Internet Domain names.

How to Find the Perfect Domain Name, and everything there is to know !

This page covers a lot, you don't need to read the whole page, you can pick and chose from the titles of the paragraphs, but i would recommend you at least read till the end of how to find a great domain name !

the closer you get to the bottom of the document, the more technical it gets, hopefully you should be able to tell when things get irrelevant to your quest !

What is a domain name

A domain name is an address on the internet, and in this context, it is your address on the internet, at that address, you keep your internet pages and images and whatever else you want to serve to your visitors.

You use domain names every day, google.com is a domain name, and so it instagram.com or facebook.com, if you own a domain name such as example.com, for as long as you are renewing it on time, people can reach your website at that address, regardless of how many times you change web hosts or the contents of your website, what people see at that internet address is what you have put there for them.

Note: at the time of writing, a .COM domain costs around $12 / year at PoloDomains.

The above is all you need to know to get started, but as with everything else, it gets a bit more complicated if you want to get more technical, I will clarify a bit here, and a lot later in this guide for those who want to dig deeper.

at the network layer, internet addresses are numbers (called IP addresses), those numbers are not easy to remember (Among other restrictions), a domain name is simply an alternative name that points to that numerical address, so example.com might actually point to 127.0.0.1 for example, now the name is much easier to remember than the number, mainly because it is a word, but also because the word is relevant to your business or website, which helps the user remember it.

later on I will get to the more technical things like A records and MX records !

Can i have any name that i want ?

As long as no one else has already registered that name, and as long as you only use the acceptable characters (Alphanumeric + the hyphen character), in most cases, yes you can (In most cases because some domains like example.com for example can not be registered, and domains that expire have grace periods, among other exceptions).

But finding a great domain that has not been already taken is hard, this is why this page has a section to help you find a great domain name.

Does it matter which domain name registrar or provider I use ?

Yes, Absolutely, although which registrar you chose does not affect the speed or reliability of your website, there are things that matter nonetheless, the criteria you should be aware of when choosing a registrar are the following

• Is your registrar well established ? when a registrar goes out of business, your domain name will most likely be moved to a different registrar (Happened before), this will be a bit confusing for some time, and the new registrar is not one that you have chosen >> PoloDomains has been online for over 23 years !
• Does the registrar play games with the price ? most registrars are playing this game lately, they give you a good price for the first year, then hike up the price for all subsequent years, our advice to you is to pick a registrar that prices their domains with a reasonable margin above the registry prices >> at PoloDomains we have never hiked up our prices, we only raise them when they are raised by the upstream provider, in which case the price is no longer within our control.
• is it marketted as a free domain ? Do not buy hosting because it comes with a free domain, it might complicate things when you decide to move away from your web host, get a domain name that comes with all the tools you need to manage it and move it around freely, besides, there is no such thing as a free domain and there is most certainly a catch, for example, a .com domain directly from verisign (top level) costs the registrar $9.59 USD at the time of writing (2024), and this is before adding the ICANN fee, the payment gateway fee, and any applicable taxes, so you can rest assured that cost has been added somewhere else, in this case, to your hosting. So i would certainly recommend not going for the free domain name that comes with hosting.
• Does the registrar give you the essential tools ? In most cases, your registrar will give you access to a few tools that are very useful for your domain name, for example, one tool that is commonly found at most well established registrars is the ability to host your DNS at the registrar instead of your host (More on that later), even though your web host will likely give you DNS hosting with your web hosting, sometimes you would want to use your domain with multiple hosts and providers, for example, you may want to use google mail for email, and a certain web host for a certain subdomain, and yet another host for a different domain, such tools can be very useful >> PoloDomains provides those tools with cutting edge technology, for example DNS hosting at PoloDomains uses anycast DNS !

now with the above out of the way, from a purely technical perspective it is unlikely that the registrar you chose will affect your websites performance or reliability, domain names are operated by the tld's registry, not by your domain registrar, your registrar gives you the tools to manage that domain at the registry, so if your domain's nameservers are pointing to your hosts nameservers, a visitor's browser will contact the registry (Verisign in this case), then go directly to your hosts DNS servers, your registrar is irrelevant and does not get contacted in the process of opening a website for example !

