Just finished registering a name for my client. I must’ve spent over 2 hours trying to find a single word that I could register for a (dot)com domain name.
Virtually all those one word domains were “parked” in other words not surving a useful purpose.
I read on the internet that all 3 and 4 letter words have already been registered for .com, .net, .org and .info.
I didn’t check the others as I was only interested in (dot)com names.
But does anyone know if there are any (reasonable) length words that aren’t taken. By that a domain name from a single word that has 40 letters is not reasonable.
And no you don’t have to tell me, cause I know you’ll want to run and register one if you find it.
ZeroZero
A few years ago I was scouting for actual words as a dot com domain name investment. I tried a great many words and one of the few that was not taken was “aardwolf.com”, which I did not buy. (too obscure - nonetheless it was soon purchased by someone else ). Another actual word I found for a “dot com” was “entireness”. (Did you even know such a word existed? I didn’t. I found it on an online wordlist of just about every English word). Needless to say, I did not purchase entireness.com either.
I believe all the “dot com” numbers up to 9999 are also taken. (Probably even many of the larger ones too).
I know that ICANN (the official Internet name brokers) have, in the last few years, started up some new top level domain names such as .biz, .info, .name and a slew of others but it seems .com still remains the gold standard of domain names.
Once you throw in medical and chemical words for new things that are several latin-esque words bonded together, I would say that we can safely say that not every word is used.
I know that there are words, but the (dot)com name is what drives the internet.
Regardless of what you tell people if you domain is Markxxx.info (for example) people tend to try Markxxx.com first
I have found sucsess with anacronyms with 5 or more letters, but not with regular words. I find it ironic that one guy bought over 20,000 INFO domains and is just sitting on them. Even at 5 bucks a pop it’s a lot, but he says he makes it back on pay per click schemes. He did say he doesn’t make a real profit, just enough to cover the restering cost
As for the new top level domains(TLDs) they are pretty worthless, because as soon as they come out with one the people with the (dot)com name register it and forward that domain onto their (dot)com site.
(Of course there are exceptions)
But I was just wondering if it’s worth even trying to search a regular word. I guess there is logic in making up a word like eBay, and then pushing that word into regular language.
I think that the real problem is a lack of creativity. If I were to start up a brick-and-mortar business, I wouldn’t dream of calling it just “Bank” or “Store”. Yet many folks starting up online businesses seem to have the idea, for some reason, that “www.bank.com” or “www.store.com” would be perfectly good names. Most real business names are a compound of words, often including proper names. And domain names of that form still aren’t all that hard to come by.
Well, the OED online has a “random entry” feature. Just for the hell of it, I got a list of twenty random words and saw which ones resolved when I typed <word>.com into Firefox.
Based on this, we can say that 75% ± 10% of the one-word domains are taken. (I think. If anyone who’s better at statistics wants to correct me, feel free.)
Alas, brat.com, as well as basically all one word domain names, have been taken. A few years back, a friend and I sat down for a week with an unabridged dictionary and tried to snag as many one-word domain names as possible. Although most were already taken, we were able to scrape together about 300. We later sold them for between $100 and $10,000 each.
As of 2006 I would be shocked if any one word domain names of any significance have been missed.
Better raise those estimates a bit. I just checked to see if entireness.com is available - well somebody in Malaysia owns it.
So, if an obscure word such as “entireness” has been taken, I’d say 99% of the relatively common words are gone. (and I’m including “entireness” as a relatively common word).
I had squiglitos.com, and eventually let it go; it was part of a long-running in-joke between me and Spoons (Squiglitos! The world’s first virtual snack food!).
It’s easier if you make the words up.
I understand that a lot of words in other languages are still available.
It’s not a word, but a few years ago, I wanted to get zev.com. That wasn’t available, but I was able to snag izev.com, which is a four-letter domain name.
Foreign words are still available? Gee, I’ll see if I can buy the medieval Magyar-Croation word for cufflink. zev - it’s good to have a 4 letter “dot com” domain name. There may be a few still left.
I think that all 3 character “dot coms” are gone. Given the restrictions that you can only use letters, numbers and hyphens (with no hyphens allowed in the first or last position), that would yield 36 * 37 * 36 possibilities or a “mere” 47,952.
I own one - 4Y4.com - why? Because it was there. I’ll probably end up taking it to the grave.
Two words of advice when you want to register a domain name:
Don’t search to see if it’s available unless you are prepared to register it at that time.
Never announce the upcoming domain name unless you have already registered it.
There are some outfits that keep track of these availability searches, and they snap up the names if they don’t get registered immediately. Several years ago I ran a Web site that showcased my desktop wallpaper designs, and I came up with the name “ScreenThings”. I started out hosting the site as a subdirectory of my personal site, i.e. (phase42.net/screenthings). That was cumbersome, so I decided to give the site its own domain name. I went to InterNIC (the only domain registrar at the time) and searched, and found the name was available. I would be using a debit card to pay for it instead of a credit card, so had to wait a few days until I got paid and had money in the bank before I could register the name.
However, I went ahead and announced on my site that it would soon be moving to its own domain at screenthings.com.
The very next day, I discovered somebody else had registered the name. :mad:
Assuming somebody was hoping to coax a large sum of money out of me to get the name, I publicly said on my site, “Screw you, whoever did this” and came up with a new name (which I registered immediately without announcing it beforehand - I’d learned my lesson).
The person/entity who registered my first choice did absolutely nothing with the domain name - there was a “coming soon” page up for a couple years, which was later replaced by a “parked” page. I just checked it again out of curiosity, and see that somebody (probably not the same person) has finally put up a site at that domain. It’s a desktop enhancement site, though with a larger scope than my original intent.
Some years ago there was a dot com that tried to get around this limitation by adding “p” before any word and “q” after it. Want cars? pcarsq.com. Want kimchi? Type pkimchiq.com. I don’t think it lasted long; no doubt down the tubes along with the rest of the dot coms.
