DomainTyper

Official Blog of DomainTyper.

What do the domain extensions stand for?

A Domain Name has two parts, name and extension. While you can choose any name for your domain, you can choose the extensions from the pre-defined combination.
Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name.
Top level domain (TLD) can be categorized as generic top level domains (gTLD) and country code top level domains (ccTLD).

List of Top-Level Generic extensions (gTLD)

Generic	.biz · .com · .info · .name · .net · .org · .pro
Sponsored	.aero · .asia · .cat · .coop · .edu · .gov · .int · .jobs · .mil · .mobi · .museum · .tel · .travel
Infrastructure	.arpa
Deleted/retired	.nato
Reserved	.example · .invalid · .localhost · .test
Pseudo	.bitnet · .csnet · .local · .root · .uucp · .onion · .exit

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country (a sovereign state or a dependent territory). All ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

List of Top-Level Generic extensions (gTLD)

A	B
.ac — Ascension Island*	.ba — Bosnia and Herzegovina
.ad — Andorra	.bb — Barbados
.ae — United Arab Emirates	.bd — Bangladesh
.af — Afghanistan	.be — Belgium*
.ag — Antigua and Barbuda*	.bf — Burkina Faso
.ai — Anguilla	.bg — Bulgaria
.al — Albania	.bh — Bahrain
.am — Armenia*	.bi — Burundi*
.an — Netherlands Antilles	.bj — Benin
.ao — Angola	.bl — Saint Barthélemy
.aq — Antarctica	.bm — Bermuda
.ar — Argentina	.bn — Brunei
.as — American Samoa*	.bo — Bolivia*
.at — Austria*	.br — Brazil*
.au — Australia	.bs — Bahamas*
.aw — Aruba	.bt — Bhutan
.ax — Åland Islands	.bv — Bouvet Island
.az — Azerbaijan	.bw — Botswana
	.by — Belarus
	.bz — Belize*

C	D
.cat — Catalonia	.de — Germany
.ca — Canada	.dj — Djibouti*
.cc — Cocos (Keeling) Islands*	.dk — Denmark*
.cd — Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly .zr — Zaire)*	.dm — Dominica
.cf — Central African Republic	.do — Dominican Republic
.cg — Republic of the Congo*	.dz — Algeria
.ch — Switzerland*
.ci — Côte d’Ivoire*	E
.ck — Cook Islands*	.ec — Ecuador*
.cl — Chile	.ee — Estonia
.cm — Cameroon	.eg — Egypt
.cn — People’s Republic of China*	.eh — Western Sahara
.co — Colombia	.er — Eritrea
.cr — Costa Rica	.es — Spain*
.cu — Cuba	.et — Ethiopia
.cv — Cape Verde	.eu — European Union
.cx — Christmas Island*
.cy — Cyprus	F
.cz — Czech Republic	.fi — Finland
	.fj — Fiji*
	.fk — Falkland Islands
	.fm — Federated States of Micronesia*
	.fo — Faroe Islands
	.fr — France

G	H
.ga — Gabon	.hk — Hong Kong*
.gb — United Kingdom	.hm — Heard Island and McDonald Islands*
.gd — Grenada*	.hn — Honduras*
.ge — Georgia	.hr — Croatia
.gf — French Guiana	.ht — Haiti
.gg — Guernsey	.hu — Hungary*
.gh — Ghana
.gi — Gibraltar	I
.gl — Greenland*	.id — Indonesia
.gm — Gambia	.ie — Ireland
.gn — Guinea	.il — Israel*
.gp — Guadeloupe	.im — Isle of Man*
.gq — Equatorial Guinea	.in — India*
.gr — Greece*	.io — British Indian Ocean Territory*
.gs — South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands*	.iq — Iraq
.gt — Guatemala	.ir — Iran*
.gu — Guam	.is — Iceland*
.gw — Guinea-Bissau	.it — Italy
.gy — Guyana

