
Ask HN: Are available domain names still important when naming a company? - gitgud
From your experience, do you check domain name availability before naming a company? It looks to me like this is becoming less important...<p>There&#x27;s many companies that either use alternative TLD&#x27;s like; example.app or example.shop<p>Or prepend &quot;get&quot; or append &quot;app&quot; to the name to obtain the dot com TLD.<p>I also think that SEO and search engines make the actual domain names less important now right?
======
PatrolX
In general most people massively underestimate the importance of naming and
treat it with indifference.

The cost of advertising is the long-term tax you pay for poor short-term
decision making when naming your product or service.

What most people don't realize is that it's the "sound" of the name that's
most important, not the way it looks on a logo or in a domain name.

The reason for this is the part of the brain's working memory called the
phonological loop that gets excited by short repetitive rhyming sounds and
rehearses them repeatedly, which is why you sometimes can't get a song or tune
out of your head. This function results in repetitive and rhyming names being
more readily committed to long-term memory, thus making good names not just
memorable but unforgettable.

All the the best names are alliterative and rhyming, and I'd argue that Coca-
Cola is the best name ever conceived so far.

"So does the available domain matter?"

Yes, but nowhere near as much as the name itself.

It's very possible to come up with original great sounding unique names that
position you well in the marketplace, it just takes time and a lot of
patience.

~~~
JeanMarcS
We have a dash in the company name, which was perfect at the time we started
if (1997).

But then came the mandatory domain name (expensive back then) and email
adresses.

So we when we had to spell it on the phone, it was a nightmare, even mor in
french because we had to explain it was the dash on the 6 and not the dash on
the 8 (underscore on French keyboards). So it was something like "g, dash, yes
the one on the 6 not on the 8, etc.."

No need to say that there were a lot of lost emails back then.

And that we bought the domain name without the dash when it became affordable
!

~~~
zepearl
I agree. I used to have a dash ("-") in my domain name and all my friends and
colleagues (italians, french, germans) hated it (I ended up hating it as well
when having to type it on the phone) => don't ever use these kind of chars in
the domain name.

Additionally try not to use long top-level domains - I'm using now ".digital"
but every time I have to type it it feels too long to me => I'm regretting
having moved my (outdated) webpage there.

~~~
wdfx
Also agree. The domain I bought for my family (my wife and myself) is
hyphenated after our surnames and it time and again has been a pain to dictate
to 3rd party.

~~~
lonelappde
Why not register the unhyphenated name also, and redirect?

NB: domain names are not for sale. You cannot buy them. You can only register
control of them for a time period.

~~~
rolltiide
Use initials for the last names and thats the default, firstnameln.com
redirects to firstnamelastname.com

And neither of those have hyphens

------
puranjay
I casually buy and sell domains. Used to do it heavily when I was in college
but have turned down my investments in this space since I believe it is
fundamentally antithetical to a free and open internet. I'm usually happy to
let go of my domains for substantially lower profits if someone has a genuine
need.

This is just to qualify my next statements.

Domainers grossly overestimate the impact of domain names. Entrepreneurs
grossly underestimate it.

The truth is somewhere in between. Domains are important, but they're not
going to make or break a shoddy product.

As long as you get a domain that's pronounceable, easy to type in, and
memorable, you should be fine.

In particular, this means staying away from exotic extensions - both gTLDs
like ".travel" and ccTLDs like ".io"

Because the average user still thinks of the web as .com. Tell them that your
website is abccorp.io and they will type in abccorp.com. In fact there is a
cottage industry of domainers who buy .com versions of websites in other TLDs
just to make money off the type-in traffic.

If you can't get the domain you want, add a prefix like "get"

Remember that domains are essentially about branding. You want to sound
familiar yet stand out. Imagine the domain name as a standalone retail store.
Does the name make sense? Does it seem trustable?

Like if you're selling watches, "WatchCenter.com" makes sense. You can
practically imagine a big retail chain named 'Watch Center'.

Some of favorite prefixes/suffixes to get solid brands are: hub, mojo, hero,
smart, open, start, center, station, base, next, genius, zap, wire, active,
metrics, dojo.

Add them before/after a keyword to get a decent domain (like "InstaPayments"
or "CodingDojo.com")

Just make sure that you stick to .com

------
thestepafter
The majority of people don’t browse the internet like people on hacker news.
They type the domain name into the Google search home page, not the URL bar
for the browser. Chances are they are going to type .com at the end. So in my
opinion after observing this from many different people in all parts of life I
think domain name is still very important. I personally only use .com. This
has forced me to think outside of the box and I have come up with, in my
opinion, some great company names that have a .com available.

Depending on what your company sells SEO is either going to be really
expensive or you aren’t going to have to worry about it. In my experience and
opinion from a purely SEO stand point you should have your business name or
primary product / product category in the domain name. I typically don’t trust
companies that out the product in the domain name though. For example,
bestgloves.com or babyclothes.com. I try to buy based on honest reviews
(getting harder and harder to find) but the majority of the internet just
clicks on the top Google search result and typically buys from there.

So with all that being said, in my opinion, importance of domain name all
depends on your target audience.

