ZebraDomain.com

Domain Name Dictionary

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD) – is a two letters long Internet top-level domain extensions reserved for a country (such as .uk, .us, .ge).

Domain aftermarket – see Domaining.

Domain appraisal – is an estimate on the potential price of a specific domain name. Domain appraisals are usually rough estimates which chage according to market demand, the domain name specific extension (TLD), the length of the domain name and various other factors.

Domain hijacking – happens when internet domain names are stolen from their rightful owners using deception or fraud. This could happen in any number of ways including identity theft (via impersonation or other methods).

Domain broker -a company or an individual who can help sell or buy a domain names.

Domain parking – a service which allows domain owners to make use of their domain to make money (from advertising etc.) while they wait to sell the domain or develop it into a website.

Domain name generator – a service or software which help users locate potential domain names.

Domain name registrar – a company licensed to register Internet domain names.

Domaining – the business of monetizing Internet domain names by buying, selling and developing them strictly for profit with the intent of resale. In this respect domainers are a lot like the internet version of real estate agents or second hand car dealers.

Domain name – a name which identifies one or more IP addresses (for example zebradomain.com is a domain name which represent one specific IP address, Google.com represent several IP addresses).

generic top-level domain (gTLD) – one kind of Top-Level Domains (TLDs). gTLDs include (among others) the following extensions: .com, .info, .net, .biz, .name, and .pro (see the gTLD full list here).

Geodomain – a term used to denote a domain name for a city or country (for example: newyork.com, lasvegas.net or hawii.com).

Internationalized domain name (IDN) – contains non-ASCII characters required by many non-English languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew and Hindi.

Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) – the standard chosen to allow the use of non-ASCII characters in domain names.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a non-profit corporation created in order to oversee Internet-related tasks such as IP address space allocation and managing the assignment of domain names.

IP Addresses – a logical (numerical) address assigned to devices in a computer network (for example 208.77.188.166). Websites also have IP addresses which could be used in the address bar of a browser to reach a specific website (for example http://74.125.45.100/).

Premium domain - is typically a more valuable domain name with unique characteristics (short, memorable and easy to spell) in many cases premium domains might also contain words that are regularly searched or are of significance to a specific sector.

Reverse domain hijacking – the practice of acquiring domain names from their owners by wrongfully accusing them of violating trademarks with the domain name.

Second-level domain (SLD) – is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in the .uk (United Kingdom) and .il (Israel) academic institutions would register under the ccSLD (Country code Second-level domain) .ac.uk or ac.il, while companies would register under .co.uk or co.il.

Sub-domain – is a domain that is part of a larger domain. For example support.microsoft.com is a sub-domain of the Microsoft.com domain.

Top-Level Domain (TLD) – the group of letters that follow the final dot of a domain name. Domain names include generic top-level domains (gTLDs such as .com, .net etc.) and country code top-level domain (ccTLD such as .de, .uk., .us etc.).

Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) – is a process established for the resolution of disputes regarding the registration of internet domain names.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) - typically refers to as a Web address (such as http://zebradomain.com/).

Web hosting - is a service provided by companies which includes storage space on a server as well as Internet connectivity, typically located in a data center.

WHOIS – a method for retrieving details on the owner of a domain name (including name, contact details, domain purchase date and renewals date), more info here.

Everybody knows that finding a good domain name is important. But actually finding one isn’t simple especially if you are looking for a new .com domain name.

Here are a few tips that might help you find what you are looking for:

1. Know thyself – Define for yourself clearly what you are looking for. Is it a personal website, a news site, does it focus only on one topic or maybe several, if it’s a business – what products are you going to sell.
2. Know your competition – If this is a commercial website its important to know who you are up against. When it comes to picking out a domain name you don’t want your name to be too similar to your competition, otherwise readers might get confused and you will have a hard time branding your business.
3. Pick up keywords – After you figured out who you are and who’s your competition you need to pick up a few keywords to start play around with. This could be very simple (like pizza – if this is your intended business) or slightly more complex (like software integration).
4. Pick a TLD – if you are starting a local business (maybe outside the U.S.), looking to start a website for an organization or supply some sort of a mobile service it could be a good idea to look for a domain name which doesn’t necessarily ends in .com (here is a list of other TLDs). However in most other circumstances .com is still the best way to go.
5. Look around – now its time to start looking around. The most straight forward way many people use is think of a name and see if it is available. You can do that by looking on domain name registrar websites such as GoDaddy.com, namecheap.com, Moniker.com etc.
6. Use thesaurus – so far everything was more or less straightforward, however chances are that other people already came up with all the great names you just thought about. Your next step will be to try and expend your keyword search terms. You can start by opening a real paper thesaurus and look for relevant terms or use an online thesaurus (here are three options thesaurus.reference.com, merriam-webster.com and visualthesaurus.com).
7. Use website name generators – if everything so far didn’t do the trick you can try playing around with some robotic domain name generators. Basically what these sites do is use one or more keywords supplied by the user along with an internal database of frequently used terms and try and create new domain names. The algorithm will then check for the availability of these domains in various TLDs. Here are a few name generators: nameboy.com, domainsbot.com, bustaname.com and makewords.com.
8. Look for expired domains – if even the robots have failed you there might still be a few options left. One of those is to search for expired domains. This isn’t easy and the few good expired domain names that reach the market get snatched usually very quickly. However if all else failed it might be worth checking out. Here are a few expired domain websites: justdropped.com, networksolutions.com and domaintools.com.
9. Get expired domains –buying an expired domain could be tricky as the good ones usually get snatched very quickly (simply too many people around the world are going over those about to expire domain name lists). Some users have suggested using special services which can secure a domain name for you the minute it becomes available. This comes at a price (typically several dozen dollars or so) but it could mean the difference between getting this great domain name and having the other guy get it. I do suggest you practice caution when using these services as scams are common. Here are a few such services suggested by readers from around the web (didn’t try any of them yet) snapnames.com, clubdrop.com, and pool.com.
10. Buy aftermarket domains names – buying second hand domain names might be the last thing you will want to look at (after all why pay hundreds of dollars for something you can buy for less than $10) but in some cases it might be worth it to check this option as well. Some internet centric businesses are dependent on having very specific domain names, others might feel that having a three latter .com domain name might help their business and don’t mind spending the extra $20k+. In some cases buying a good domain name might also be a good investment (after all nobody is making any new good .com domains). There are several aftermarket websites where you can buy second hand domain names including afternic.com, sedo.com and namejet.com.

I will explore many of these points in more depth later on.