Finding a good domain name in 2009
Wow, I thought finding a good domain name was hard back in 1998 (I had check whois to confirm that date) when we registered booksoft.com and again in 2000 when we registered brightblocks.com. Its impossible these days :)
Here are a couple sites I found to help look for domain names and get inspiration:
- This site is fast and efficient, very good for trying variations on words you're interested in, variations such as 2 or 3 word combinations, and common prefixes and suffixes
- Note: when it tells you the domain name is available, what it really means is it can't tell for sure its not available :) I got very excited when it told me some names were available, only to find out they're not actually. Reading the FAQ it looks like the site does a DNS check to enable it to quickly check large numbers of names, instead of a whois query.
- Similar idea to bustaname.com, but has a few more canned endings you can apply to a single word
- I found this site interesting, it lets you search and browse previously owned (but now available) domain names
- The part I liked was that you could search these previously owned domain names to find ones that contain a substring that you specify, which is an interesting way to get inspired by names people have previously registered
- Though, most of these domain names are terrible, which must be why they are no longer owned :)
- I didn't have a lot of success with this site, but it does let you generate random domain names with different numbers of letters which I thought had some promise
- Wordoid was a bit of a breakthrough for me. By the time I'd found it I'd given up on the possibility of finding a good domain name made of 1 or 2 english words, and instead concluded I'd better make up a word :) Wordoid makes that easier, it makes up names that sound natural in english and tells you if they are available... so you just have to hit next, next, next, next until you see something you like!
Good luck :)
P.S. why didn't I register lots of domain names back in 1998? Or say 1995? At the very least why didn't I register alexblack.com? Was your foresight better than mine, did you register some good names back then? sex.com anyone? :)
