It is hard to read much without coming across an article about artificial intelligence replacing people in various jobs. What about domaining? How easily could we be replaced by a bot, or perhaps an autonomous agentic system?
If choosing names solely, or mainly, according to a few metrics, such as number of registered extensions, or how many times the term appears in a compilation of existing company names, why is the domainer needed? Couldn’t a rather simple automated bot do everything the domainer does?
As AI agents and systems get smarter, and more autonomous, even sophisticated approaches could be automated.
But this is not really an article about AI replacing jobs or automation. It is an argument for a more nuanced and multifaceted approach to domaining, one that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative considerations.
This article also deals with the topic of what to do when the signals on the quality of a name are in conflict.
Let’s first see how this article came about…
How This Article Started
Sometimes the article I publish in the NamePros Blog has been in preparation for months, or occasionally even years. I work slowly! At other times, I pivot to a topic from the news, or something that seems particularly relevant. This is one of those times when I pivoted, and the content of this article is illustrated through a specific domain name consideration from this week.
Each day I check drops of single-word domain names in several different extensions using ExpiredDomains.net filters. If you don’t yet do that, and want a guide to using ExpiredDomains, check out the articles Finding Expired Domain Names and Getting More from ExpiredDomains.
I have customized my columns in ExpiredDomains, and at a glance see how many registered extensions, whether the term is currently registered in a number of specific extensions, and search volume, cost-per-click and advertiser competition.
One night this week I quickly looked over the dropped list for .cc, and decided to take none of the dropping names. Very early the next morning, I took a second look, and decided to take one of the names I had earlier passed over.
While I prefer not to publicize the specific name in an article, it is an 8-letter dictionary noun, with an ‘er’ ending. The first six letters are also a very common noun. If anyone really must know the name, just send me a DM and I will tell you privately.
Let’s look at my thought process for first rejecting the name…
Number of Registered TLDs
ExpiredDomains.net or dotDB indicate many Exact Match TLDs (top level domains, or extensions) are registered with a term. For this name, the Exact Match number is 70 from dotDB, and 72 from ExpiredDomains. That number, the first thing I look at, is high enough that I paused when I first saw the domain name in the list, but typically for .cc I acquire names with 100+ extensions registered, so my initial decision was not to pick up the name.
Here is a tip: the number of exact match registrations that show strength in a term depends on the extension you are considering acquiring. Had I been looking at the same term in .io, .xyz or .org, I would have regarded 72 as enough to research the name carefully, and probably acquire it. If the name was the .com, even a few registered TLDs and I would have definitely considered, and probably taken the name. But the market for .cc single-word names is much less competitive, and fewer businesses consider that extension as an option, so you need terms that are more in demand.
DotDB also provides the Domain Count, which indicates the total number of domain names that contain this term, including many longer names. I covered this and more about dotDB in last week’s interview with Ken Lin, the developer of dotDB, published last week in the NamePros Blog. In this case, the Domain Count was 1083, a solid number, but not high enough, for a .cc name, to cause me to immediately acquire the name.
So why did I take a second look at this name?
Listen To Your Inner Voice
The reason I took a second look was not based primarily on any numerical metric. Rather, when I looked a second time at the list of expired names, this one struck me as a great name for a business. In short, I could without hesitation see starting a business on this name.
The name is also versatile, My mind immediately came up with many different types of businesses that might naturally name with this term.
The art of domain investing means you should listen to those inner voices. But you should also seek quantitative support for your opinion. So I dove a bit deeper into research on this name…
Number of Existing Active Companies
One of the sites I use every day is OpenCorporates. That site provides the total number of company names using, or also known as, any term. OpenCorporates covers the published directories from many jurisdictions, but keep in mind not everywhere make that information public.
So I went to OpenCorporates, checked the Active Only box, and searched the term. I found just 54 active businesses for this term. I almost never acquire a .cc domain name when this number is less than about 200. This metric seemed to validate my initial thinking that I should pass on this domain name, despite seeing many ways it could be used.
Advertiser Competition
I was almost ready to give up on the name after this disappointing result, but I had noticed that there was a fair amount of advertiser competition on the term. But even before that, I want to stress to look at whether important extensions are registered.
Without the column showing the names, I show below part of the display from Expired Domains. You can see that I have customized my columns to show whether a term is registered in .com, .org, .io, .net, .co and .xyz, as well as .me and .ca. You can see in the green box that this term is registered in all of those extensions. Don’t just look at the Exact Match and Domain Count numbers – also make sure that the term has been registered in .com, .org, .io, .net, .co, .ai and .xyz, and perhaps others.