J	K
.je — Jersey	.ke — Kenya
.jm — Jamaica	.kg — Kyrgyzstan
.jo — Jordan	.kh — Cambodia
.jp — Japan	.ki — Kiribati
	.km — Comoros
	.kn — Saint Kitts and Nevis
	.kp — North Korea
	.kr — South Korea
	.kw — Kuwait
	.ky — Cayman Islands
	.kz — Kazakhstan*

L	M
.la — Laos*	.ma — Morocco
.lb — Lebanon	.mc — Monaco
.lc — Saint Lucia	.md — Moldova*
.li — Liechtenstein*	.me — Montenegro*
.lk — Sri Lanka	.mg — Madagascar
.lr — Liberia	.mh — Marshall Islands
.ls — Lesotho*	.mk — Republic of Macedonia
.lt — Lithuania	.ml — Mali
.lu — Luxembourg	.mm — Myanmar
.lv — Latvia*	.mn — Mongolia*
.ly — Libya*	.mo — Macau
	.mp — Northern Mariana Islands*
	.mq — Martinique
	.mr — Mauritania
	.ms — Montserrat*
	.mt — Malta
	.mu — Mauritius*
	.mv — Maldives
	.mw — Malawi*
	.mx — Mexico*
	.my — Malaysia
	.mz — Mozambique

N	O
.na — Namibia*	.om — Oman
.nc — New Caledonia
.ne — Niger	P
.nf — Norfolk Island*	.pa — Panama
.ng — Nigeria	.pe — Peru
.ni — Nicaragua	.pf — French Polynesia
.nl — Netherlands*	.pg — Papua New Guinea
.no — Norway	.ph — Philippines*
.np — Nepal	.pk — Pakistan*
.nr — Nauru*	.pl — Poland*
.nu — Niue*	.pm — Saint Pierre and Miquelon
.nz — New Zealand*	.pn — Pitcairn Islands*
	.pr — Puerto Rico*
	.ps — Palestine*
	.pt — Portugal*
	.pw — Palau
	.py — Paraguay

Q	R
.qa — Qatar	.re — Réunion
	.ro — Romania*
	.rs — Serbia*
	.ru — Russia*
	.rw — Rwanda

S	T
.sa — Saudi Arabia	.tc — Turks and Caicos Islands*
.sb — Solomon Islands*	.td — Chad
.sc — Seychelles*	.tf — French Southern Territories
.sd — Sudan	.tg — Togo*
.se — Sweden*	.th — Thailand*
.sg — Singapore	.tj — Tajikistan*
.sh — Saint Helena*	.tk — Tokelau*
.si — Slovenia	.tl — East Timor (formerly .tp)*
.sj — Svalbard and Jan Mayen islands	.tm — Turkmenistan*
.sk — Slovakia	.tn — Tunisia
.sl — Sierra Leone	.to — Tonga*
.sm — San Marino*	.tp — East Timor
.sn — Senegal	.tr — Turkey
.so — Somalia*	.tt — Trinidad and Tobago*
.sr — Suriname*	.tv — Tuvalu*
.st — São Tomé and Príncipe*	.tw — Taiwan*
.su — Soviet Union	.tz — Tanzania
.sv — El Salvador
.sy — Syria*
.sz — Swaziland*

U	V
.ua — Ukraine	.va — Vatican City
.ug — Uganda*	.vc — Saint Vincent and the Grenadines*
.uk — United Kingdom	.ve — Venezuela
.um — US Minor Outlying Islands (code terminated)	.vg — British Virgin Islands*
.us — United States*	.vi — United States Virgin Islands
.uy — Uruguay	.vn — Vietnam
.uz — Uzbekistan	.vu — Vanuatu*

W	Y
.wf — Wallis and Futuna	.ye — Yemen
.ws — Samoa*	.yt — Mayotte
	.yu — Yugoslavia

Z
.za — South Africa*
.zm — Zambia
.zw — Zimbabwe

* Foreign registration permitted

May
4th

Mon

Six naming myths to ignore

When people face challenges they feel unprepared for, they want rules. They want experts to explain to them clearly and unequivocally what to do. And there’s usually no shortage of people willing to step into that expert role.

