Website name

[Jimmi]

I had a couple of ideas for a name of a website.The one I like the most turns out someone has that name in the USA. I'm not sure if it's a commercial site it's more like a personal thing although they're selling a book they wrote and some of their own stuff. They have a .com domain and I've registered a .co.uk one. Apart from any legal stuff is it a good idea to go ahead and use the name I want? It seems most names I come up with there's already something close or the same.

[Toni]

Check the USA trademark website - I dont have the link.

Ideally you should get a .com and a .co.uk to compliment it perhaps through a specialised landing page for UK customers.

My 2p's worth!

[Jimmi]

I can see what you're saying it makes sense to have both.
Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.
http://www.frets.com/
http://www.frets.co.uk/
Both in a similar area, stringed instruments.
frets.com is a vey well known site even though it looks a bit clunky but I can't see them sueing frets.co.uk unless they had copied the site wholesale or something like that.

[Toni]

I can see what you're saying it makes sense to have both.
Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.
http://www.frets.com/
http://www.frets.co.uk/
Both in a similar area, stringed instruments.
frets.com is a vey well known site even though it looks a bit clunky but I can't see them sueing frets.co.uk unless they had copied the site wholesale or something like that.

if you are never going international then the .co.uk will do but if you idea what ever it is you think may expand to other countries .com is king!

[Jimmi]

So it would help it come up in search results worldwide? If I put "frets" into google I get a mixture of UK and other sites but I don't know how it would be searching from another country. In fact looking at it the majority are UK sites.

[Quizarea]

You can search from america using a Proxy server like Varg

www.varg.org (http://www.varg.org)
it might be of use for you.

[collateit]

Personally I would go for one where you can get both the .com and .co.uk. You just need a bit of patience, a thesaurus (thesuarus.com), a dictionary (dictionary.com) and a quick whois lookup (ajaxwhois.com).

Although most short words have gone (anything under 6 characters) you can still get some good 2 word domains. Or maybe don't choose the name of your company say what it does for the customer.

[J-Wholesale]

Ideally, you should have both. If you only have the .co.uk domain, there will always be a small percentage of your customers who type in .com, and reach this other site. They might realise their mistake and find you anyway, or they might not - in which case you'll lose potential business.

Put your own personal feelings about the URL aside. It's more important that it's unique, than that you like it.

[Jimmi]

Personally I have to like the name. I could think of anything that would be unique and not consider whether it's a decent name. I agree it's better to have both but I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons. It's not clear to me how much difference the url makes to Google even though searching through a proxy from Google.com gave different results. I'm guessiing that results are localised through .co.uk. Strangely enough if I put frets in my url I may well get on the first page with no effort from all the people who search for frets.com. So it might pay to not be unique. Also, I could keep the site name and get another url that is unique that is close to the site name. I'm not sure if there's any name you could think of that wouldn't have something similar already out there.

[J-Wholesale]

Personally I have to like the name. I could think of anything that would be unique and not consider whether it's a decent name. I agree it's better to have both but I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons. It's not clear to me how much difference the url makes to Google even though searching through a proxy from Google.com gave different results. I'm guessiing that results are localised through .co.uk. Strangely enough if I put frets in my url I may well get on the first page with no effort from all the people who search for frets.com. So it might pay to not be unique. Also, I could keep the site name and get another url that is unique that is close to the site name. I'm not sure if there's any name you could think of that wouldn't have something similar already out there.


www.fretsmusic.com (http://www.fretsmusic.com)

It's available. You've got the 'frets'. It passes the elevator speech. And you've got the added bonus of the music keyword which won't do you any harm.

Buy the .com, .org, .net, and .co.uk, and run with it.

[Jimmi]

It's a good name but I'm not in that area I was using it as an example :)
Also I noticed they have .uk.com now how many do you have to buy :|

[J-Wholesale]

There's a myth that all the good domain names are taken. You hear it a lot on forums such as this. But it really IS a myth. All the good domains are NOT taken - all the obvious ones are. And that's not the same thing at all.

You're clearly at least some way concerned about your domain name issue. I'll reiterate what I said before: You need to own the .com. Stand in front of a white board for an hour, and you'll come up with something you like that's both available and readable.

I'm reminded of a story from about a year ago: a website devoted to red headed people, and how they were in danger of extinction. Apparently redhead.com was unavailable, so they chose to spell it differently (don't ask me how you could spell those 2 words differently, but they did.) Anyway, it turns out that redhead.com lead to a porn site, and to this day that's the only thing I remember about the endangered red heads website.

Another story that springs to mind concerns a local business man who loved his domain name so much, he didn't care that it was almost identical to a major competitors. Without naming names, we're talking something along the lines of carsdirect.com Vs cars-direct.com. The first URL was already established, the second was the one he wanted, so he carried on regardless. The domains were so close that he even printed his business cards with the wrong domain by mistake, and never even noticed. I'm not messing about here, this really happened to a guy I know.

Business first. Personal preference and taste, second. You are not your customers.

Also I noticed they have .uk.com now how many do you have to buy :|

You've got to buy the big three: .com, .org, and .net. And it helps to own your local one too: .co.uk, .de, .fr, whatever. If you don't own the big ones, then any single dissatisfied customer can acquire it and seriously damage you. Example: frets.com - title: "frets.co.uk sucks!", and they'll be on the front page of Google right next to you when your customers come calling.

[Jimmi]

This fella has .com and I have .co.uk all the rest are available to me. He's not likely to be a competitor in any way unless he objects to the name. My site name is the same as the url which is the same as his. He's a minor site really. Having said that I think I need to look at getting a unique name so thanks for your input on it. I like your site by the way (bookmarked) :)

[krisnowak]

if you are never going international then the .co.uk will do but if you idea what ever it is you think may expand to other countries .com is king!

In European countries second most popular domain after dot com is *.eu.
Its just an extra solution if yourname.com is taken. :)

Regards

[krisnowak]

This fella has .com and I have .co.uk all the rest are available to me. He's not likely to be a competitor in any way unless he objects to the name. My site name is the same as the url which is the same as his. He's a minor site really. Having said that I think I need to look at getting a unique name so thanks for your input on it. I like your site by the way (bookmarked) :)
If you site kick off and you get lots of internation traffic, you will lost some entries for yourname.com :)

For UK webpage you need only *.co.uk domain name, but if wanna get traffic from all the world, you can also reg yourname.eu :)

[Jimmi]

www.paypalsucks.com/