JuliannaSo you have heard the dirge “all the good domain names are gone!”. But have you tried to register a .COM lately?
Chances are all the good generic words and short snappy phrases you searched for were taken. Okay, we admit it. It’s no longer a secret that almost all the good .COM names have been snapped-up, many by savvy domainers eager to sell them to fledgling businesses. It has become extremely difficult to register anything out of a dictionary, or a word or phrase that clearly distinguishes your company/product, conveys an idea or concept.
Don’t believe us? Try for yourself here. Among domain names, .COM is still king
To illustrate the point, Denis Forbes has some new statistics after crunching the numbers on .COM’s.
- Approximately 47 million .COM’s domain names have been registered, making it the most valuable commodity and real estate on the Internet
- Every possible two character and three character combination (including letter and number domain names) are taken
- All of the 1,000 most common English words have been registered
- Nearly every four letter English word has been registered (those that haven’t are likely contractions, and domain names don’t accommodate apostrophes)
And if you have big dreams about registering your own name, or children’s name, don’t hold your breath. Mr. Forbes’ work shows the most common 1,219 male names have already been registered. The registration options are even sparser for female names, with the most common 2,841 taken. When you combine these with the 300 most common surnames, an average of 87% of the resulting combinations are unavailable.
No doubt Forbes’ findings are frustrating for web developers and entrepreneurs, but there is hope! Remember less than 800,000 .CA’s – total – have been registered, so if you are Canadian or can meet Canadian presence requirements there’s a lot of great .CA real estate still available. And if you are dead-set on a .COM, here are some tips to help you get a hip and memorable domain name.
We suggest you try some morphemes … or more specifically, a morpheme mash-up.
For starters, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation, or alternatively, meaning. Take the word disreputable; it’s composed of three morphemes – “dis,” “repute,” and “able”, all of which are different types of morphemes (prefix, free morpheme and suffix, respectably). Mashing morphemes and /or mixing together partial words can result in clever combinations and great domain names.
Take the word “domainer”, possible alternatives include: domainr, dmainr, dmnr, dom.ain.r, d.main.r and so on, all of which are memorable, phonetic and semantically relative. Alternatively, combining words or parts of different words can affect the same result, for example: BlinkSale, TypePad and NewsVine. Examples of morphemes can be found all over the Web, frequently associated with Web 2.0 technologies, examples include: Flickr, Del.icio.us, Digg and Ma.gnolia to name but a few. The trend is catching however, so if you’ve got a good one in mind, don’t sit on it for too long.
Lastly, if you are willing to pony-up some hard cash to get a domain name that matches your business concept, you might want to check what’s listed on Sedo.com, a domain marketplace that buys, sells and appraises domain names … but be prepared to pay. Alternatively, you can check the WhoIs information of your dream domain and email the owner; if the domain is parked or not associated with a business, they may consider selling it to you.
More Information
Read Denis Forbes’ .COM breakdown: Interesting Facts About Domain Names
For more on the anatomy of morphemes, check out the Wikipedia entry.