This is a guest post from Dmitry Davydov, the founder of PickyDomains.com that contains useful resources for domain name ideas. His company has helped to name over 1500 online businesses since 2007.
We’ve all been there – you have a great idea for a website, but all the good names are already taken. Don’t despair, there a lot of free (or almost free) tools that can help you find great memorable domain name without breaking the bank.
1. Nameboy
Nameboy.Com is a free domain suggestions tool (others include ShoutDomains.com, NameTumbler.com, etc.) that uses keyword algorithms to automatically create domain names and check them for availability. Since all domains are generated by machine, most of the suggestions are outright unusable; however you can get some ideas by using NameBoy. Free is free.
Unlike Nameboy, PickyDomains.com is powered by humans (44,000+ registered contributors and counting). This service isn’t free, and it is fairly inexpensive ($50) and you pay only if you decide to register one of the suggested domains. If you don’t like anything, you don’t pay anything. Risk-free crowdsourcing model in action. If you are good with words, you might want to try it on the contributor side, as 40%-60% of that client fee is paid to the contributor who made the winning suggestion via PayPal.
3. Expired Domains
There are a number of services in this niche both free and paid, easily found via search engine (‘expired domains’, ‘expired domain lists’). Expired domains are just what their name suggests – domains that have been previously registered and had since become available. Expired domains aren’t all bad; for instance, I’ve recently purchased UnPrice.com for a discount site, which is perfect for my purposes, but there is a lot of digging to be done. The advantages and disadvantages of buying expired domain are the same – you inherit all the history, which could be free type-in traffic and existing backlinks, but it also could be ban from search engines for violations.
If you need domain name for commercial purposes, it might be worthwhile to see if related trademarks have already been registered. Uncle Sam gives you an antiquated but free online service for that. You can also file for trademark registration at online, but a brief visit to that site will make it clear why most companies rely on patent lawyers for that.
DuraLabs may sound cool, but ‘dura’ means ‘fool’ in a number of Slavic laungages. And if Kurva Technologies opens its office in Poland, expect riots in the street. While fear of ‘what it may mean in other languages’ may be overblown somewhat, it never hurts to check. You can also use Google Translator backwards. Some words, like ‘smart’ are overused in domain names. How about ‘cliste’, which is ‘smart’ in Irish. What about Swahili? Give it a try.
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Dmitry Davydov is the founder of PickyDomains.com. He has helped to name over 1500 online businesses since 2007. Dmitry can be reached at support@pickydomains.com.
Gail Gardner
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I have checked many tools to find an ideas about domain name. And everyone provided with average to good names but my favorite is https://domainglo.com . It helped me a lot. It has three part. For one generates domains as per your keyword. Second one provides brandable domain and third part provides keywords related to your keyword
Hey!!
Before you embark on choosing a domain for your website, it is worthy to note that choosing a keyword rich name gives you a good impetus to achieve success online. Search engines love keyword rich domain names, as this is considered as having a degree of relevancy.This thing will help you in choosing excellent domain name.The tips you mentioned here like using google translator etc are awesome.
Thank you for the great sharing.
Hi Victor,
While there was once a major advantage in using an exact match keyword domain, Google removed that advantage some time ago. But there is still an advantage in having a domain that is easy to remember or that helps anyone seeing the URL to know what the site is about.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Blogging in 2017 and Beyond: What Will Change?
One of the most important things that one must look at with these services is the
storage space provided by them. Try to get one that has a keyword from your industry.
The disk space is the quantity of data the server let you store for your
website.
Hello Gail,
Normally i was using wordoid all the time, but say some thing very interesting on your blog.
Expireddomains… and when i go through that its truly a gem for me even we can find PR domains their,
Appreciate and thanks for the share
and going to check google translate what saga means as my domain ends with saga
I have been using Nameboy for several years now and it always helped me to come up with some interesting domain names. I didn’t know about PickyDomains.com, but the service sounds quite interesting and I’ll definitely check it out.
http://nametoolkit.com – Generates tons of suggestions, people who dismiss websites which help the creative process are missing the point. It’s impossible to completely generate great suggestions without interpreting context, but a lot of the time, what we doas humans when generating a name is algorithmically simple, say joining two words:
twitter meme – tweme or twitmeme (this is exactly what our munging algorithm provides you.
Another example, twitter meme, often a thesaurus is useful to look for synonyms, we provide this. We provide these and many more tools to find domains, visit, make up your own mind.
Kurva doesn’t mean anything in Polish. You mean Albanian. Can’t write down what it means though haha.
Pickydomains is great. I’m glad I know of it now, could’ve used it before.
Nameboy is not very satisfying.