Here is an example to recap the tech aspect

.COM domains are managed by verisign, .com is a TLD, and verisign manages ALL .com domains, so when a user wants to visit your website, your registrar has no role in this transaction, in this example verisign will tell your visitor's browser where your DNS servers are, and consequently the DNS servers will tell the browser where your pages and files are stored !

What are TLDs ?

TLD is short for Top Level Domain, .com for example is a TLD, and your domain name falls under such a top level domain, and hence it is called a second level domain (SLD)...

Domain name TLDs fall into two categories, general and country code, not long ago, general TLDs were limited to the three letter TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil) and international TLDs were two letter extensions such as de, jo, uk, etc... every country ran their own tld's registry, while general TLDs were run by private entities. this is still the case today, but today we have many more general TLDs, the ICANN (International corporation for assigned names and numbers ) started the "New gTLD Program" in 2004, which allowed for many more general tld's, so now we have top level domains such as dev (Run by google) or .travel (managed by TheGlobe), those TLDs are called "Sponsored top-level domains" or sTLDs for short.

Which TLD should i get

Up to the time of writing this in 2024, In most cases, we still recommend you try to get a very relevant .COM domain, people kind of still default to .com, saying a name with a .com at the end explains that this is a web address, people associate .com domains with established businesses, among many other benefits that you will figure out as you read on.

In other situations, getting a country code TLD may be a better idea, especially if you want people to know that you are local to a certain country from the name.

But things are not always that simple, most .COM domains are already taken, so, to help you chose a domain and a TLD, we have composed some tips for you to help you find a good domain name, both the name and the tld, as there are trade-offs !

How do i find a great domain name ?

To find a great domain name, you will need to use tools, mainly because the obvious great domains for your trade or project are probably already gone !

the tool needs to be able to do the following

• Check the availability of domains, the tool is of no use if it presents you with thousands of killer domain names that are mostly taken, inspecting their availability one by one will take a long long time
• be able to generate relevant suggestions
• be able to take your suggestions for alternatives into account
• preferably use AI with good RAG data
• allow you to pick what about the name matters to you the most, for example, if you value shorter names, or if you are looking for descriptive names, or if SEO is your main objective.

From this point on, we will call such a tool a domain name generator, or a domain generator for short.

but using a good domain generator (Like the one PoloDomains provides) is not enough, you need to understand the criteria for choosing a domain name, otherwise, you will pick a sub optimal domain from the domain names suggested by the domain generator !

So what is the criteria for a good domain name

That differs from domain to domain depending on it's purpose ! let us start with the more basic things you would want in a domain. mind you, sometimes a great name will deviate from all of the below, those are just guidelines that work for most domains, but if you find a killer domain that does not meet any of them, it is still a killer domain and you should get it !

• short: You would want your domain name to be short, provided that it remains relevant to your business, a very long domain is a bad choice, even if you are aiming for SEO, besides that very short domains break the bank, money you may be (depending on your budget) better off spending on your website or product
• descriptive: It is much easier to remember a domain name if it is descriptive of what your website is about ! sometimes adding the name of the city you provide your services in for example can be a big plus
• easy to spell: You don't want your competition to snatch the common misspellings of your domain and take away your customers, you also don't want them to visit a non existing website and think your website vanished
• sometimes, if you are creating a tool, you may want to use a name that can be used as a verb, for example, to google something, a good example is when microsoft changed it's search engine's name from live to bing, in hopes that people might start using the verb "To bing something" since live didn't lend itself very well to being used in this way !
• memorable: if your domain name uses a word that has not been used since the middle ages, the odds of people remembering the name will either be high (As it is different) or very low, if that word is hard to remember, or if for example you use a word from biology that is 10 letters long, you can bet no one is coming to your website by simply typing its name in a browser ! too generic can also have this problem, you have to assess the memorability for the domain yourself
• sounding nice: Domains that sound nice have a certain obvious advantage, both to memorability and to your brand !

