How to Choose a Domain Name in 9 Steps

Your domain name is the part of your brand that people type, say out loud, and print on everything. Pick a good one and nobody thinks about it again. Pick a bad one and you spend years spelling it out over the phone.

The short answer: decide what the name has to do, brainstorm far more candidates than you think you need, check them all for availability at once, and cut anything that is hard to say, spell, or own. Then pick the extension, check trademarks and history, and register the winner the same day.

We have run Instant Domain Search for 20 years and watched more than 50 million people look for a name. Below is each step, what we have learned from watching people do it, and a small experiment that shows why most first ideas fail.

How to choose a domain name in 9 steps

1. Decide what the name has to do. Build a brand, or describe what you sell.
2. Brainstorm 100+ candidates. Your first five ideas are everyone’s first five ideas.
3. Check availability in bulk. Do it before you get attached to any one name.
4. Keep it short and easy to say. It should pass the radio test.
5. Skip hyphens, numbers, and creative spelling. Each one leaks traffic.
6. Pick the extension. .com if you can get a good one, a strong alternative if you can’t.
7. Have a plan for taken names. Change a word, change the extension, or buy it.
8. Check trademarks, social handles, and history. Ten minutes now can save a rebrand later.
9. Register it today. Then turn on auto-renew.

Your first idea is probably taken (we checked)

To see how crowded it really is, we named a made-up coffee roaster. We picked 20 words a founder might reach for (ember, harbor, cedar, maple, atlas, and so on) and checked five common patterns against our index of registered domains in October 2026.

What stands out:

• Every obvious pattern was gone. Not one of the 60 names in the first three rows was available.
• Single words are taken everywhere, not just in .com. atlas is registered in 690 extensions, orbit in 498, and compass in 487.
• Many taken names are for sale. Six of the “word + coffee” names were listed on the aftermarket, from $1,288 for meadowcoffee.com to $24,499 for canyoncoffee.com. hollow.com was listed at $750,000.
• A more specific word opens things up. Swapping “coffee” for “roasters” took availability from 0 of 20 to 12 of 20, all at the normal registration price.

Good names are not gone. You just need volume, and a fast way to check it. That is what the steps below are for.

1. Decide what the name has to do

There are two ways to name something, and both work.

Brand-first names don’t describe the product. Think Stripe, Notion, Slack. They are short, distinct, and become synonymous with what the company does over time. The advantage is room to grow: when Slack expanded beyond chat, its name didn’t hold it back. TeamChatApp.com would have.

Descriptive names say what you do. We took this route with instantdomainsearch.com. It is longer, sure. But there is zero confusion about what you will find, and people searching for “domain search” recognize the name as the thing they want. booking.com, bankrate.com, and healthline.com work the same way.

How to pick:

• The business will change or expand? Go brand-first.
• A focused tool, service, or local business? Descriptive works well.
• Trying to own a category? Descriptive, if you can get it.

What doesn’t work: a name that is neither, like mycompany123.com. It has no brand value and no descriptive value.

Settle this before you brainstorm. It tells you which candidates to keep and which to cut.

2. Brainstorm 100+ candidates

The experiment above is why you need a long list. The names that come to mind first are the names that came to mind first for thousands of other people.

Ways to get to 100:

• Combine two words. One about what you do, one about how it feels: harborroasters, copperkettle.
• Use a word from a different world. Stripe, Notion, and Slack all borrowed ordinary words.
• Modify a word. Add a prefix or suffix, or shorten it. Use these sparingly (more in step 7).
• Invent a word. Coined names like Figma or Zillow are easy to own but cost more marketing to explain.
• Ask AI. Ask ChatGPT or Claude for 100 names in a few styles, then ask for 100 more. Push until you have a few hundred.

Our business name generator does this as a conversation: describe your business, react to the names it suggests, and it checks every one for domain availability as it goes. To find words by meaning, use the reverse dictionary. For more ideas, read how to come up with unique business name ideas.

3. Check availability in bulk

Don’t check names one at a time, and don’t fall for a name before you check it. Paste the whole list into our bulk domain search, which checks up to 1,000 domains at once, and filter to show only available names.

From a few hundred ideas you will usually end up with a shortlist of 20 to 50 names you can actually register. Everything from here on is about cutting that list down.

