Choose Your Domain Name & Brand Your Site

Brand your site and grab your domain name

Choosing a domain name is tricky. If you are an established company your choice of domain names should be limited to something similar to your company name. Not only is this a good search engine optimisation strategy but it will make it easier for people to find your website if they know your company name. Ideally, people should be able to know what your site is about from the domain name. If you have spent time creating a brand name you should take advantage of this.

You should think about the offline world when you choose your domain name too. Not everybody communicates by email. If one of your visitors told his friends that he has just played the best online game at “great games dot com” would he be sending people to your website www.great-gamez.com or that of your competitor www.greatgames.com.
Remember to think about punctuation and spelling.

Should I Use .com or .net?

There is a lot of disagreement on how much effect the top level domain extension (or TLD, the .com, .net, .org, or .co.uk part) has on your website. It seems to be more of a trust factor rather than anything else. It is generally thought that search engines don’t rank a site based on the extension, but will give more authority to links with certain extensions. A website with a .gov extension will be more trusted than a .info website.

Basically, for a commercial site choose a .com, .co.uk, .com.au or the similar extension for your country.

Search For Your Chosen Domain

If you are not sure how to find out if your domain name is available, this guide will show you how to search.

DomainTools is the best place to go for your domain name searches. Find the site at www.domaintools.com.

DomainTools homepage

On the home page click “Domain Search” and enter your chose name.

Results of domain search

This image shows the results page.

The highlighted box on the left lists the domain you have searched for and some similar variations. The middle box shows whether each name is available. The DomainTools website currently lists .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us extensions. The box on the right shows the key to the symbols used.
This is an excellent tool as it shows you whether a domain name is registered, and whether there is a site there or not, parked or redirected or on hold. If a domain name has been registered and there is no website residing there, the owner will usually be willing to sell it. Domain names are often registered in an attempt to make money from people who may be interested in using that domain name in the future.

A white circle means the domain name is available. A globe icon means the domain name has been registered and there is an active website at that location. A red circle with either a “P” icon or a white backslash means the domain has been registered but there is no active website there.

If your Domain is Available

You can register your domains directly from the site by clicking on the white circles for the names you wish to register. It is recommended that you keep a note of which domains are available and register them through your chosen registrar.

If your Domain is not Available

DomainTools gives you a list of related domain names below the one you have searched for. If any of these suggestions are suitable, make a note of them and register them through your chosen registrar. If you cannot find any suitable domains, it’s time for a rethink. Go back to the beginning and start searching for another domain.

Register Your Domain

It really is not an exaggeration to say that a good domain name is essential. But even choosing a suitable registrar can be tricky. Prices vary significantly, despite the fact that each company is offering the same basic service. ICANN maintains a list of accredited registrars on their website. Bear in mind that some organisations, such as Google, are accredited but do not offer a registration service. It is speculated that Google wants access to DNS information, but they have not been clear about what they plan to do. Unscrupulous companies will charge you a fortune for basic services such as forwarding your domain to another website or changing your email (DX) records. You also need to make sure that your host won’t steal your domain name when it expires without notifying you. Such examples are extreme, but they do happen.

Since you only need to renew your domain every year at most, going with a well known, established host such as the ones listed below is highly recommended.

Current Prices

The table above shows some of the best known registrars but there are thousands of companies. Don’t take the list to be a recommendation but shop around and see what is best for you.

Unscrupulous Practices

Domain Front Running

An issue that has become more significant in the last year is the issue of domain front running. This occurs when you are looking for a suitable domain name and somebody quickly registers all the domains you are searching for. This is usually performed by unscrupulous individuals who will then hold your domain “for ransom” until you pay for the privilege of taking back the domain. Network Solutions caused a storm when they were discovered to be “holding” domain names searched for on their website for five days. The domain name was available to register through Network Solutions, but other registrars showed it as registered. For this reason, when you are looking for available domain names, never search through a registrar. Always search from a command line tool or from a website dedicated to domain management, such as domaintools.com.

Domain Tasting

Domain tasting refers to registering a domain name and cancelling it within five days. This is ICANN’s “add grace period”, where the registrar can receive a full refund of their fees. The purpose of this practice, as you might suspect, is money. Somebody registers a domain, adds Google AdSense for Domains to the page and waits to see if it monetises. The process is repeated tens of thousands of times. Any domains that don’t make any money are cancelled within the five day grace period. This process is popular on domains similar to popular websites, often with simple spelling mistakes. ICANN is currently in the process of stopping domain tasting and hopes to have it implemented some time this year.

Domain Kiting

Another method for squeezing more money out of domains is the practice of domain kiting. A domain name is registered and monetised with Google Adsense. Before the five day grace period ends, the domain is cancelled and then re-registered, meaning it is never actually paid for. Google has recently stated that they will stop this practice by analysing if a domain has recently been deleted and re-registered. If this happens too often they will be banned from the program.

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Tags: brand, domains, identity, Planning Issues