So now you know what a great domain name looks like in general, But there is a catch ! most of the domain names that will fulfill a good balance from the above criteria will be taken especially for highly competitive markets !

So, let us get back to our domain name generator, PoloDomains provides a tool (A domain name generator) that will hopefully allow you to get a great domain name in the shortest time possible, so start by entering your dream domain, granted it will be taken, but that will help our AI understand what you are looking for, so for example if you are building a website for your insurance packages, you might want to start by searching for the domain name insurance.com ! obviously, this name is not available, in fact, it was sold for $35.6 million US dollars ! but it is a starting point !

Now, you will be able to start requesting things to try from our chatbot, you can start by telling the bot about your competitive advantage or your target market, for example, tell the bot that you sell domain names in Xanadu, at which point, the domain generator should suggest a domain such as XanaduInsurance.com or the like, but maybe this is not the best domain for you as you want to show up for searches outside of the Xanadu, so you might tell the AI that you are seeking something for a broader audience, and that the audience you are targeting is interested in discounts and great rates on popular insurance plans by a certain insurance company and so forth.

As you go, the AI will only show you domain names that are available for you to register, and you would probably have created a short list of domains that you would consider, and here are a few tips on how to pick a domain from that short list

1- Branding

• Does the name lend itself to branding ? Branding is a very important aspect, and some names lend themselves better than others, Imagine a logo that goes with that name, Imagine a theme, and then assess whether that is a look and feel you would want for your business
• After you get your domain name, you would probably want to get matching handles on social media platforms for the brand's consistency ! and although it can be overlooked if you find a great domain name (You will have to make do with variants of the name for those handles), having matching handles is good for both branding and marketing.
• are there too many variations of the name, you don't want your competition to take a variant of your name and steal your customers who are accidentally visiting that variation of the name ! if the name is really good, and the variations are few, i recommend getting the ones that make sense !
• Before getting a name, check that your name won't get you into legal disputes, research any potential legal issues with copyrights and trademarks
• Would the name mean something else in a different language ? would that meaning affect your brand negatively ?

• SEO value, a name that describes the content or purpose of the website it points to will add points to how it is ranked by search engines, how big of an effect that has is no longer a simple matter, search engine algorithms have gotten far more complex than the early days of SEO, so when you pick a domain name, SEO can be a factor to consider.
• does the name restrict you when some time in the future you decide to expand your operation, either geographically or in terms of offering or target market ?
• is the name easy to remember ? this is very important because besides making it harder for your visitor to come back to your website, if a group of people are talking about insurance, the last thing you want is for one of them to say, i got my insurance from a great website, but I don't remember what it was called... I'll check and let you know, because they will probably forget about it the next day
• is it easy to pronounce ? try saying it out loud a couple of times, and if it sounds a step away from being a tongue twister, avoid it...
• Does it lend itself to your marketing plans ?
• if two domains seem to be equal, go back and check the basic properties of a good domain above
• Is it hard to pronounce ? will people
• avoid hyphens in your domain, remember, you will have to say hyphen every time you say your domain name
• avoid double letters for the obvious reasons.
• avoid numbers in your domain names, numbers can either be a numeric character (digit) or it can be spelled within the name which can be confusing when the website name is conveyed orally !

Renewing your domain name

Renewing your domain name on time before it expires is very important, it may be that there is a grace period that is between 30 and 90 days (Redemption Grace Period (RGP)), but during that grace period, there is a registry redemption fee and a registrar redemption fee, you don't want to get caught with the registry redemption fee because your registrar cant Waive it, it is a registry charge. and it is usually around $100 for most TLDs !

You might think that you would want to wait for the domain to expire and then get it without paying the fee, but the risks involved are great, there are people out there who will try to back-order it and snatch it as soon as it expires, they will then "taste" it, and if it is getting any traffic or it is a nice sounding name, continue to register it, if not, they will return it for a refund. in general, this is a risky plan

Keep your contact information (Your email) current at your registrar so that you can receive notifications before your renewal date, or better yet, enable auto renew for the domain names you care about.