How To Find If A Domain Name Is Taken

Check If Its Not Trademarked Or Already Used

Before you move forward with a specific domain name, check to see if the name is available on social media sites, as well as if there are any trademarks already registered to the name.

To build your brand, its ideal to have the same name across your domain and social networks. This builds familiarity and makes it easy for your visitors, fans, and customers to find you around the web.

Avoid legal issues you should stay away from names that already have trademarks.

How can you quickly check social networks and trademarks for your potential domain name?

Its quite easy with a tool like Knowem. Search your potential domain name itll show you if its available throughout over 25 popular social networks and if there are any trademarks already registered to the name.

If its taken, consider tweaking it so that you can create original social media profiles.

I Need To Check Whether A Domain Name Is Available Can Ionos Help

Before you use the IONOS domain check to see if the domain you want is available, it’s important that you think carefully about what you want your domain name to be. Choosing your domain name will be one of the most important decisions you make when it comes to building your website. Play around with some ideas and take the advice of friends and colleagues. As you begin to come up with potential domains, you can check which ones are available on the IONOS site. This will allow you to filter out ideas that are already taken and start whittling down your list.

All you need to do is visit ionos.co.uk and type a potential domain name into the checker. The IONOS check will immediately see if the domain name is available for you to register and also provide you with other possible top-level domain names if your initial choice is not available. In addition, it will display the domain names that may have been occupied in the past but are now free for you to register.

Contact The Domain Name Owner

If one of the steps above leads you to the website owner, its time to reach out! Craft an email letting them know that youre interested in purchasing the domain.

To avoid looking like spam, make sure your email conveys seriousness and professionalism. If you have a professional email address at a domain name you own, that will look more legitimate than one from a yahoo or aol account. If not, consider at least setting up a gmail address, which looks a bit more respectable.

Make sure your email includes:

• Your contact information both email and phone, so its easy for them to choose the method they prefer.
• Language that makes it clear youre willing to pay you may not want to include a specific offer yet , but theyre more likely to respond if they know this is a genuine business offer
• Something that shows your legitimacy how can you show youre a real person with serious intent? Maybe thats a link to a website you already run or a LinkedIn profile.

People get a lot of spam emails, so you want to clarify that youre a real person with real interest. If you can pull that off, the chances of getting a response are much higher.

Also Check: Is Gmail Com A Domain Name

How Do I Check That A Domain Is Available Without Triggering A Grabber

A few days ago, I checked whether a domain was available by tying the name in the web browser. Also host returned not found 3

When I tried again today, some domain grabber had snatched it.

How can I check whether a domain is available without losing to some barely legal “service”?

• What registrar was it registered with? Just curious, the same thing happened to me before. KeithFeb 1 ’11 at 4:47
• 3For my own learning, how could a domain grabber know you typed in a domain in your browser that wasn’t registered and then grab it? How would you know this had happened, and wasn’t just a coincidence. Matthew LockFeb 1 ’11 at 5:00
• 1@Matthew, it’s not a coincidence. It’s called “domain name tasting” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting. Companies form agreements with registrars to automatically register any domain accessed that is not already registered. The company has several days to decide if they want to keep the domain if not they can abandon it at no charge. According to the Wikipedia article, over 90% of domain name registrations at some registrars are “tastes”. Dour High ArchFeb 1 ’11 at 5:31
• Please check my suggestion out in the answers below

I use whois, nslookup and similar tools from the command line to check whether a domain is registered.

Assuming you have access to SSH or a terminal:

In your shell .rc file add:

alias checkdomain="' & &  echo -e '\033[0 32mAvailable\033[0m' || echo -e '\033[0 31mNot available\033[0m') < < < "

checkdomain < domain> 

What If Domain Name Is Already Taken

Try to buy it You can always offer to purchase the name that you want from the current owner. If the Whois information is public, you can contact the domain owner directly and see if theyre interested in selling. If the info is private, you can see if they have contact information listed on their website.

Also Check: How Do I Find Out Where My Domain Is Registered

Already Have A Domain

If youve already got a domain from a third-party provider, you can simply transfer it to Squarespace.

Add Your Country To The Domain Name

Have you heard of the Nissan domain name lawsuit?

Back in 1994, a company called Nissan Computer Corp registered the domain nissan.com.

It was headed by an entrepreneur named Uzi Nissan who had used the business name since 1980.

Then in 2000, Nissan Motor sued Uzi Nissan. The goal: To get the nissan.com domain name.

The famous car company didnt end up getting the domain. If you type nissan.com into your search bar, youll see Uzi Nissans site:

So what did Nissan Motor do? They added USA to their URL:

This last resort strategy is actually a solid option if youre having domain name problems.

It can actually look quite nicenissanusa.com isnt a bad URL at all, and it still has the brand name in it.

You can also use your city if youre local to a major metropolis. The company Loud Marketing uses Barcelona in their URL:

And The Eugene, a luxury apartment building in New York City, uses the abbreviated NYC:

Its best to use this strategy if you provide services within a certain country or city.

You can use your country in your URL to designate where youre from, but some of your users may think you only work within that country. Think about it carefully before you pull the trigger.

Read Also: How To Change Ownership Of Domain Name

How To Buy A Domain Name When Yours Is Already Taken

• Domains

You sit glaring at the screen, thinking that there must be some mistake. Maybe if you refresh a couple times, it will fix itself.

You came up with a creative business name, have your new logo design, and even snatched the Facebook page and Twitter handle, but after a search for the right domain, its taken.

