How to find an available domain name

A domain name is part of the address you type into a web browser to go to a website.  It is also part of an email address.  It is a way to find resources on the Internet.

A domain name has a number of parts.  For example, the address https://www.companyname.com has a domain name of “companyname”.  The “www” is the name of a specific host or server.  The “com” is the top-level domain name.  A top-level domain name is a way to organize different parts of the Internet for things like commercial (com) or educational (edu).  But, the lines have blurred as the Internet grew.  Additionally, new top-level domains have been allowed like BIZ or CO that are options.

It is a good idea to match your business name to a domain name.  This sometimes is difficult because a business name only needs to be unique in your government that registers business names.  But, there can only be one domain name per top-level domain name.

There are a number of tools to help brainstorm domain names.  The easiest domain name is one that exactly matches your business name.  But there is a good chance that domain name might already be taken so you need to brainstorm some alternatives.  Once you have a few options, the next step is to check availability of the domain names at a domain name registrar.  A domain name registrar is a company that will lease a domain name to you for fee per year.  You can check the different combination of domain name and top-level domain names until you find one that is available.

Let’s talk about how to find an available domain name.  First, let’s start what is a domain name?

What are the parts of a domain name

A domain name is basically the address that you type into a web browser in order to go to a webpage. So when you fire up, say something like Google Chrome, you type in HTTPS, colon, backslash, backslash www.google.com. That’ll bring up the Google search engine. So let’s break that down. explain exactly what the domain name is. Here’s a couple of different parts. The first is actually the protocol HTTPS. That’s a specific protocol used for web browsers. The s refers to secure HTTP is hyper Transfer Protocol. The www is the hostname. So it’s actually the name of the server that is used for this A website. Google is the domain name.com is actually what’s called a top level domain name. There are many different top level domains. The ones most people are familiar with are.com dotnet.org. And then there are different ones for specific countries such as.uk or.ca for Canada.

Relationship to business name

Your domain name should be related to your business name. This isn’t always possible. The reason why is domain names are universally registered meaning throughout the entire world. So someone might have already picked your domain name. That’s right to your business name. Your business name, though, needs to be unique usually within your government jurisdiction. So for example, the air your state if you’re in the United States, so sometimes you have to get a little creative when it comes to matching those up However, for branding purposes, it is important to try to get a domain name that is very similar to your business name.

Domain name registrar

A domain name is actually leased from a domain registrar there are many domain registrar’s available probably one of the most common ones known as GoDaddy, you actually lease this domain name so you never actually technically own it. They’re different things on how the internet’s put together that actually the names are just leased from these domain registrar’s. But once you get it if you continue to pay the yearly fee, you’re able to continue to use that domain name to point at different internet properties such as websites.

Domain name demonstration

So let’s look at how to find available domain name. We’ll do some demos now where we look through different brainstorming tools. We will actually show you how to check for the availability of the domain name you might want. And then we’ll briefly talk about what you might do if you’ve already purchased it.

Brainstorming tools

The first brainstorming tool we’ll get is a website called name licks. This actually says business name generator, but I kind of like it because it looks at business names and shows some different possible domain names. So let me walk you through showing you how to use it. So you can enter a couple of different keywords, we’ll just say that our company is called Acme company.

We have different options on the different links we want to choose. Want to just choose also we see a wide selection. And then this is just again, different words and different ways to show different possible business name. So you have some things like foreign words, or compound words, or real world so we’ll just choose a couple here and just see what we get. Go ahead and do generate and a whole bunch of different things come up. Now again, you’ll notice Some of these are completely unrelated to our original search term, which was Acme company. But again, it’s a brainstorming tool. It gives you different things, it might generate some different ideas, you know, when you come from what your business name should be. So anyway, so that’s one tool. Another website that’s useful for brainstorming domain names is a website called name station.com. Again, we can pick put in our company name this again, Acme company, and get name suggestions. So this one brings up a lot of different names. It does also show some similar ones, that if again, they probably already been taken, but you can again, start getting some ideas of how you might be able to put together different combinations of words or letters are additional words that might do it. Additionally, they have lots of other options here for picking names. So again works out to be a really great tool to see what might show up on different things.