~~~
zepearl
> They type the domain name into the Google search home page, not the URL bar
> for the browser.

I can confirm it - my father keeps doing that (I keep postponing this
therefore very soon I'll have to try to explain him the difference, but I have
to find an entertaining way to do that when mentioning IP-addresses, virtual
hosts, DNS, etc... => difficult).

~~~
jaeh
when i try to explain complicated topics to people not familiar with them, i
try to simplify instead of going into detail.

one thing that worked nicely for me in the past when explaining domains: full
domain name: actual internet address of a company, like a street address of a
store. google.com is equal to streetname.number

if you know the number (eg tld) of the house, you just go there directly and
enter the store.

if you do know the street (google), but do not know the number of the house
(.com) you need to stop and ask someone for the way, and this is what
google.com is for.

usually the big aha effect is that google.com is an address which leads you to
a page that allows you to find other addresses.

going to google.cn (or whatever country you like) might help too, explaining
how google has both .com and .cn and .nz and so on, all different
"storefronts" of the same company, catering to different countries.

once that is understood, and if it was easily understood, maybe explain how
the top bar (in most browsers) can be used for both searching for addresses
and to input addresses directly, then set the default search engine to
duckduckgo.

hope that helps :)

~~~
ChristianBundy
> google.com is equal to streetname.number

Small correction: the left side of a domain name is the most specific. For
example, `translate.google.com` is like `number.street.city`, not the other
way around.

It may _seem_ like the end of a domain name is like the street number, since
it's often a country-code, but it's more like having company that's so big
that they have the same street address in every city.

~~~
jaeh
actually very true, i missed that, so obvious, thanks for the correction :)

------
andreygrehov
I once purchased quite an old premium .COM domain name. It didn't have any
content for several years. I created a prelaunch page with a basic subscribe
form and the website immediately showed up #1 in Google Search. It
consistently outcompetes everyone, including companies' websites that have
very similar company name and been around for a few years.

I'm not a SEO expert by any means, but I'm confident that the domain name
still does matter. There must be something about the domain name age, its
length and TLDs.

~~~
joegahona
"Shows up #1 in Google Search" is impressive if the term it's showing up for
is "coffee." Not so impressive if it's "bologna and whipped cream sandwich on
pumpernickel."

~~~
rolltiide
Oh you know its the latter

------
mindgam3
Echoing an earlier comment, branding and domain naming is _massively_
important. A crappy brand is to consumers like a crappy API is to developers.
People won't be attracted to your idea if they can't relate to it.

You need to think of your company or product name as the interface to the
collective psyche of your customer base. The stronger and more positive the
association the higher chance your little idea has a chance to be understood
and stick around in people's minds long enough to catch fire.

Two essential tools for domain name research:

1\. [https://domainr.com](https://domainr.com): search a name across multiple
TLDs simultaneously

2\. [https://wordoid.com](https://wordoid.com): search for different versions
based on a root word (i.e. word-oid, nap-ster, etc)

Happy hunting!

~~~
koboll
[http://impossibility.org/](http://impossibility.org/) is a good one for
multi-word names.

------
frereubu
People need to be careful of new TLDs not just for branding and communication
reasons. We had a client in the UK healthcare industry who had to switch their
domain name from clientname.healthcare to clientnamehealth.org.uk because NHS
systems were rejecting email addresses with the .healthcare TLD as invalid.

------
c0d3rX
It's on the top 10 list of things to consider - along with finding real
customers. How high is debatable. If your product/service resonates with
customers, you could change the name to something more appropriate later. It
might be expensive to buy the right domain, but if you've got $ or stock
that's worth something, it's totally doable.

Consider the fact that a brand and the company name are two separate things.
Think Uber Cab (Uber), Google (Alphabet), Tide (P & G). The domain name
can/should be tied to the product - and the brand. The company name itself can
be anything really. As a first step to a rename if you really really want to
do it, you could file an incorporation document amendment that says "Company
AD15asd Corp, d.b.a. NiceBrand"

------
Tade0
The company I work for recently switched TLDs from .io to .dev, because
apparently the former has some serious reliability issues.

