One of the toughest aspects of naming a company or a product is finding a URL, a domain name for your Web site. You might want to consider the “used” market. Every day thousands of perfectly good URLs are abandoned and left to expire—their yours for the taking. If you have ever bought a used car or a find at a garage sale, you might discover the used URL market to be a bargain-hunter’s paradise.
Expired name lists come from a number of sources and can number over 100,000 at any given time. You can check out lists of expired names at sites like www.networksolutions.com or www.expiredurl.info. Some of the pay sites like http://deleteddomains.com or www.snapcheck.com provide user interfaces that help you sift for that needle in the haystack without having to page through the hundreds of thousands of names. They let you search on keywords for names that are related to your area of interest or that are variations on words you suggest. Some like www.domainsbot.com will actually create combinations and suggestions to help you explore variations that might work for you.
But like buying an old TV at a garage sale or a used car from a want ad—BUYER BEWARE!
You need to know as much about who owned the domain and how they used it BEFORE you buy. A domain name with an unsavory history will cost you traffic, search engine rank, and your good reputation.
Many names expire because the previous owner got too busy to keep up the site, couldn’t afford it any longer, went out of business or simply never got off the ground. In these cases, you shouldn’t have any trouble with the domain. However, many, many domains are abandoned because their disreputable past has caught up with them. Search engines aggressively weed out spam sites. Any URL associated with spamming can be permanently banned from a search engine’s site index. If you buy that URL, you may never get ranked and never attract visitors. A permanent ban is just that: permanent.
Watch out for a “lemon”
- Did the owner have just one name or a thousand. Be wary of previous owners who mass hundreds of names. They could be speculators or spammers who inter-link sites and otherwise try to confuse search engines. Their expired names are definitely suspect.
- Did the domain name ever have a site? If so, what was it about? You don’t want to be associated with a former porn site or with other material that would undermine your purpose. Check the WayBack Machine Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to see how your domain name has been used in the past.
- If the domain was actually used, how did it rank with search engines? You can enter the domain on search engines if it was recently release to check its rank. If you find a used name that ranks highly without negative connotations, you definitely start out ahead.
With a little care, you may find that it pays to recycle and that “used” is better than new.
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More naming resources:
Naming How-To:
Naming Mistakes
Six Factors for a Memorable and Motivating Name
History of Best Known Brands
Styles and Types of Brands
Choosing a Name
Try a Recycled Name
Web 2.0 Naming Considerations
What is Brand Architecture
Approaches to Brand Architecture
Brand Architecture and Business Strategy
Companies and Products:
MSNBC vs. msnbc.com and The Bigger Naming Problem
Macy’s Blunder with Marshall Field’s Name Change
Banks and the Name Game from Bank Marketing Magazine
AIG Name Change to AIU
Breaking Up the Motorola Brand
Google’s Speedbook Disaster
Renaming a Small Business
Proxios CEO Talks About Renaming Process
Naming a Green Sportswear Company
Unintentionally Funny Names-BARF
Unintentionally Funny Names-Putzmeister
Renaming a $2 Billion IPG Agency
Renaming Iraqi Freedom
Selected Naming Portfolio
Additional Naming Materials:
Merriam’s Guide to Naming available at Amazon.com
Naming in general