Another brainstorming tool is called name boy. So, again, this one actually shows you the one with a.com is already not available but again, it goes through a number of different choices that you might have. additional option is this website passerby, go ahead and search here.  It goes through and it to shows different options that may be available. Right that and again, you’re going to get mixed results depending on what keywords you put in there.

The next one to look at is one called named mesh. COMM. The results here again, they go through different organizations, short names, extra names, common ones similar fun mix.  But again, just to show you there’s a wide number of possible ones that may give you some inspiration as you’re looking.

So once you’ve kind of gone through looked at different options come up with some ideas for domain manger, I want to look for your website, I next recommend you actually look at a domain registrar to look at the exact availability. Some of those brainstorming tools also do have the ability to look to purchase but I kind of like to go with one that I like to register my domain names and use it to look for that.

The website I’m going to recommend for domain registrar is hover.com hover.com is really good because it’s primarily just domain name registrar. They don’t try to upsell you on other different things. They include free domain policy, domain privacy with their accounts, very easy to renew. It’s a great site. So here we’ll go ahead and type in again, the domain name we’re looking for to match our company name. And you’ll get a little more specific recommendations on what to do. So the first thing that you’ll notice are these filters. We’ll go through those in just a second.

And it’ll again, go ahead and give you different options. So they have their top pick, you get to see the prices that are available. And we’ll go.  Yeah, so they have popular domains. And maybe what they try to do is they put your words that you’ve typed in and then put in different top level domains. So again, if you wanted a top level domain of XYZ, they do give some suggestions how you can combine different words like again Acme company group, cash Acme company, again, you just kind of kind of look through these and see what’s available. They then start breaking it down into if you happen to be in the tech industry, they put different domain names or excuse me, top level domain names that reference tech. Same with business. A popular one here is.eu excuse me, dot biz, or dot business.

Again, company and again, they skip their home services. Anyways, you can keep looking through this list you may be able to find some specific lines for example, if you happen to be in the legal industry or lawyer, they have special ones for that same for dental for Yvette, accountants. But let’s go back up top and change our search a little bit to say that we actually wanted the domain name, Acme company.com. And we’ll see that this search comes back similar results before.

But it’ll actually tell you that this domain name is taken. And do you want to go to a company called domain agents that might be able to help. And you can actually try to make an offer on that. Definitely something to look at. If you found a name, domain name and truly want to do, it’s possible that you might be able to make an offer on it. One easy way to check that is just to type that domain name into your web browser and see what comes back. And if you find out that the website is pretty much an existing company, the chance of they’ll sell it to you are probably pretty low. Now, in this example, you could say yes or no, the copyright is 2000 On, however, it’s probably something somebody isn’t gonna want to sell, you may find different domain names that actually come back with blank sites. And those you might take a risk.

Each of these agencies that handle kind of making these offers us sort of an escrow service to kind of handle the transaction, read up how much it might cost to pay for their services, and then what maybe their minimum bid is, so it’s something to look at, but be aware that might not actually work out as you go through.

So, um, can take a risk, but it may be easier just to find a domain name that is available. The other thing you’ll see here is since this one’s taken, this is where really the idea of a top a different top level domain becomes actually interesting. Most people are familiar with dot coms. And so if you can find a domain name that fits a.com it is probably the best thing to do. People just don’t worry about it. They don’t wonder about it.

But we are seeing more and more domain names that are not dot coms come up. For example, a.io is becoming very popular in the tech industry. Again, a dot biz isn’t terrible. So again, you might be Oregon a unique specific one for your business type. In fact, if I remember correctly, there was an option for a top level domain of company. So let’s see if that one’s been taken. And, yes, unfortunately, it is taken also, there are these ones that are available. Again, few thousand dollars depending on your business may or may not be part of your startup expenses. But usually it seems like the best thing to do is to try to come up with a different alternative that will actually fit there. No admit it’s just a it’s just process of typing in different ideas until you find something that comes back. I’m best of luck on that. Trying to find your domain name and then finding one that’s available