Naming is one challenge that many people find baffling, and naming rules abound in blogs, books, and magazine articles. The rules are often stated in uncompromising terms that make them easy to follow with minimal thought. Today The Name Inspector wants to talk about some of those rules and why they’re dumb.

1. Your domain name should have no more than six letters

Some rules are bad because they continue to be passed around after they become obsolete. The myth of the six-letter domain name is one of those rules. The Name Inspector doesn’t know how it got started, but he found something like it in writing. A Microsoft publication called Managing Your E-Commerce Business, Second Edition has the following guideline:

The perfect domain name is less than six letters long, followed by .com or some other suffix. Short domain names are easier to remember and type. However, let’s be realistic: Fewer and fewer one-word domain names are left with each passing hour.

That was written in 2001, but you’ll still find people talking about how domain names are ideally no more than six letters long. Sometimes they point to a bunch of prominent names like eBay, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, etc. as “proof” of this idea. But anyone who has tried to find a good domain name in the last five years or so knows that the six-letter limit is unrealistic. The five-letter limit urged in the passage above is now laughable. Some companies, like Biznik, do manage to find great six-letter domains, but they’re the lucky exceptions.

There’s some truth to the idea that short domain names are more memorable than long ones, but it’s not a matter of counting letters. The name ICanHasCheezBurger.com is far more memorable than the name jfhpnx.com, even though the former has eighteen letters and the latter has only six. Memorability depends on the units being remembered. Meaningful phrases are more memorable than random sequences of letters, for example.

While it’s true that there are several big names on the web that have six or fewer letters, there are plenty of popular sites that have longer domain names. The following sites are all in the Alexa Top 100: YouTube (7 letters), FaceBook (8 letters), Wikipedia (9 letters), Craigslist (10 letters), Photobucket (11 letters), and even Adultfriendfinder (17 letters). What these names have in common is that they consist of familiar parts put together (except Wikipedia, which was named before anyone knew what wiki meant).

So when you’re trying to come up with a domain name, you want to keep reasonably short, but you might also want to make it meaningful. If that’s your goal, don’t worry about arbitrary letter limits.

2. A name should be an empty vessel

You’ll hear a lot of marketing people say that a name should be an “empty vessel”. Hardly anyone gives a coherent explanation of the term, though. Here’s a statement taken from the website of Heckler Associates, the esteemed Seattle branding agency that came up with the name Starbucks:

Unique brand names serve as relevant ‘empty vessels,’ their meaning filled entirely by brand equity. Brand names that embrace market trends and conventions or associate too closely to common words signal a follower’s position. They reduce the opportunity for distinction, limit assimilation of your brand values, and make legal protection difficult.

The phrase “their meaning filled entirely by brand equity” implies that an empy vessel has no meaning. But what counts as meaning? Heckler came up with the name Cinnabon, which clearly resembles the phrase cinnamon bun. That’s not meaning? Do they mean the name doesn’t appear verbatim in the dictionary? If so, they should say that. The image of an empty vessel is a terrible way to get that point across. Cinnabon does not get all its meaning from brand equity. It gets most of its meaning from its resemblance to the phrase cinnamon bun. The first time The Name Inspector saw one of these places in an airport, he thought to himself, “Huh, I guess they sell cinnamon buns”. Cinnabon is about as descriptive as a name can be.

So it’s really unclear what marketing people are getting at when they talk about this empty vessel stuff. One thing they mean is that a name shouldn’t limit a company too strictly to one area of business, lest it make future diversification difficult. That’s a legitimate concern. But it has nothing to do with a name being devoid of meaning.

When you talk about the “meanings” of a name, you really have to consider two things. First there are meanings of the word(s) that the name is based on. Then there’s the way those meanings relate to the company, product, or service the name stands for. Some names based on real words, like Internation Business Machines, are essentially literal descriptions and can indeed be limiting. Other names based on real words, like Apple, evoke concepts that relate only imaginatively to what the names stand for. Two very different kinds of name, neither devoid of meaning.

So, there are three problems with the “empty vessel” idea: (1) no one explains clearly what it means, (2) actual naming practice doesn’t seem to follow the dictate of the empty vessel, and (3) this way of talking about meaning completely misses the crucial role of context.