Danny would love you to read ..Remington RM1015P 10-Inch 8 Amp Electric Pole chain Saw
If I recall correctly, the folks at Market Samurai released a tool that does this sort of thing as well. You drop in a huge list of keywords and it’ll search them, possibly even generate some close variations (not sure what those variations might be, but you can mesh up what you’re interested in by using excel).
Dmitry, great idea about using Google Translator . I never even thought about it. It truly is a genies idea.
I do use nameboy and expired domains once in a while. But never tried your company, picky domains. I may give it a try. Thanks.
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I love to go with Keyword in the domain, and then a prefix or suffix. But often the right domain is usually the hardest one to get. Due to that they are used by someone else. The next domain-generator I will be using is PickyDomain. They have over 1400 clients, they cant be bad? They are great! 🙂
Have a nice time!
Finding the right domain name is usually always the hardest part of opening a new website. Thank you so much for this article. The next website I will start, I will be sure to use Picky Domains. Keep up the hard work, we appreciate it!
Of all the tools listed here, the only ones I’ve used before is Nameboy. Google translator is a very interesting tool. Never thought of translating from one language to another though! I think even if you’ve translated it, it ain’t going to be good for search traffic unless you would prefer some kind of local traffic.
I’ve been thinking of putting up new sites for my new niche and I was deeply thinking of what name I would call it with new technologies, CMS etc.. in creating blogs and site lots of site are popping around and most of the names on my mind are all ready taken… it’s very frustrating mostly available are long ones and are very hard to remember…
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It’s pretty much important to consider first how you name your domain. Consider it as a signature especially if you are into business. Remember you will be using this to establish connection and brand. So make sure it’s decent and does not sound so awful.
If your looking for a catchy brand name that isnt currently being used, a good idea would be to scroll through websites that are dictonaries for slang and street words and phrases. I got the name chooky which I then based a lot of my work on as its catchy and memorable. Hope this advice helps your readers!
They say what’s in a name anyway, but not in domain name that’s why I suggest you use Picky Domain name.It will be a great help in your business in your business promotion. Just think the difference when you use a Nameboy.com.
Where is NameStation, formerly known as MakeWords?
Just visited the site and the names are really picky. eyesonfries, coupspot, merchmatch..Would definitely give it a shot later..Thanks for sharing.
Thinking of a domain name is really exhausting.
As for me I want to it to be as simple as possible to be easily remembered.
This are some very informative tips here, I’ll be recommending PickyDomain to my friend who plans to make a site for fitness and health.
Thanks for the share, great read!
Nice tips. Another I heard recently is to put an i or e in front, but not a big fan of those type domain names. You see a lot of companies leaving out a vowel or duplicating the last letter now such as fiverr.com.
Thanks for the domain name tips especially the translate – a good french or spanish name would probably be recognizable and interesting….
Cool.. I guess I’ve never considered using a tool to help with domain name choice. It seems like it could definitely be helpful. I own at least 12 domains, and I have to admit its becoming harder and harder to think up original domain names which are still available these days…
Thinking of good domain names is one of the most important thing to do in creating your site. Your list of tools is absolutely a big help.
When choosing a domain name it is best to think of SEO purposes also, rather than just choosing a random name. Try to include one of your main keywords to get a head start in the google rankings.
It’s tough to find a new domain name that someone doesn’t have these days. Especially a .com extension. Some will suggest alternatives that haven’t been registered yet. Sometimes they do alright, and other times the suggestions they provider are not that good. If nameboy can find a decent unregistered domain name or alternative it would be something worth checking out.
The last time I was looking for a domain name, I tried using Latin. It is in connection with the the Google Translator option thing. And no need to stretch on the fact that being imaginative is the key. Thanks for sharing!
I agrre with Petra. Imagine if you start looking what your domain name mean in other languages, hehe. Choosing your brand name the right way is important, then you check if that domain is available.
In the past I have always gone with keyword rich domains, if they are taken I make an offer and that’s how I have acquired my domains but lately I have wanted to obtain some creative domain names and a service like PickyDomains is just what I needed. Thank you Dmitry.
Great tip on using Google translate…wouldn’t want to be a dura with my domain hehehe
I always think long and hard about any domain name that I purchase and am never really happy with it in the end. But, I have discovered the power behind branding non-keyword based domain names.
Is this kind of the idea behind PickyDomains dot com?
Mark
I’m failing to see why it’s really that important to take into consideration what a domain name could mean in Polish, when your site is in English and you expect to have primarily English-speaking customers. Maybe I’m missing something, but that wouldn’t really be something important I would think about when deciding on a name for my domain.
Seriously, the polish meaning of my domain name has absolutely NO effect on my decisions.