The Domain Name List and How to Find A Good URL

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Ownership Search

Choosing a good handle for your Internet presence may seem simple. Looks can be deceiving; still, it's not all that difficult if you remember a few important points. Also, it helps to have access to a good domain name list. Here are the things to remember:

First, it should be memorable. Making your domain name unique is of course a given, but unique doesn't equal memorable. After all, who wants to have their web content at 56YttP181Wqz.com? 

Unique, yes. Memorable? Not likely. Your choice should be descriptive .Starting a retail gem business? bigshinyrocks.com is available. Shorter is better, if you can manage it.

You can try bigrocks.com or shinyrocks.com (both are available at the time of this writing). Short, descriptive, catchy... it's like writing a pop song, only more so. You need to do an ownership search to see what's available. I chose the name WebmasterCourse.Com for my web site design course URL for this very reason - short, a .com and pretty easy to remember.

This is the tricky part, and you have to have this figured out fairly early on. You don't want to knock yourself out spending hours or days settling on a decision, only to find out that it's already taken. That's where the domain name list comes in handy.

There's a fairly straightforward method of finding out whether your website hopeful is taken or not. Hit the website at http://whois.net and type in your proposed URL. If it comes up as being registered, you're out of luck and will have to come up with something else. This function provides you with negative feedback; no news is good news.

However, there is also a function on whois.net that can provide you with a list of available domain names based on a keyword you provide. Just enter your keyword in the field titled "List of deleted domain names" and hit the Go! button, and presto... the site will present you with a list with names that had been previously registered, but which have been allowed to lapse.

All of the domains in the list will be available for registration. There's one caveat, however: The list only includes websites that were previously registered.

You can still invent a completely fresh new domain name that has never been registered, and it won't show up on the list. Therefore, use both of the tools at whois.net to your advantage.

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