If someone else owns the domain, what can you do?

This happens, as getting the perfect domain, although such a seemingly small task, can be one of the greatest challenges youll have in building your digital presence.

Find out what it means if your domain is taken, and the next steps you can take to secure one for your brand.

Domain.com has over 300 domain extensions to choose from to help set your website apart from the rest. It all starts with a great domain.

Godaddy Domain Name Search

GoDaddy is the worlds largest domain provider that has more than 70 million domains under its management. It offers almost all types of extensions.

GoDaddy has an advanced domain name search tool that will help you to find the availability of a domain name. It will also show you some suggestions and alternatives based on your search. Just go to GoDaddy site name Search and enter your site title. And click on the Search button.

In this case, it shows that the webdomain is taken as Ive entered my domain. It also shows the available domains for other extensions. Now lets try with a different name. Ive added a prefix to the title and found it available. Thats a pretty handy tool for checking name availability.

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Consider What The Company Does

Your domain name can incorporate what you do. Think of a few keywords that represent your business, product, or services, and consider using one or two as part of your domain name. Try to think long-term though. If the company expands in a few years, will the descriptive words you selected still be relevant?

Use The Right Domain Name Extensions

When you choose your domain name extension, you can be sure of one thing: .com is still the best.

According to research from Domain Name Stat, 43% of all domains have the .com extension.

Why? Well, .com is the most familiar and easiest to remember.

While there are many successful websites with a .net and .org, your website will probably do better if it has a .com extension. Its the safest bet.

Our advice: Go with .com. If thats taken, try .net or .org. If these are taken too, youd be better off brainstorming a new domain name. And oh! Avoid those weird extensions like .club, .space, .pizza and so on.

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Choose A Different Domain Name

If you cant find out who owns the domain you want, or they arent willing to sell, you may simply have to choose another name. Fortunately, you wont necessarily have to start from scratch.

Instead, you could look at the list of alternatives provided to you by any domain checker tool, and use those ideas to find a suitable replacement. This can save you valuable time and effort, and youll often be able to grab a name thats almost identical to the one you wanted:

Of course, there are other methods for finding an alternative domain name. You can try using a keyword tool to discover promising options. This can help you find terms to incorporate that are relevant to your audience, and have strong search volumes.

As an example, if youre opening an organic cafe, you might find that people often search for organic cafe in combination with the name of their city. In your domain, you could try combining your citys name with the term organic cafe in order to attract traffic.

Consider Using Niche Keywords That Reflect Your Website

Our website mainly about web development or helping people to create a website. Hence we chose to add a name that reflects all of it website. Obviously website.com was no longer available, we simply chose WebsiteSetup.

Keywords can help to improve your SEO you need to tread carefully here! If you try to awkwardly stuff keywords into your domain, it comes across as generic .

If you choose to use keywords, put the keywords at the beginning of your domain. Thats where theyll be the most powerful for your ranking.

You can find keywords with tools like and Keywordtool.io.

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How Do I Check If A Domain Is Available

We also offer a Domain Backorder service, where you purchase a backorder credit to give you a chance to get the domain you want when it goes to auction.

Domain Name Taken Try These 7 Clever Solutions Instead

Its been a long time coming, but youre finally ready to launch the business youve been dreaming about for years! Your plans are set, you chose the perfect company name, and youre itching to start promoting your brand.

But, wait. You use a domain name search tool only to find yourcompanyname.com is not available. How could your domain name be taken?

It happens. Short .com domain names can be hard to come by these days. The number of domain registrations worldwide has surpassed 329.3 million. While you might think your name is superbly original, many of the good names are already taken.

It could be that someone is already using it for a website, or they just liked the name and wanted to claim it. Maybe they have a future business idea that they havent yet pursued. There are several reasons why your company name may not be available as a .com domain. Dont panic you have options!

Sure, you can try to purchase your domain from the current owner if theyre willing, but youll be limited by how much youre able to pay. Sometimes that just isnt a practical option.

Note: Before you buy an alternative domain, make sure someone else isnt using your business name.

If your dream business name is already trademarked, you dont want to step into legal issues or cause customer confusion. This may be a sign you need to start fresh with a new name.

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What Is Domain Privacy And Do I Need It

Domain privacy and security is as important to us as it is to you. Without domain privacy, your private and sensitive information may be collected and displayed in ICANN’s WHOIS database when you register your domain. Domain privacy ensures that these details are hidden from the public view. Our Domain Privacy + Protection package will make ICANN display our contact information in lieu of yours.

How To Find Out Who The Domain Owner Is

Youve spent time brainstorming domain names. Youve tried different domain suggestion tools. And youve finally figured out the perfect name.

But when you go to register the domain name youre set on, you find that someone has already claimed it. What a disappointment.

Before you give up on that perfect name and start the whole process again from scratch, know there might still be hope.

Registered domain names are sometimes still availableif you know how to find the owner.

People invest in domain names for a number of different reasons. Sometimes, its to start their own website at that domain. Sometimes its purely for investment purposes. And in a few cases, it may be for a website idea that either never comes to fruition, or that falls off the owners radar over time.

If the website youre interested in isnt being actively used and updated, then the owner may be happy to hear from an interested buyer. And even if the owner is clearly using the domain name right now, if youre willing to spend enough to make a sale worth it to them you may still have a chance.

In both cases, you should anticipate spending more for the domain name than if you went with something no one else owns yet. But if youre really set on that domain name, its worth trying your chances.

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