• amazon.com
• ebay.com
• wikipedia.org

There are a lot of different types of domains to choose from before you even start to choose a domain name. Generic Domains The oldest and most famous unrestricted generic domains are:

• .com - originally used to indicate commercial companies, but is now completely neutral
• .net - originally used for network infrastructures, now unrestricted
• .org - unrestricted, but can have non-profit connotations

There are other domain names that still maintain their original restrictions like:

• .gov - US government websites
• .edu - mainly US educational institutions’ websites

The dot com (.com) is the most well known of all the domains and the most valuable, because of that, it’s also the hardest to get. In order to give businesses and individuals more choice, new generic domains have been created.

• .info - unrestricted but it’s supposed to be used for informational sites, unfortunately it now has the reputation for spam sites
• .biz - unrestricted but it’s supposed to be for businesses
• .mobi - unrestricted but it’s supposed to indicate websites for use with mobile devices

Remember though that these domains do not have the same community recognition as the .com, .net and .org domains.

Geographical Domains

You can also get domains that indicate they come from a specific country or territory. These are known as geographical domains or country domains. These are really useful if you’re targeting a market in a particular country. Many, but  not all, have far more regulations than the generic domains and most of these require some connection with the country in order to get a domain name registration. Probably because of these restrictions, inhabitants of the targeted country can find websites with geographical domains more trustworthy than the generic version.

The country code is made up of two letters:

.us - USA

.uk - United Kingdom

.au - Australia

.nz - New Zealand

.za - South Africa

.jp - Japan

.cn - China

.hk - Hong Kong

.br - Brazil

Often, you won’t be able to register a domain with only the country code on the end, the country’s rules will require you to add a .co or a .com or something similar before the country code. For example in the uk you can register yourdomain.co.uk but not yourdomain.uk. In Australia, we can’t register somedomain.au but we can register somedomain.com.au, somedomain.net.au and somedomain.org.au. Each country has it’s own rules. If you are thinking of registering a geographical domain name, you need to check what the requirements and restrictions are first.

Vanity Domains

There are also a number of countries that let you register a domain name with absolutely no connection to that country (or desire to do business in it), these are sometimes known as vanity domains. Some of them have become viewed as generic by the community, even if they are not technically.

The most famous and useful one is the .tv domain. It actually indicates that the domain is from Tuvalu which is a tiny island in the South Pacific, but is now run by Verisign (a major US company) and has been pushed by big media interests as the domain name for media, especially video. Because of the familiarity of the word “TV” (ie an abbreviation of television) and because many big US television and media interests are advertising websites using the .tv domain - the .tv is starting to become a premium international domain with good community recognition.

Some other vanity domains are:

.fm - from the Federated States of Micronesia, but can indicate radio stations [last.fm]

.cc - Cocos Islands, billed as an alternative to a dot com

.ws - Samoa (used to be Western Samoa), sold as also standing for “website”

.to - Tonga, but can be used for clever domains like go.to

Things to think of when choosing a domain name

• Target Market - which countries do you plan to market to? Country level domains are usually more expensive than generic domains but they often have more choice of names. If possible you should ALWAYS get the generic domains (especially the .com) if it is available even if you have no plans of marketing internationally. If you’re based in the US, the .com is more well known and more prestigious than the .us (US country code) so you’d be better off sticking with the .com if available. Think also of countries that you might like to target in the future.
• Simple with little or no chance of being misspelt - if you told someone your domain name, would they be able to know how it was spelt or would they need you to write it down? Remember some letters are easily mixed up like z, s and x.
• Hyphens (”-”) will reduce the perceived value of your domain names but search engines ignore them so consider the purpose of your domain and the intended audience.
• The shorter, the better - if your company name is very long then by all means register it, but make sure you also register a shorter version that you can advertise. Premium domain names are 5-8 letters, 10-16 words is still very good. You can get away with a few more if the words you use are simple or form an easy to say phrase.
• Get multiple domains as insurance - if your domain name can be easily misspelt or spelt differently then consider registering alternative spellings. For example you wanted to register domain9.com, it would be best to also try and register domainnine.com (you don’t have to use it, but you can set up your website so that if someone types in domainnine.com they get transferred to domain9.com). 
• Don’t give up, keep playing around with combinations - if your domain name is already taken then look to see if you can add something to it - like if your shop was called Ruby’s Dresses and www.rubysdresses.com is not available, you could try rubysdressesonline.com or buyrubysdresses.com.
• If your website is amazing enough, people will find you even with a difficult domain name - just look at the popularity of del.icio.us and icanhascheezburger.com. But just don’t count on it!

Registering a domain You need to find a domain registry if you want to register a domain name. There are heaps of them so it does pay to do a little research and shop around as prices can vary a lot! Remember to not just consider the upfront price but the renewal price, what extra services are included and what reputation the registry has for service.

Recommended generic domain registry

Namecheap.com

For .coms, .nets and .orgs, our favourite is Namecheap.com, especially if you don’t have hundreds of domains to manage. It doesn’t have great tools for huge domain portfolios but it’s one of the fastest and most streamlined for managing smaller portfolios. They give away free privacy protection with every domain registered (and the privacy renewal fees are cheap). Standard features include free domain and email forwarding which are useful until you get your hosting set up. Domain forwarding is especially useful if you are registering a domain name that is an alternative spelling of your main domain - it means that you can get that domain to automatically forward to your main domain for free. Watch out for companies that put advertising on domain forwarding, it makes your website look tacky and cheap - fortunately Namecheap’s domain forwarding is advertising free. 

Over November, you can try using “FIRSTSNOW” as the promo code for a discount on domain registration.

Other domain registries

• Godaddy: one of the biggest resellers and they are cheap but we don’t recommend them. There have had some bad press about their policies. There are reports that they are very quick to pull down your website if they receive a complaint. They also have one of the shortest periods of time for you to reactivate your domain if it has expired - 18 days. Many registries give 30 days (and so did Godaddy, once upon a time) - if you don’t renew your domain past this period that you will be up for extra charges (starting at $80) if you want to keep your domain. If you don’t pay this fee, your expiring domain will be put up for auction instead of it just slipping back into the pool of available domains for you to register again. Pretty dodgy.   
• Moniker.com
• Fabulous
• Dynadot

For user reviews, check the Name Pros forum.