Meaning is good. Meaning is your friend. You just have to use it imaginatively. Forget the empty vessel.

3. Your name should yield almost no results in Google

This rule is proposed by Seth Godin in his post The New Rules of Naming. It’s based entirely on the idea that customers will find a company’s website by typing the company’s name into a search engine. It is important to be findable in that way. But to be found on Google, what you really need is to be the first search result. The rest don’t matter for findability purposes. If you own yourcompanyname.com, then you’re already halfway there.

There’s another important way potential customers use web searches: to learn about the credibility and reputation of a company before becoming actual customers. If you search on a company’s name and their site doesn’t turn up as the first result, you might think the company lacks legitimacy. If the first several results aren’t web pages that mention the company, you might think the company is small potatoes. Godin’s rule will help a company avoid these situations. But it’s overkill to say a name should only yield a few results in Google before you start using it. What’s really important is that you be able to dominate the top ten or so results for a search on your name. Results after that will probably be ignored by web searchers. So what matters is not so much the number of results you get for a search on a potential name, but how much “Google juice” those results have to compete with you, should you decide to use the name.

Let’s amend Seth’s rule: It’s a good idea to choose a name that will allow you to dominate the first page of search results on Google (and other search engines, of course). That means not having too much competition from popular websites.

4. Your name should start with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet

Guy Kawasaki promotes this rule in his book The Art of the Start. It’s a pretty old-school rule, based on the idea that you want to appear early in alphabetical listings like the phone book or a list of conference vendors. Again, the validity of this rule really depends on the situation. How much of your business do you expect to get from the phone book or from conference attendees? How much do you expect to get from web search, word-of-mouth, and advertising? If you’re relying more on the latter, message and memorability are way more important than what letter your name starts with.

5. Your name should begin with/contain the letter(s) __.

Experts often tell you that your name should ideally start with or contain a certain letter.

From the website of KaZaK Composites:

While visiting Sony in Japan, Dr. Fanucci [that’s the founder] attended a presentation on the principles of choosing a good corporate name. There he learned what makes a good company name, including that it should include the letters k, z and x.

Who was that mysterious “expert” giving bogus naming advice in Japan?

The branding professionals at Shift Partners suggest that a company name should begin with the letter V.

Now, The Name Inspector is obviously in favor of being sensitive to the nuances of words, sounds, and even letters. But people, there are no magic letters. Worry about things that matter first, like whether your name evokes ideas that help your brand.

6. Names of such-and-such a type are bad

The company Brains on Fire sometimes advertises itself this way in Google search ads:

No Latin roots. No mashed together words. Names that mean something.

The Name Inspector has already made it pretty clear that he loves meaning, so he doesn’t object to that last sentence. It’s the first two that are puzzling. Surely the folks at Brains on Fire don’t actually avoid using any words based on Latin in their names. They’re probably talking about avoiding a certain naming style that was popular in the 1990s–the one that gave us names like Acura Integra. Fair enough. But no mashed together words? Does that mean no blends, like Viralmentalist or Fiskateers? Wait, those names came out of Brains On Fire projects. Do they mean no compounds, like IndieBound? Oh, that’s a name they came up with. So what does their ad mean, exactly?

Linguistically speaking, there are only so many ways to create a name. The Name Inspector can’t understand why anyone would want to take perfectly serviceable types of name off the table. It’s already hard enough to come up with a good, meaningful name.

The bottom line: when naming, you can follow simple rules that will get you nowhere, or you can do the hard work of using language creatively to help people see your company, product, or service in the best and most interesting way.

via The Name inspector

May
3rd

Sun

The Effective Strategy For Choosing Right Domain Names

Naming is linguistic design, and a good domain name is an important part of the overall design of a website. A name plays a prominent role when people discover, remember, think about, talk about, search for, or navigate to a website. It establishes a theme for the branding of a website before people even visit it for the first time.

Coming up with a good domain name requires a combination of strategy, imagination and good linguistic design practice.

You’ll find some basic pieces of advice all over the Web, and it’s worth mentioning those right away. Ideally, your domain name should be:

Short
Catchy and memorable,
Easy to pronounce,
Easy to spell,
Not too similar to competing domain names,
Not a violation of someone else’s trademark.