If you have one of the paid plans for dotDB, you can get similar data from that; see below. We should not be surprised about the tiny discrepancy in exact match number, or a small difference in search volume, since both depend on the precise timing of data access. Note that dotDB gives a range of CPC values, while ExpiredDomains a single average. Also, in terms of competition, dotDB uses the Google Ads low, medium, high terminology, plus an indicator bar. ExpiredDomains use a value from 0 through 100.
That relatively high value for ad competition stood out. I am no expert on this topic, but it seems to me that relatively high ad competition values, often, not always, occur when there are many relatively new/small companies using a term, and paying to get traffic from ads. You can see from the blue markup box that the value for this term is more than for most of the other dropping .cc names that day.
So I decided to check one more thing…
CrunchBase
While OpenCorporates is a fantastic resource for company names, many names are acquired by recent startups, particularly tech-oriented startups.
While there are regional biases, CrunchBase provides a better measure of tech-oriented startups. You will need a subscription to get the full search results, but can do a free search at CrunchBase with this link that can be expanded to show up to 25 company names. Many dropping terms have zero or very few names in CrunchBase. If all 25, and who knows how many more, use the term, it is usually a healthy indication of worth of the term.
Now it is a bit of an art deciding which company names are truly this term, but as I count it there are at least 10, a relatively respectable CrunchBase number, based on my experience. If I am counting for a singular term, as here, I generally include both singular and plural company names, and longer names including that term, but not names they present that are really a different base term. I also include brandable names if they are clearly based on the term.
Over the past year I have begun to reflect on whether the ratio of CrunchBase to OpenCorporates has some significance. That is, if there are relatively decent number of CrunchBase listings compared to the active OpenCorporates number, that might be an indicator of a trending term. I may do some analysis related to that, and write a future article just on that topic.
I also checked LinkedIn company name search, and found 35 with this exact term, an encouraging number.
I did an overview of active and abandoned trademarks using Furm.com.
The number of quotation mark Google search results (just over 43 million, a decent number, not outstanding) is an indicator of how well used a term is.
When I checked sales in the term using NameBio, the results were very disappointing, just $$$ level wholesale transactions, and only 4 in total.
So what we have is a somewhat conflicting picture for the domain name:
The Important Deciding Factor
When seriously considering a term, I always check out the status of the important extensions. Here is what I found for this term:
What I found positive was that a number of the better extensions are developed, and the others are strongly priced. But even more than that, the developed sites are in very different sectors and niches, confirming my feeling that the term was versatile. This information was the deciding factor in deciding to acquire the domain name.
Don’t depend on the color coding from dotDB to be sure which are truly developed, but use the clickable links, if you have a plan, from dotDB to visit each extension of interest yourself. Otherwise simply manually check the names.
You probably are wondering, do you really go to this much work before deciding to spend $12 (I registered it for multiple years)? Yes, yes I do.
Final Thoughts
I think the more comprehensive and sophisticated your approach to domain name evaluation, the more likely you will acquire names that will eventually sell. That will include both qualitative and quantitative indicators: domain name investing is both an art and a science.
I still think that number of exact match extensions registered is one of the most useful initial filters when looking at a list of names. This article simply argues to go beyond that one number in your consideration.
I took a rather different approach to the idea of multiple indicators in an earlier NamePros article Look Beyond a Single Domain Name Metric that complements this article.
While I briefly mention a number of indicators in the current article, it is not intended to be a comprehensive look at domain name selection and pricing. I covered that in a two-part series on How to Rate and Price a Domain Name:
Any full evaluation would consider the sales record and types of name that sell in that extension, topics not covered in the current article.
The idea of taking a second look is generally valuable in many aspects of domain investment, not just in domain name acquisition.
While the current article argues to not place too much dependance on any one metric, it remains true that each objective metric adds to the overall picture in important ways
I would like to express my thanks to the various services that provide useful data to help inform our activities as domain name investors: NameBio, ExpiredDomains.net, dotDB, OpenCorporates, CrunchBase, Furm.com, and others.
If choosing names solely, or mainly, according to a few metrics, such as number of registered extensions, or how many times the term appears in a compilation of existing company names, why is the domainer needed? Couldn’t a rather simple automated bot do everything the domainer does?
As AI agents and systems get smarter, and more autonomous, even sophisticated approaches could be automated.
But this is not really an article about AI replacing jobs or automation. It is an argument for a more nuanced and multifaceted approach to domaining, one that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative considerations.
