Choosing a Domain Name

Often choosing a domain name (www.businessname.com) goes hand-in-hand with choosing a company name, and the availability of a domain name could influence your choice of company name. However, when your company name already exists, you may be surprised to find out that the domain name you want is already in use or has been reserved by another company.

If you’re in this situation, consider using a variation of your company’s name. For example, you could append the business name with where your business is (e.g. businessnamewest.com). You could add what the industry is (e.g. businessnamecarrepair.com). Or, you might want to abbreviate the business name (e.g. bn.com).

Another strategy is to adopt the new trend in marketing campaigns — use a descriptive phrase (e.g. buymygreatproduct.com). Though usually used to sell a specific product there’s no rule against using a phrase for your overall domain name.

To see if the name you want has already been used:

InterNIC (domain name check)

http://www.internic.net/whois.html

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