These are all good rules of thumb. But they lack specifics. These are really criteria to use to evaluate ideas for names after you’ve thought of them. To come up with a name in the first place, you need to know what type of name is best for you. And before you can answer that question, you have to answer two others: one about your resources, and the other about your Web strategy.

Two Questions

The first question is easy: Are you willing and able to spend lots of money on your domain name? If not, you can forget about a .com domain that’s a single real word, like Twitter.com or Amazon.com. They’re all registered, many by domain speculators, and buying one will cost a lot. You’ll need to look for a different kind of name. Real words on .net and .org domains are pretty hard to come by, too.

The other question is a strategic one and takes more thought: How do you plan to get traffic to your website? Answering this question can help you avoid a lot of confusion about what makes for a good name. Some views on this issue directly contradict others. For example, Rob Monster, CEO of Monster Venture Partners, believes that Google.com and Yahoo.com are “lousy domain names” and that podcast.com and slideshow.com are great ones. Marketing guru Seth Godin advises against real words like these and in favor of unique made-up names like Squidoo.com (his company).

So, what’s going on here? These two views correspond to different strategies for getting Web traffic. Monster is interested in what we might call a “discoverable” domain name. That’s a name that can be found by someone who doesn’t know about your website but is doing web searches on keywords and phrases related to a specific topic, or by typing those words and phrases directly into the navigation bar of the browser. Discoverable names are generically descriptive.

The type of name that Godin is talking about is a “brandable” domain name. A brandable name establishes a distinct identity and communicates indirectly to evoke interesting ideas and feelings. Some brandable names, like Squidoo, provide a unique character string unlikely to be found anywhere except in documents that mention that particular website. That means people who know the name of the website can easily use a search engine to navigate there. Godin makes good use of this advantage, though it may not be a significant source of traffic. A unique character string also makes it possible for mentions of your website to dominate top search results for your name. That helps establish credibility, which may be considerably more important.

Discoverable Or Brandable?

So, do you need a discoverable name or a brandable name? If you intend to rely primarily on organic search results for a specific topic, you might want a discoverable name… but not necessarily. Even if your website has a brandable name, it can still rank well in search engine results for keywords and phrases as long as it’s full of relevant content. Discoverable names are only necessary for people counting on “type-in” traffic.

Domains Bot, a search engine that is geared specifically towards finding a domain name. It works best if you’re looking for a compound-word domain rather than an invented word.

Discoverable names are real words and phrases. If you don’t have the budget to buy a single real-word domain, then you’ll need to go for a phrase. Common phrases are often registered as well, so it can take time to find one. The trick to a discoverable name is not to be clever but to think of a phrase that other people would likely think of as well and would type in a search engine or navigation bar. The catch is that you have to find one that hasn’t yet been registered. DomainTyper.com is a great tool for checking the availability of domain names and suggest available alternative names.

If your marketing plans involve paid search listings and buzz generated by prominent mentions of your website, then you will almost certainly want a brandable name. A brandable name is distinctive, evocative and memorable.

Strategies For Brandable Names

So how do you come up with a brandable name? It takes some creativity. You sometimes hear people, including marketing people, say that a name should be an “empty vessel,” so that it can get all its meaning from other forms of branding. That’s not the most productive way to think when coming up with a name. Most great website names are connected to the purpose of the website in an indirect and interesting way. Often they use sensory images or tap into people’s personal experience in some way.

Some names are metaphors. PageFlakes, for example, uses the unexpected flake metaphor to help people understand something about how to use the website: you drag little boxes of content around, and they stick in the places you drop them, like flakes. Smashing Magazine is based on a word used in an enthusiastic appraisal of a performance, outfit, or design — “That looks smashing!” — but it also evokes the idea of being physically clobbered. That metaphor is brought to the foreground by the tagline: “We smash you with the information that makes your life easier. Really.”

Image credit: eBoy.