This article also deals with the topic of what to do when the signals on the quality of a name are in conflict.
Let’s first see how this article came about…
How This Article Started
Sometimes the article I publish in the NamePros Blog has been in preparation for months, or occasionally even years. I work slowly! At other times, I pivot to a topic from the news, or something that seems particularly relevant. This is one of those times when I pivoted, and the content of this article is illustrated through a specific domain name consideration from this week.
Each day I check drops of single-word domain names in several different extensions using ExpiredDomains.net filters. If you don’t yet do that, and want a guide to using ExpiredDomains, check out the articles Finding Expired Domain Names and Getting More from ExpiredDomains.
I have customized my columns in ExpiredDomains, and at a glance see how many registered extensions, whether the term is currently registered in a number of specific extensions, and search volume, cost-per-click and advertiser competition.
One night this week I quickly looked over the dropped list for .cc, and decided to take none of the dropping names. Very early the next morning, I took a second look, and decided to take one of the names I had earlier passed over.
While I prefer not to publicize the specific name in an article, it is an 8-letter dictionary noun, with an ‘er’ ending. The first six letters are also a very common noun. If anyone really must know the name, just send me a DM and I will tell you privately.
Let’s look at my thought process for first rejecting the name…
Number of Registered TLDs
ExpiredDomains.net or dotDB indicate many Exact Match TLDs (top level domains, or extensions) are registered with a term. For this name, the Exact Match number is 70 from dotDB, and 72 from ExpiredDomains. That number, the first thing I look at, is high enough that I paused when I first saw the domain name in the list, but typically for .cc I acquire names with 100+ extensions registered, so my initial decision was not to pick up the name.
Here is a tip: the number of exact match registrations that show strength in a term depends on the extension you are considering acquiring. Had I been looking at the same term in .io, .xyz or .org, I would have regarded 72 as enough to research the name carefully, and probably acquire it. If the name was the .com, even a few registered TLDs and I would have definitely considered, and probably taken the name. But the market for .cc single-word names is much less competitive, and fewer businesses consider that extension as an option, so you need terms that are more in demand.
DotDB also provides the Domain Count, which indicates the total number of domain names that contain this term, including many longer names. I covered this and more about dotDB in last week’s interview with Ken Lin, the developer of dotDB, published last week in the NamePros Blog. In this case, the Domain Count was 1083, a solid number, but not high enough, for a .cc name, to cause me to immediately acquire the name.
So why did I take a second look at this name?
Listen To Your Inner Voice
The reason I took a second look was not based primarily on any numerical metric. Rather, when I looked a second time at the list of expired names, this one struck me as a great name for a business. In short, I could without hesitation see starting a business on this name.
The name is also versatile, My mind immediately came up with many different types of businesses that might naturally name with this term.
The art of domain investing means you should listen to those inner voices. But you should also seek quantitative support for your opinion. So I dove a bit deeper into research on this name…
Number of Existing Active Companies
One of the sites I use every day is OpenCorporates. That site provides the total number of company names using, or also known as, any term. OpenCorporates covers the published directories from many jurisdictions, but keep in mind not everywhere make that information public.
So I went to OpenCorporates, checked the Active Only box, and searched the term. I found just 54 active businesses for this term. I almost never acquire a .cc domain name when this number is less than about 200. This metric seemed to validate my initial thinking that I should pass on this domain name, despite seeing many ways it could be used.
Advertiser Competition
I was almost ready to give up on the name after this disappointing result, but I had noticed that there was a fair amount of advertiser competition on the term. But even before that, I want to stress to look at whether important extensions are registered.
Without the column showing the names, I show below part of the display from Expired Domains. You can see that I have customized my columns to show whether a term is registered in .com, .org, .io, .net, .co and .xyz, as well as .me and .ca. You can see in the green box that this term is registered in all of those extensions. Don’t just look at the Exact Match and Domain Count numbers – also make sure that the term has been registered in .com, .org, .io, .net, .co, .ai and .xyz, and perhaps others.
A part of a display from ExpiredDomains.net. I have marked up in red showing Exact Match domain count. The green box indicates registrations in my customized extensions, see top of table. The blue markup box shows search volume, ad competition, and CPC for the term.
If you have one of the paid plans for dotDB, you can get similar data from that; see below. We should not be surprised about the tiny discrepancy in exact match number, or a small difference in search volume, since both depend on the precise timing of data access. Note that dotDB gives a range of CPC values, while ExpiredDomains a single average. Also, in terms of competition, dotDB uses the Google Ads low, medium, high terminology, plus an indicator bar. ExpiredDomains use a value from 0 through 100.
