SocialBias :: a Digital Abstraction of Michael Parkatti

I’ve recently been grappling with a fairly fundamental issue that any internet startup has to deal with: picking a good domain name. A good URL is not only your site’s window to the world, it is also your chance to control your brand image and appeal to your target demographics. Before you get started, you need to understand the measures by which a good domain is judged. These metrics will change in every circumstance, but the following should be a good place to start:

1. Readability - the difference between stoplitter.com and killlitter.com
2. Brandability - getanicecar.com vs crazycars.com
3. Memorability - related to its brand, but a good name should stick in someone’s mind
4. Keyword Value - a domain with a great keyword in it can be extremely beneficial for SEO purposes
5. Length - each letter appended to your domain will decrease it’s overall value, all things being equal
6. No unintended meanings - Pen Island could easily devolve into penisland.com
7. Syllables - some long domains can be easily spit out, and vice versa
8. Legality (a) - dear Lord, make sure you ensure whatever name you choose isn’t trademarked. Search your country’s intellectual property agency’s database, and always search the United States trademark database
9. Legality (b) - don’t pick something close to a company that already exists just to skirt its trademarks. That’s known as passing-off in legal circles, and you will get sued. ie. GoogalWebSearch.com
10. Availability - as in, not registered yet. If you can’t find an open domain, you’re not being creative enough.
11. Top-Level Domain - you should have a massive bias towards .com names over all others. Perhaps .org would be acceptable in some circumstances, but you’re putting yourself at an early disadvantage. Ever wonder why any non-.com company has to quote its full name in its marketing? (Box.net, upcoming.org, etc)

As I mentioned, any situation will rate these measures with differing priorities, but you should analyze which are most important to your particular case.

Any Web 2.0 aficionado will know that there are currently many naming trends for domain names. Once one company makes it big using a particular convention, you can bet your right foot that many more copycats will follow. Here are some of the more popular ones:

• Mis-spelled: Flickr is the most famous case, but you could make a decent argument that Google itself was the first (googol is the actual word). If you’re going to misspell something, make sure it’s short, readable, and aesthetically pleasing.
• -ler, -ly, -o, -ster etc: taking a normal word and adding one of these fun little guys can work. I have a site I’ve always wanted to build around ranking things — and I’m sitting on Rankler.com for just that.
• Two real words: I think this is my favourite convention, in that it almost always results in something readable and brandable, and there are a surprising amount of unregistered possibilities.
• me-, you-, i-, we-: inspired by the ‘.com’ era e-everything convention, using a pronoun in front of a real word is a good way to find a domain that’s short and is not nonsense. See below.
• Nonsense: klukripl.com or weqstaf.com — wtf is going on with this crap? Don’t fall for this, please.
• Punny: ie registering airfair.com for a site on air fares. I really like this convention actually.

My favourite tools to find a good available domain are instantdomainsearch and Bust-A-Name. Spend some time getting to know what’s available. You’ll notice some trends around certain words that are totally picked clean. If that’s the case, don’t get frustrated and force a crappy name with an over-subscribed word. This can actually give you a chance to differentiate your brand.

Once you’ve picked your domain, make sure to register all the other TLDs for it, and some appropriate country domains as well (.ca, .co.uk, .jp, etc). And most importantly, once you’ve picked your name, NEVER FREAKING CHANGE IT. Which leads me to my next point –> never second-guess your name, unless you somehow picked eatbabies.com the first time around.