Naming A Company? Forget the Dotcom

“…and the name needs to be available as a .com.” We hear this one a lot. Otherwise intelligent people have dropped vowels, smashed words together, and butchered perfectly good words to register a website. After all, name.coms are the gold standard for your business’ web presence, right? Not really. In 2016, name.com URLs are small potatoes. In this article, we’ll look at why.

First, let’s consider why people want name.coms in the first place. Some of it is just inertia: In the 90s, during the heady days of the dot com boom, everybody had that flashy (or boring?) name.com. But most people want them for two reasons. The first is searchability. The second is prestige.

Anxiety over being found on the internet often convinces people that they need a certain URL. The thinking here is that people hear a name and go to or getname.com.

Then there are the other Top Level Domains: over 1200, in fact. .io is a favorite of tech companies due to its resemblance to the On/Off buttons on a device. .co and .us (for US companies) are good stand-ins for .com, as is the somewhat more dated .net. .media, .design, .financial, and .systems are your friends if you’re in those spaces. .works is a confident add-on. And .xyz telegraphs originality.

Finally, there’s domain hacking, a la del.icio.us, about.me, adf.ly, and stopspamming.us. Who knows, you might end up going with mynewna.me.

At the end of the day, your name is the most important part of your brand. At trade shows, in boardrooms, in banner ads, and at cocktail parties, it’s going to do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t let URL perfectionism get in its way. Our naming service covers URL availability, trademarks, and more. Call us today.