I don't know the details, but given how painful the process of switching email
addresses of everyone in the company is, it must have been really bad.

~~~
zepearl
Really?!

".io" is used quite a lot (subjectively) => I thought that in general all top-
level domains were reliable... .

Any kind of additional info like what kind of reliability issues, how often,
etc....?

~~~
vemv
[https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-
produc...](https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-production-
traffic-b6aa17eeac20)

~~~
kkarakk
>2017

~~~
zepearl
Thx

------
3Scribe
Double edged sword I suppose. I know of one company that got one a trendy 5/6
letter ending in o that you see a lot of CPaaS companies get (Twilio, Nexmo
etc.) but it had been used years earlier as part of a scam that resulted in
prison time. Still comes up when you google their name.

------
michal_a
It's easier to remember example.com than example.app, so it matters in
contexts where someone has to remember an URL. Imagine nike.get - sounds like
a scam. Big serious brands have a .com. And now you have the association: if
you have a .com then you're a big serious brand.

> Or prepend "get" or append "app" to the name to obtain the dot com TLD. This
> is bad advice - always check if the word is trademarked. I learned it the
> hard way - I was running mentionme.app and mention.com sent me a cease and
> desist letter, since they own the word "mention".

Similarly Facebook sent a cease and desist letter to openbook.social.

I'm collecting cases like this, as I recently had to go through the rename. If
you know more please let me know. I've documented my story here:
[https://medium.com/syften/you-should-obsess-over-your-
produc...](https://medium.com/syften/you-should-obsess-over-your-products-
name-c95a407bd992)

------
tzs
> There's many companies that either use alternative TLD's like; example.app
> or example.shop

Careful with domains outside of .com, .org, .net, and maybe the major country
or region TLDs. Spammers are real quick to jump in when a new TLD becomes
available. Mail with a from address in those domains can quickly become a very
good indicator of spam to a spam learning filter.

Plus, some people might not be patient enough to wait for their filters to
figure that out, and just do it manually. I've got all the following TLDs
going straight to mostly ignored mailbox, because I receive a ton of spam from
them and have never received a legit message from them:

accountant bid christmas click club cricket date download faith gdn gq help
info link loan men party press pro racing review science site space stream
team top trade uno webcam website win work xyz zone

It might be fine to use the newer TLDs for web stuff, but I'd say try to get a
domain under one of the classic TLDs to use for email from and reply-to
addresses.

------
davismwfl
From an SEO perspective I do agree that domain name isn't as critical as
content.

From a company perspective I do think a domain name is important when it comes
to being easy for people to remember, related to the business properly and
uses a well known TLD. I think the use of the classic TLDs will become less
and less important with time, but I see a lot of people nervous if a site is
using a new TLD they haven't heard of. This matters depending who your target
audience is in the end. If it is engineers than probably less important, if it
is general consumers the importance is higher.

Also, I generally try to avoid abbreviations in the name but at the same time
try to avoid long names the best I can. Outside of that I wouldn't get overly
excited about it myself. But to answer your question, I won't name a company
unless I have done searches for decent domain names I think are easy for the
target audience to grasp/remember and type in.

~~~
c0d3rX
Yep. Totally agree. I do the same.

The thing I find interesting is that doing the research gives me a new
perspective on whether or not I really want to go after that business/model.
The SEO search turns up potential competitors, domain squatters, etc. While
thinking about different names to lookup and key words to search for, my
context changes to a potential customer...

A lot of times it reminds me ("oh yeah... did I talk to real potential
customers yet?") and if I didn't, I'm in real trouble of building another tool
that no one wants :(

~~~
davismwfl
Yea, I totally agree. And like you said, it may highlight things you didn't
think of when you start analyzing search trends etc. So you have more ideas &
information to talk to potential customers before you go all in.

------
wiseleo
They are important, but less so if your primary distribution method is an app
store. There the app name functions similar to how AOL keywords worked on top
of the Internet.

Keys to naming: 1\. Come up with a temporary throwaway name and build your MVP
2\. Start brainstorming permanent names and see if any are trademarkable
available on secondary market for less than $100,000. 3\. As soon as you can
afford to, acquire your preferred domain name and file the trademark. 4\.
Rebrand the company.

This should ideally happen before you build too much brand equity in your
temporary name. I spent $2000 on my name because it perfectly describes my
business. When I made the decision, it actually cost $5000.

The final name should not be related to the first name to avoid tipping off
domain owner.

