that firm, could have an email address of jsmith@firmname.cpa. The AICPA said that this domain name could help authenticate legitimate CPA firms. The AICPA formally opened applications for the new domain name in September.

Accounting Today reported that on Thursday there was a surge of new applications that overwhelmed the platform, which left some CPAs unable to access their own web sites. This was because the early registration process closed at the end of October, and those who received a .cpa site were first able to activate it on Nov. 5. Apparently almost everyone did so at once, stressing system resources.

The outage has since been resolved.