How do you come up with a metaphor? First, you have to have a clear understanding of what makes your website special and interesting. Then you have to find a simpler concept that helps people understand that concept by analogy, usually by imagined sensory experiences. The sensory information used in metaphors makes them vivid and memorable. There’s no algorithm for finding a metaphor, but it often involves thinking visually, which should come naturally to Web designers.

Some names have indirect connections to a website’s purpose but not through a metaphor. Flickr.com, for example, relates to photography through the concept of light that’s implicit in the word “flicker.”

Putting Names Together

Because you won’t be looking for a single-word name (unless you have big bucks to spend), you’ll have to build your name out of pieces. There are several different ways to do that:

Compound
Example: YouTube
Two whole words, often two nouns, stuck together. Don’t let anyone tell you that this kind of name is a “fad” and will go away. This has been the most common way to coin new English words as well as to create new names, and that’s unlikely to change in the next few hundred years.
Phrase
Example: Six Apart
Words put together according to normal grammatical rules. Phrase names can be similar to compounds, but have a different pattern of syllabic emphasis. In compounds, the emphasis goes on the first word, the way we emphasize “white” in “the Whitehouse.” In phrases, the emphasis often goes on the second word, the way we emphasize “house” in “a white house.”
Blend
Examples: Microsoft, Farecast
A blend combines a part of a word with another word or word part. The name Microsoft combines the “micro” part of “microcomputer” with the “soft” part of “software.” When blends involve a surprising overlap in sound between the two words, they’re a form of wordplay. Farecast is like that. It combines the words “fare” and “forecast,” and “fare” resembles the first syllable of “forecast.” When you create this kind of blend, be sure to avoid awkwordplay: don’t pile up consonants in ugly ways (like in the name Syncplicity), and don’t use important words to replace syllables that aren’t emphasized (the way the names Mapufacture and Carticipate do).
Tweaked word
Examples: Flickr, Zune
Sometimes you can find a good domain name that’s basically a real word, but changed in some small way. It might have a modified spelling, like Flickr, or it might have a changed or added sound, like Zune (from “tune”) and iPhone.
Affixed word
Example: Friendster
Some names are new words created by sticking a prefix or suffix onto an existing word. Friendster, for example, is “friend” with the suffix -ster attached. Biznik is “biz” with the Yiddish-derived suffix -nik (as in “beatnik”).
Made-up name
Examples: Etsy, Odeo
Sometimes you can find a name that is, or seems to be, completely made up. For example, Etsy is an online hand-made goods marketplace, and Odeo is an online music website.

When building a name out of pieces, be sure that both pieces contribute something interesting. The name LibraryThing fails in this respect. LiftPort, the name of a company that wants to build an elevator to outer space, is not much better. The words “lift” and “port” have very similar meanings; both relate to moving things around. Neither relates to what makes this company really exciting, outer space.

Linguistic Design Guidelines

Here are some general guidelines on linguistic design that you can use in your quest for a name:

Meaning

Be specific:

Good: 37signals
Bad: LibraryThing

Appeal to the senses in appropriate ways:

Good: Twitter
Bad: BookGoo

Make every piece count:

Good: YouTube
Bad: LiftPort

If you use a metaphor, make sure it’s enlightening:

Good: PageFlakes
Bad: Fairtilizer (how is fertilizer related to music?)

Sound

Keep groups of consonants simple and appealing:

Good: Biznik
Bad: Sclipo

Preserve the natural syllabic emphasis of words:

Good: Farecast
Bad: Carticipate

Use sound to support your meaning:

Good: Etsy (a short sound for a hand-made goods marketplace)
Bad: Syncplicity (an awkward blend for an application that’s supposed to sync your computers seamlessly)

Conclusion

If you’re a Web designer, you know that the design process isn’t unfettered creativity. Rather, it involves elegant, creative solutions to specific problems. Naming is no different. Forget the cliche of the crazy adverstising or marketing genius who’s struck by the perfect idea as if by lightning. Approach the naming process in a strategic, rational way, and look for elegant solutions to your particular naming challenge. Even as domain names become scarcer and scarcer, with the right strategy and enough attention to linguistic design principles, building a great name is still possible.

via Smashing Magazin