------
giancarlostoro
Well Paul Graham says to always get a .com though I get the feeling as long as
your domain comes up first (easier with a good name + .com) it wont matter. It
could be .xyz and people will click on it if its high enough. Though there is
more legitimacy in having a .com

If I remember correctly though Discord used to be DiscordApp.com it wont hurt
to start out with a longer .com that has app at the end. I would also consider
.app maybe Google will rate it higher but I am no SEO expert and that would
involve separate research.

Post from Paul Graham, surprised HN didnt share this one yet:

[http://paulgraham.com/name.html](http://paulgraham.com/name.html)

~~~
earthboundkid
Ah yes, the founder of HackerNews.com.

------
Ayesh
As much as we like to think that we don't have to pay for premium domains,
they still do have a good reason to purchase..

Not all TLDs are treated equally. Think of this yourself: would you trust URLs
with .xyz or .to? Those domains are used so much in spam (because they are
cheap or free), and we already have bias against them.

At best, these novelty TLDs work as an extension to the .com domain. If you
can, always always buy the .com. you will probably need to pay a premium
(domainers awfully overcharge you), or choose an abstract name at least.

You will need to think about the TLS registry and technical details as well:

\- Most novelty TLD nameservers are run on "shared" nameservers that handle
other TLDs as well. \- Some TLD nameservers are quite slow as well, which can
result in recursive nameservers to be slow. \- DNSSEC, Nameserver glue, and
whois considerations. \- Registries will have to pay ~$25K in annual fees in
addition to costs to run the servers. This cost will be spread among domain
owners. This is one of the reasons why certain TLDs tend to be expensive
(apart from the registry greed)

~~~
tptacek
I don't think DNSSEC is going to matter at all. Virtually no major tech
companies have signed their domains.

------
winrid
Communication is more important than discovery. You will most likely be
selling more than being discovered early on.

I'm starting [http://watch.ly](http://watch.ly) and even with a short name
like that I don't expect to get a lot of customers from online advertising and
the like. But the name is easy to remember which is important.

------
orev
Others have said that it is quite important, and it is, but picking the wrong
name (such as if that’s the only one available) can also be the kiss of death.
If the name just sounds dumb, people either won’t want to use it, or might use
it but won’t tell anyone, costing you word of mouth marketing.

------
joshfraser
If it's a mobile app, it doesn't matter nearly as much. Otherwise, try and get
the .com.

------
DoreenMichele
You need to know your audience. You need to think of ways it could go wrong.
This means researching if it sounds or looks like something offensive. Sexual,
political, racist, swear words, unpleasant associations, etc.

But there is plenty of marketing that hinges on there being an acceptable
_sexy_ interpretation of a name or catch phrase -- _hot and ready_ pizza,
_Easy Stripper_ paint removal product -- so it isn't even as simple as "Just
make sure it can't possibly be interpreted as sexual."

Different people approach this space differently. I like casually collecting
stories or examples of successes that _break the mold._ Questionable Content
has a .net name and as far as I know is the best monetized webcomic on the
planet, or was at one time. Hyperbole And A Half uses blogspot and has no TLD.
She just uses the blogspot url.

[https://questionablecontent.net/](https://questionablecontent.net/)

[http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/)

Aflac is not the actual name of the Fortune 500 insurance company best known
by that name. Their legal name is still American Family Life Assurance
Company. They originally incorporated as American Family Life Insurance
Company. Internal tales from when I worked there indicated that they lost the
original name in "a gentleman's coin toss" between two CEOs because there was
another company in another state with the same name and it had to be settled
somehow.

They had low name recognition for an industry that already lacks sizzle and
tends towards poor name recognition and thought about renaming it, but that
would require filing new papers in all fifty states and other places they do
business. They decided to go with the acronym.

It's kind of like calling someone Bill when his birth certificate says
William. Everyone knows that's not how he signs his name on a check and no one
will be confused by it when his signature is different from what his friends
call him.

As noted in another comment, most people don't relate to the web the way most
hackers do. You need to have some idea of how people will be accessing your
site, from where, when, why, etc.

It's great if you can find a unique .com that hasn't already been taken that
is also an excellent name for the company in question, but it shouldn't be the
single most important thing involved in picking a name.

~~~
mLuby
Corollary: make sure your _logo_ isn't easily sexualized.

[http://blog.wanken.com/9115/uncomfortably-sexual-company-
log...](http://blog.wanken.com/9115/uncomfortably-sexual-company-logos/)

~~~
cameronh90
Ironic from a site called Wanken...

------
warpech
Domain names are not only for websites and SEO, but also for services like
email. So I think yes, it is still good to have a relevant, predictable,
memorable and pronouncable domain name for a company.

------
mywacaday
Not only does the domain matter the TLD you choose can have a huge impact.

