How to choose a domain name

The strongest single filter for a domain name is the radio test: say it out loud once, and ask whether a stranger could type it correctly without ever seeing it written down.

Names that fail the radio test leak traffic in ways you never see in analytics. Someone hears your name on a podcast, types their best guess, lands on a parked page or a competitor, and gives up. No dashboard reports that loss. It just shows up as a smaller audience than your marketing should have produced.

In practice, four categories of names fail this test again and again. Read your shortlist against them before you get attached to anything.

• Hyphens

  Nobody says "hyphen" out loud. If your name needs one to be readable, the name is really two names fighting each other.

• Doubled letters at word boundaries

  Compounds like newsstand, bookkeeper or shelllife create a letter nobody is sure about. Half your audience types one L, half types three.

• Numbers and homophones

  Is it 4, four, or for? Is it 2 or to? If you must use a number, register the spelled-out variant too and redirect it.

• Creative misspellings

  Dropped vowels were fashionable a decade ago and are now a tax. Every mention has to be followed by "without the E", which is a sentence you will say thousands of times.

Most people arrive at a domain search with one name they love, discover it is taken, and spend the next hour bolting words onto it. That is how you end up with getourappnow.com. A better process is to widen the pool first, then narrow with tests, so that you are always choosing between good options rather than rescuing a single bad one.

Five naming patterns cover the overwhelming majority of strong modern brands. Work through each one and write down at least five candidates before evaluating any of them.

Length is the second filter, and it is more mechanical than aesthetic. A name under roughly fifteen characters fits comfortably in a mobile browser bar, in an email address that will not wrap, and in a social handle without truncation. Past that, every additional character is another opportunity for a typo and another line of visual noise on your packaging.

“If the name does not fit on a coffee cup at a readable size, it will not fit in your customer's memory either.

Checking a single extension is how people fall in love with a name that is unusable. The .com is free, so they buy it, then discover that the matching handle is taken on every platform they need, a competitor holds the .co, and the .app version redirects to a bigger company with lawyers.

1. 1

   Sweep the extensions in one pass

   Check the whole set of relevant extensions simultaneously rather than one per search. You are looking for a name that is clean across the group, not just clear on your first choice.

2. 2

   Look at who holds the near misses

   If a large, well-funded company in your sector already owns three neighbouring extensions, that is a signal to move on. A dormant parked page held by a domain investor is a much smaller problem.

3. 3

   Check social and developer handles

   The handle matters more than the extension for most consumer brands. Research a shortlisted name and you will see handle availability alongside registry data.

4. 4

   Confirm nothing is live on the name

   A domain that resolves to an active site is registered, whatever a stale availability list tells you. Live DNS plus a registry record together is the honest answer.

This is the moment most naming projects go wrong, because the decision gets made emotionally at 11pm rather than deliberately in advance. Write your rule down before you search, and you will make a better call.

• Option one: change the name

  Cheapest, cleanest, and the right answer far more often than people accept. If you have generated forty candidates, losing one is not a crisis.

• Option two: add a short qualifying word

  A single meaningful prefix such as get, try, use or join is acceptable if it reads naturally. Two added words is a warning sign, three is a mistake.

• Option three: use a relevant alternative extension

  A short exact name on .io, .ai, .co or .app almost always beats a padded .com. You accept some type-in traffic loss in exchange for a name that is actually good.

• Option four: buy it on the aftermarket

  Viable if the holder is an investor rather than an operating business, and if you have budget. Expect four to five figures for anything short and pronounceable.

A domain costs the price of a sandwich. Rebranding after a trademark dispute costs a quarter of your year. The checks below take about fifteen minutes and should be the last gate before checkout.

1. 1

   Search the exact name in quotes

   Look for an existing company using the name commercially, especially in your own category or country. Two pages of results is enough to spot the obvious problems.

2. 2

   Search the app stores

   Mobile apps are a common source of collision that never surfaces in a normal web search.

3. 3

   Check your national trademark register

   Most registers offer free public search. Look for marks in the classes that cover your goods or services, not just identical spellings.

4. 4

   Say it in another language

   If you plan to sell internationally, run the name past a native speaker in each target market. This catches problems no database will.

5. 5

   Check the domain's history

   A previously used domain can carry spam history or unwanted archived content. Look at the registry record and archive snapshots before you buy a name that has clearly lived a previous life.

“The best name you can register today beats the perfect name you cannot have.

Once a candidate has passed the radio test, the length check, the namespace sweep and the conflict checks, stop deliberating and register it. Names that sit on a shortlist for a fortnight have a habit of disappearing, and the marginal difference between your first and second choice is almost always smaller than the cost of another two weeks without a brand.