A part of a display from dotDB. It provides a range in advertiser CPC, and a graphical display of ad competition for the term.
That relatively high value for ad competition stood out. I am no expert on this topic, but it seems to me that relatively high ad competition values, often, not always, occur when there are many relatively new/small companies using a term, and paying to get traffic from ads. You can see from the blue markup box that the value for this term is more than for most of the other dropping .cc names that day.
So I decided to check one more thing…
CrunchBase
While OpenCorporates is a fantastic resource for company names, many names are acquired by recent startups, particularly tech-oriented startups.
While there are regional biases, CrunchBase provides a better measure of tech-oriented startups. You will need a subscription to get the full search results, but can do a free search at CrunchBase with this link that can be expanded to show up to 25 company names. Many dropping terms have zero or very few names in CrunchBase. If all 25, and who knows how many more, use the term, it is usually a healthy indication of worth of the term.
Now it is a bit of an art deciding which company names are truly this term, but as I count it there are at least 10, a relatively respectable CrunchBase number, based on my experience. If I am counting for a singular term, as here, I generally include both singular and plural company names, and longer names including that term, but not names they present that are really a different base term. I also include brandable names if they are clearly based on the term.
Over the past year I have begun to reflect on whether the ratio of CrunchBase to OpenCorporates has some significance. That is, if there are relatively decent number of CrunchBase listings compared to the active OpenCorporates number, that might be an indicator of a trending term. I may do some analysis related to that, and write a future article just on that topic.
I also checked LinkedIn company name search, and found 35 with this exact term, an encouraging number.
I did an overview of active and abandoned trademarks using Furm.com.
The number of quotation mark Google search results (just over 43 million, a decent number, not outstanding) is an indicator of how well used a term is.
When I checked sales in the term using NameBio, the results were very disappointing, just $$$ level wholesale transactions, and only 4 in total.
So what we have is a somewhat conflicting picture for the domain name:
- Modest number of exact match registrations.
- Disappointing number of active company listings on OpenCorporates.
- A dictionary word that could legitimately be used in many sectors and niches.
- A noun, just 8 letters, easily pronounced and without any obvious negative factors.
- Fairly strong ratio of CrunchBase listings to OpenCorporates.
- Significant, but not outstanding, search volume, but moderately strong ad competition in term.
- Fairly strong number of search results.
- Very poor sales record from NameBio for term, both exact and contains.
The Important Deciding Factor
When seriously considering a term, I always check out the status of the important extensions. Here is what I found for this term:
- .com is developed for a clothing outlet.
- .io is for sale at just under $30,000.
- .co is developed for a gaming outlet.
- .ai is a developed site for a video related application.
- .org has a coming soon lander.
- .xyz is for sale at just under $8000.
- .app is developed for business management technology.
- .net is developed (lightly) for web hosting and domain registration.
What I found positive was that a number of the better extensions are developed, and the others are strongly priced. But even more than that, the developed sites are in very different sectors and niches, confirming my feeling that the term was versatile. This information was the deciding factor in deciding to acquire the domain name.
Don’t depend on the color coding from dotDB to be sure which are truly developed, but use the clickable links, if you have a plan, from dotDB to visit each extension of interest yourself. Otherwise simply manually check the names.
You probably are wondering, do you really go to this much work before deciding to spend $12 (I registered it for multiple years)? Yes, yes I do.
Final Thoughts
I think the more comprehensive and sophisticated your approach to domain name evaluation, the more likely you will acquire names that will eventually sell. That will include both qualitative and quantitative indicators: domain name investing is both an art and a science.
I still think that number of exact match extensions registered is one of the most useful initial filters when looking at a list of names. This article simply argues to go beyond that one number in your consideration.
I took a rather different approach to the idea of multiple indicators in an earlier NamePros article Look Beyond a Single Domain Name Metric that complements this article.
While I briefly mention a number of indicators in the current article, it is not intended to be a comprehensive look at domain name selection and pricing. I covered that in a two-part series on How to Rate and Price a Domain Name:
Any full evaluation would consider the sales record and types of name that sell in that extension, topics not covered in the current article.
The idea of taking a second look is generally valuable in many aspects of domain investment, not just in domain name acquisition.
While the current article argues to not place too much dependance on any one metric, it remains true that each objective metric adds to the overall picture in important ways
I would like to express my thanks to the various services that provide useful data to help inform our activities as domain name investors: NameBio, ExpiredDomains.net, dotDB, OpenCorporates, CrunchBase, Furm.com, and others.
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