These guys paid €500,000 ($550,000) to buy teamwork.com, they were running
under teamworkpm.net. Apparently the change paid for itself in 3 months.
[https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/teamwork-
pays...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/teamwork-pays-off-for-
cork-entrepreneurs-behind-software-firm-1.3721014)

------
rolltiide
I think it really depends on the target audience

If most of your users will come to your side through facebook posts, instagram
stories and twitter then the url really doesn't matter, they’re never typing
it.

If your brand picks up with them you’ll be able to buy the premium .com
version

If it cant pick up without your social media users alone then that says what
it needs to say

------
buboard
I have always been able to find .com domains for my side projects - why would
i bother leaving the opportunity for squatting open? Sometimes it takes a lot
of searching but it has been doable for a wide range of projects. The naming
absolutely depends on availability imho

------
therealssj
Its definitely something to consider otherwise who knowsm maybe down the line
someone who owns a better TLD like .com can be like "Pay me $XXX,XXX or I will
put bad content on the domain"

~~~
n8henry
Is that not extortion?

~~~
lawl
I can't speak for US law. But i worked at a company that had something similar
happen to them. We went to the police and they said there's nothing they can
do.

The guy that 'extorted' us dropped out of law school and knew _exactly_ what
he could and couldn't say.

So the answer to that is probably that it's not extortion if you know your way
around the law and are clever about it. He never extorted us, he just offered
to sell us the domain name that was shit talking our company. Of course he's
allowed to SEO the domain name with a link farm, that's not illegal. And it's
not slander if it's true or not presented as a fact, just as speculation.

~~~
buboard
I think if he asked ‘pay me or xx’ it would be extortion. What he did was ‘an
offer you cant refuse’

~~~
lawl
Yeah, just a note though, we did refuse. We fought him on the SERPs instead
and he eventually gave up after it became clear we're weren't going to pay. It
was certainly more expensive and took longer, but was probably worth it.

You don't really want to become known as an easy extortion target.

~~~
JustARandomGuy
What happened to the .com? Does he still own it?

~~~
lawl
It wasn't a dot-com, and he let it expire after a year. He (also) goes for
$company-criticism.ccTLD etc. whatever he can get his hands on that he thinks
he can rank for your company name. That's why I said similar case. The
legally-not-slander stopped because we made him work to keep it on the first
page on SERPs.

I just checked his blog/authority site and he does exactly the same thing to
others now. Apparently he won a court case where he did this to a government
agency and his current target seems to be a cleaning company that took his
parking spot once.

------
7ewis
I actually like the made up names like Google and Spotify. So I'm sure there
are plenty of domains like that available still.

If not, I'm sure a combination of things could work, like Facebook or Netflix.

~~~
puranjay
You'll be surprised how few made up names are available.

You can bet that the moment Spotify hit big, a bunch of domainers registered
every good name ending in "-ify"

~~~
kkarakk
just [acquisition synonym verb][madeup/foreign language word].com

for eg [get/try/use/make][sutra].com - most common variant is get nowadays.

then when you become big enough pay off the squatter to give you sutra.com

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
Of course, the flip side is that you could pick up sutra.com for $1000 today,
but when getsutra.com is big and you need to buy it, it'll be $100,000

------
d000m
I don't think it's important but your website could be harder to find if you
use a different TLD than com, net or something other that's well-known.

------
wayneftw
It's an easy way to get a de-facto trademark on a name that you want to use.
So, in that respect it's pretty important. It does help with SEO too.

------
galfarragem
Content is way more relevant than the name. Godaddy.com is certainly not an
obvious choice for a sucessful domain seller.

------
gls2ro
Not sure if this will help but for me a company and its products are two
separate things.

Sometimes the company is (from a brand perspective) the same with its
products. But it might also be that you name your company in a way and then be
more thoughtful about the name of the product.

Sometimes the customer remembers more the name of the product and not the
company. Also sometimes the customer remembers a USP which could also be the
domain name and not the actual product name.

------
techslave
depends on the use case. if your company produces apps for phones, not so
much. if your company is saas, yes, big time

------
superasn
Yes the domain names especially getting a .com domain is pretty irrelevant
now.

It was very important very google used to give a lot of weight to .com domains
and exact matches but thanks to SEOers exploiting that I don't think a .com
ranks higher than .info or .co either just because it's a .com

The only thing that matters is the tld reliability imo. I mean stay away from
domains like tk etc which have a known bad history.

------
HNLurker2
Just Sue the shit out of them

------
test999
You can buy by paying them

------
Brajeshwar
I'm OldSkool, I still check domain names first, a .com.

------
xysut
How much money did that idiot Morin pay for path.com ?

