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Domain
Names
Getting a good domain name..(Almost everything is taken!)
So
you've decided to setup a web site? Why not? Everybody is doing
it. Hire some web space, get a good domain name and you are on..
Wait a minute, did I say good domain name? I must be out of my mind..Last
time I checked it felt like almost every English dictionary word
was taken. I decided to look for a good Hindi domain name. No luck
again, whatever came to mind had already been registered. Our clients
then came up something, which was sort of a compromise. It was definitely
not in the league of a business.com or an internet.com, but what
the heck; the site had to go up...
So what does one do? How does one get a good domain in a world where
thousands of domain names are being registered everyday? Well, there
is no simple answer to that, but there are some rules you can follow
to construct a good domain name. These rules will help you systematically
search for a good domain name. But let's first look at what is a
good domain name.
A good name must have the following qualities...
It must be easy to remember. (Most Important)
It must as closely describe the web site content as possible (This
can really help you get good rankings on a search engine). Though
there are exceptions to this rule (Yahoo.com being the most notable
exception).
It must be as short as possible.
It must be easy to spell. (you don't want your visitors to misspell
their way to other sites)
It must be sufficiently different from the names of other popular
sites (at least different from the names of popular sites in the
same category as you).
It must NOT be the name used by a famous brand or company.
If your site is international in nature, make sure the domain name
is not considered offensive in some country.
Now let's say how one can construct a good, possibly available,
domain name...
Let's say your site is a general information site about books, so
your main keyword would be books....
First you will try books.com, and unless you are really, really
lucky you will not get it. Next maybe you'd give a shot to books.net
(no luck again! huh!). If your site is India specific maybe you
can try pustak.com or kitaab.com, but if your site is international
in nature, you would have a problem at your hands. The only choice
now would be to use prefixes or suffixes with your keyword and see
if the resulting domain name was available for registration. While
adding prefixes or suffixes to your keyword avoid the use of hyphens.
This causes a problem when you rely on word of mouth publicity for
your web site. When people recommend your site to others, they might
not mention the hyphen and the person would not be able to reach
your web site at all.
Getting a good domain name..(Almost everything is taken!) (cont.)
Here's how your domain name would look when attached with some common
prefixes for information web sites....
aboutbooks.com
allaboutbooks.com
knowbooks.com
books.com
ebooks.com
Here's how your domain name would look when attached with some common
suffixes for information web sites....
booksonline.com
booksonthenet.com
bookssite.com
If you are India specific, then you could try for indiabooks.com
or booksindia.com. If you feature books of a specific type you could
try prefixing an adjective to your keyword. for e.g. oldbooks.com,
classicbooks.com, rarebooks.com etc..All these domain meet the criteria
mentioned on top. In addition these type of domain names are in
vouge. Net savvy surfers directly try these domain name when they
are looking for information on the net. This might become a common
practice, as the use of the web grows and more and more people gain
expertise. These domain names will surely become extremely valuable
in a couple of years. Remember domain names like business.com have
fetched millions of dollars when they were sold by their original
owners.
Of course you could have many more prefixes and suffixes and therefore
a lot more combinations would be possible. This as you will realise
could be a lot of hardwork. Specially if you are using a conventional
web based whois query tool to check for domain name availability.
Almost every site which lets you register a domain name provides
a web based whois query tool. Some sites like qwho.com or betterwhois.com
are dedicated exclusively to this purpose. Such sites are fast and
return detailed information about the registered domain name. Detailed
information which includes registrant name and address, helps you
contact the owner of the domain name in case you want to purchase
the domain name from him/her.
But what you really need is a tool to which helps you make whois
queries for multiple domain names at the same time. The best tool
available at the moment is at register.com. The whois query tool
at register.com lets you specify one or two keywords. It also lets
you specify the type of content your web site would host. Then using
this information it automatically constructs domain names and gives
you a report within seconds.
The problem with web based tools are that they are slow and cannot
be customised. They are now software applications available which
make searching for a good domain name a breeze. ITAZ DomaiNIC is
one of the new fast and easy to use tools available. It is first
of it's kind because it is actually a set of tools which help you
quickly choose a good available domain name. It feature a quick
multi domain whois query tool, a fast, intelligent and fully customisable
domain name generator and domain name research tool. The DomaiNIC
research tools lets you quickly survey the kind of domain names
already registered for your keyword.
You can download a copy of DomaiNIC from http://www.itaz.com/domainic
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