There are approximately 270 million registered domain names globally, with tens of thousands of new domains being registered every day. In such a crowded space how do you make sure you pick the right domain name?

DOMAIN BREAKDOWN

There are two parts that make up a domain name, the first bit (not its technical name) and the domain extension – the dot com or dot co dot uk – at the end.

There are a massive range of domain extensions available, suitable for virtually every company type known to man. The most common and familiar extensions being .com and .net, through to specific country extensions (also known as country code top level domains – ccTLDs) such as co.uk, and .de, then to the more generic .info and .biz.

Google.com was supposed to be googol.com – a misspelling by a graduate student while checking domain availability was to blame

FORGET DOT COM, GO DOT NINJA!

As there are only a finite amount of .com or .co.uk domain names it is becoming harder and harder for new companies trying to find a suitable domain name. However, there has recently been over 1,400 new extensions released for pre-order opening up a Pandora’s box of possibilities.

These extensions include .shop, .wedding, .hotel and even .ninja! The aim of these new extensions is to more accurately describe your business (though we’re not sure how this works with .ninja…) and vastly grow the range of domains available.

Some other domain extensions that are soon coming available:

• Geographic: .london, .scot, .wales
• Business: .agency, .press, .studio
• Food and Drink: .cafe, .food, .restaurant
• Interests: .camera, .garden, .space
• Leisure and recreation: .dance, .hotel, .spa
• What the…: .ninja, .wow, .wtf

It remains to be seen whether all of these new domains will prove to be popular, or go the same way as .info or the distrusted .biz. Registration on some domains would suggest a high uptake. .Berlin received 46,000 registrations within its first month.

For a list of all new GTLD domains click here

The most expensive domain ever purchased was VacationRentals.com – for $35 million in 2007.
The new owner confessed to paying so much just to stop Expedia from purchasing it.

ALL CHANGE FOR .UK

Nominet, the company who oversee .co.uk domain names, have recently announced the release of the shorter .uk extensions. This is happening in the summer of 2014, and brings the UK in line with other large ccTLDs, such as France’s .fr or Germany’s .de.

Existing owners of a .co.uk or org.uk will be offered the .uk equivalent of their current address, with five years to decide whether they want it. Where competition exists (with one company owning example.co.uk and another owning example.org.uk) the .uk domain will be offered to the .co.uk registrant.

DOT BRAND?

In 2012 a registration process was opened to allow brands to begin to register their own extensions.  The $185,000 registration fee would deter all but the largest brands, but it may not be long before you see .coke, .heinz or .nike in use.

The most popular country code extension is .tk – the small South Pacific island of Tokelau. The .tk is so popular due to their unique business model of being free.

QUICK TIPS FOR SELECTING A DOMAIN

• Check the availability of the .com and your own local extension (.uk or .au etc). For brand purposes you are likely to want to purchase these two as a minimum for protection.
• Make it unique. Check your domain isn’t just a pluralised version of another popular domain, or that you just have a hyphen to separate you from someone else. Is there an alternative international spelling of your potential domain?
• Easy to type – avoid really long, or difficult to spell words. Ideally there would be only one way to spell your domain, so avoiding numbers is also important (was it 5 or five?)
• Not everyone will be using a search engine to find your website or have your business card to hand, so make sure your domain is memorable.
• The domain must help to build your brand, so trying to include keywords in your domain isn’t always helpful.
• You don’t have to buy all extensions. Generally search engines will only show one domain for your site, so you won’t see an increase in traffic from multiple domains. (However, it’s worth making sure you’ve protected your brand across the most popular extensions.)
• Carefully select your primary domain – this will be the one you want shown in search engines. If you are a local company and only serve the UK then having the .co.uk as your primary is a good idea. If you work across regions then the .com may serve better.

The first domain registered was symbolics.com in 1985, for the Symbolics Computer Corporation

SHORT URLS

Short URLs (Uniform Resource Locator – this is the full address of a page, not just the domain name) are links that take a long web address and make it shorter. They are popular on social media sites as they make links much more shareable, especially for long addresses.

For example http://bit.ly/LjnWMf redirects to this page

There are various free URL shortening services, such as bitly.com and goo.gl, although it’s increasingly popular to register a short version of your own domain for social sharing. Amazon use amzn.to, the New York Times uses nyti.ms, and the already short BBC.co.uk uses the even shorter bbc.in on Twitter.

If you operate a lot on social media then a small investment in a short version of your domain name can further help with brand building. Ideally we’d like infot.ex, but the .ex extension doesn’t exist. Yet.

DOMAIN VALIDATION

Starting from 1st January 2014, ICANN (they oversee top level domains) are introducing a new process that requires domain owners to validate their contact details via the email address held against their domain. When a domain name is registered, transferred or due to renew domain owners will receive an email asking you to validate the email address. Failure to do so within 15 days will mean the suspension of the domain name, until it has been validated. Validation is simply clicking a link, you should not be asked to enter a username and password or any other details.

LIST OF NEW GENERIC TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS (GTLD)

Please note that not all extensions below will be available for public registration. If you’d like to check availability and release dates of any domain name then please get in touch.