For a single name, the main domain search shows results across hundreds of extensions as you type, in under 25 milliseconds.

4. Keep it short and easy to say

The best domain names pass the radio test: if someone hears your domain on a podcast, can they type it correctly without seeing it written down?

• Shorter is better, up to a point. As a rule of thumb, aim for 6 to 14 characters. A short name nobody can pronounce is worse than a longer one everyone can.
• One obvious spelling. If you have to say “that’s with a Y, not an I,” you will lose visitors to typos.
• Easy to pronounce. Read more about why pronounceable domain names win.

Two tests that work:

• The radio test. Say each finalist to five people and ask them to write it down. If more than one gets it wrong, cut it.
• The paper test. Write your top three on paper and stick it somewhere you will see it all day. Names that seemed clever at 2am often look different at 9am. The ones that still feel right after a few days are usually keepers.

5. Skip hyphens, numbers, and creative spelling

Each of these makes your name harder to say, so each one sends some of your visitors to the wrong place.

• Hyphens. Nobody remembers them. If freshbakery.com is taken, fresh-bakery.com mostly sends traffic to the owner of freshbakery.com.
• Numbers. When someone hears “four,” they don’t know if you mean 4, four, or for. Use a number only when it is part of the brand.
• Creative spelling. Lyft got away with it, with a large marketing budget. For most of us, northsyde.com just means people typing northside.com.
• Words you didn’t mean. Write the name as one lowercase string and read it slowly. “Therapist finder” becomes therapistfinder.com. Check before your customers do.

6. Pick the extension

The part after the dot is called the top-level domain, or TLD. It matters more than most people think.

Start with .com

If you can get a good .com, get it. It isn’t that .com has special SEO powers. It is that people assume websites end in .com. When someone half-remembers your name, they type .com by default, and if that leads to a competitor or a parked page, you lose them. With 168 million registrations, it is still by far the most common extension.

Strong alternatives

• .ai is close to expected for an AI product now. It has passed 1 million registrations.
• .io is the default for developer tools. Recognized in tech, less so outside it.
• .co reads as a shorter .com to most people. The risk is the same as above: some visitors will type .com.
• Industry extensions like .studio, .design, .shop, or .coffee say what you do. In our experiment, 4 of the 20 single words were still open as .coffee.
• Country codes like .ca, .de, and .uk are a strong choice for a local business, because they tell customers and Google where you are.

Browse every option in domain extensions, which shows availability and pricing across 800+ TLDs.

If you go with something other than .com, check who owns the .com of the same name. A small blog there is fine. A competitor is not.

7. Have a plan for taken names

Most good one-word .com names are registered. You have three options.

Change a word

Add a word that says what you do or who you are. If northside.com is taken:

• Add a descriptive word: northsidecoffee.com, northsideroasters.com
• Add a place: northsidebrooklyn.com
• Add a short brand word: northsidehq.com, northsideco.com

Be careful with generic prefixes like “get,” “try,” and “use.” They are fine as a starting point, but they are also the first thing everyone else tries. In our experiment, every “get” + word .com was already registered, and six were listed for sale, at prices up to $29,000. Our domain generator shows hundreds of variations of a name at once, with availability for each.

Change the extension

northside.co, northside.cafe, or northside.ca for a business in Canada. See step 6.

Buy it

A registered domain is not always an unavailable one. Many are listed for sale. Browse premium domains to see what is on the market, or run a WHOIS lookup to see who owns a name and when it expires. Our guide on how to find out who owns a domain covers how to reach an owner when the record is private.

Before you make an offer, run the name through our domain appraisal to see a free estimate of what it would sell for. Buying makes sense when the name is right for the brand and you will use it for years. It doesn’t make sense when you are testing an idea that might change.

You can also watch expired domains. When an owner forgets to renew, a name drops and anyone can register it again.

8. Check trademarks, social handles, and history

Before you buy, spend ten minutes on these.

Trademarks. If someone has a trademark on your name in your industry, using it as a domain can get you a cease-and-desist letter and a forced rebrand. Our free trademark search searches USPTO records as you type. Outside the US, check TMview for the EU and the UK trademark search. For anything you will invest real money in, ask a trademark lawyer.

Social handles. Your domain and handles should match or be close. Check X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, GitHub, and any platform your customers use.

Domain history. A name that was registered before may have baggage. Look it up on the Wayback Machine to see what was there, and search Google for the domain in quotes to see who linked to it. Past spam can take a long time to shake off.

9. Register it today

Good names get registered every day. If you have found one that passes every step, register it now. A standard .com costs about $10 to $15 a year. See how much a domain name costs for the details, and how to buy a domain name for a walkthrough.

Then protect it:

• Turn on auto-renew. Letting a domain expire by accident is the easiest way to lose it.
• Keep WHOIS privacy on. Most registrars include it for free.
• Register the obvious alternatives if your budget allows, like the .com of a non-.com name. You don’t need every extension.

How to choose a domain name for a business, a blog, or yourself

The steps are the same. What changes is which ones matter most.

For a business

Brand and trademark matter most. Run the trademark check in step 8 first, not last, and make sure the name still works if you add products or move cities. A local business can lean on a place name or a country code. For the bigger picture on naming, read how to name your business.

For a blog

Pick a name that can grow with your topics. veganrecipesblog.com locks you in. A name built on your voice or your angle doesn’t. Avoid the word “blog” unless it is part of the brand.

For yourself

Your own name is usually the best choice for a portfolio or personal site. If yourname.com is taken, try a middle initial, a profession (janedoedesign.com), or a personal extension like .me or .dev. For a homelab or side project, anything short and cheap is fine, since nobody else needs to type it.

Mistakes we see most often

• Falling for a name before checking it. Then settling for a hyphenated version of it.
• A name that needs explaining. If you have to say “it’s like the word, but spelled differently,” it is too clever.
• Waiting. People search a great name, sleep on it, and come back to find it gone.
• Keyword stuffing. healthline.com is a strong name. best-cheap-health-tips-online.com looks like spam to people and to Google.
• Overthinking it. A good name you launch with today beats a perfect name you never find. If you build something good, the name will start to sound right.

Checklist

Before you register, your domain name should be:

Frequently asked questions

What makes a good domain name?

A good domain name is short, easy to say and spell, fits your brand, and is on an extension people trust, ideally .com. It should pass the radio test, have no hyphens or numbers, and be clear of trademarks.

Should you put LLC in your domain name?

Usually not. “LLC” or “Inc” makes the name longer and harder to say, and customers don’t type it. Your legal name and your domain don’t need to match. If acme.com is taken, acmeplumbing.com is a better fallback than acmellc.com.

Do keywords in a domain name help SEO?

Not much. Google rolled out its exact-match domain update in 2012 to stop low-quality sites from ranking on a keyword-filled domain alone. A keyword can still help people understand what you do, which helps clicks, but your content and links matter far more than the domain.

Does the domain extension affect SEO?

Google treats generic extensions the same, including newer ones like .app, .shop, and .studio, and treats extensions like .io and .co as generic too. Country codes like .de or .ca tell Google your site targets that country. The bigger effect is on people: which extension they trust, remember, and type.

How long should a domain name be?

As short as you can make it while keeping it easy to say and spell. As a rule of thumb, 6 to 14 characters, and two words at most. A memorable 15-character name beats an unpronounceable 5-character one.

How much should I pay for a domain name?

A new .com costs about $10 to $15 a year, and some extensions like .ai cost more. A name someone already owns can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to millions. Our domain appraisal gives a free estimate, and how much does a domain name cost breaks down the pricing.

Can I change my domain name later?

Yes. Register the new name, move your site, and set up permanent (301) redirects from the old domain so visitors and search rankings follow. Expect some short-term dip in search traffic, and update your email, social profiles, and anything printed. Keep the old domain renewed so the redirects keep working.

Should I buy other extensions and misspellings of my domain?

Buy the .com if your main domain is on another extension and you can afford it, and the most common misspelling if you get a lot of word-of-mouth traffic. Beyond that, most businesses don’t need to buy dozens of variations.

How do I know if my domain name is good?

Run it through the checklist above and say it to five people. For a second opinion, our domain appraisal scores a name from 0 to 100 on length, brandability, memorability, and extension, and shows the reasoning behind each factor.

Start searching

Type a name into Instant Domain Search and you will see hundreds of extensions at once. Have a list? Paste it into bulk domain search. Out of ideas? Try the domain generator or the business name generator.

You can also search from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor with our free domain search MCP.