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discuss Brand name testing for Anonymous Smart Search aggregator

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Which names do you prefer for an Anonymous Smart Search engine?

  • 1st

    SearchIt.com

    60 
    votes
    40.8%
  • 2nd

    Toki.com

    38 
    votes
    25.9%
  • 3rd

    Decrawl.com

    27 
    votes
    18.4%
  • 4th

    Searchful.com

    votes
    5.4%
  • 5th (tie)

    Incogne.com

    votes
    4.8%
  • 5th (tie)

    Vesh.com

    votes
    4.8%
  • 5th (tie)

    Unicrawl.com

    votes
    4.8%
  • 6th

    AskSite.com

    votes
    4.1%
  • 7th

    Brung.com

    votes
    3.4%
  • 8th (tie)

    Searchcow.com

    votes
    2.7%
  • 8th (tie)

    NetNut.com

    votes
    2.7%
  • 9th (tie)

    Updig.com

    votes
    2.0%
  • 9th (tie)

    Jaroo.com

    votes
    2.0%
  • 9th (tie)

    Yoxt.com

    votes
    2.0%
  • 9th (tie)

    Lookue.com

    votes
    2.0%
  • 10th

    Qhain.com

    votes
    1.4%
  • 11th

    Zuwk.com

    vote
    0.7%

Rob Monster

Founder of EpikTop Member
Epik Founder
Impact
18,389
Epik has been developing a series of new platforms including Anonymize.com, Armored.net, Us.Tv, Watchmask.com, and more on the way.

Recently, Epik has been developing an Anonymous Smart Search aggregator. This new brand is intended to power an alternative to Google.com, Bing.com and DuckDuckGo as a domainer-friendly and censorship-light search engine. You can see a preview here. We have also been inviting name suggestions here.

This is a poll of a reduced set of submitted candidates to screen for the top-4 to be poll-tested outside of NamePros to select the finalist.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Rob, it's a nice and short brandable name, what is your plan for making it well known.

I wonder if the letters can be used as abbreviation of any related words.

The strategy goes something like this:

- Identify a pain point: Censorship and Privacy both seem like themes. Also, the decentralized web will need to be searchable. By aggregating and de-deduplicating search results, folks can know they are getting the full story without being surveilled.

- Make and Keep a promise: The ultimate brand needs to be wrapped around a promise that is specific and enduring regardless of the technology. The above point is one that has an implied promise. We'll check if that promise stands on its own.

- Deliver a compelling Minimal Viable Product: We have an existing prototype already live. People are using it and giving feedback. We'll use a lot of existing technology to make it blazingly fast, secure, and scalable.

- Establish Product Superiority: These days Epik.com is a pretty good product. We invested continuously in innovation. We will be looking for an acquisition or strategic hire to accelerate product superiority.

- Identify a Growth Hack: I am not sure what that will be but the universe has a funny way of presenting them. We just need to pay attention when they show up.

That is all I know so far -- the recipe is a bit generic. Anyone with the requisite skills and a bit of determination can do it.

Regards,
Rob
 
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SURFA = Surf A = Surf Anonymously .. Works well with the product theme :)
Can be tagline.
 
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I voted for searchit .com among the choices given. Toki is nice and short and can be made into a nice brand, but it kind of sounds like a cartoon character to me.
Agree. Toki sounds like a video game character from Japan.

Given the options, I went with searchit. But frankly that name is too generic to be branded.

I recommend the search continues
 
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I recommend the search continues

Agree.

From the pioneers of market positioning: "“What you must look for is a name that begins the positioning process. A name that tells the prospect what the product’s major benefit is.” - Al Ries, Jack Trout

If a name should start (and further support) the positioning process, then what might work here? Rob says 'personal empowerment' is the position. If that's what it is to be, what type/direction of brandable domain names could help with that, for a search engine? Eg. empowr? …..?
 
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Think techie, vote unicrawl! :xf.wink:

But really, based on domainer votes, it looks like it comes down to toki for a madeup word, or searchit for something more descriptive. Decrawl is great if the focus was only decentralized indexing, but it was mentioned this needs to accomplish both regular search and blockchain which is why I put unicrawl / unicrawler in the mix! It might sound a bit tech-ish but plenty of engines use "crawler" to identify themselves, google is just so big no one hears much about them. WebCrawler and metacrawler.com were among some of the earliest search engines on the web. Now we have the likes of KinCrawler.com for genealogy, newzcrawler.com for a news aggregator, craftcrawler.com for craft brewery searching etc.. etc..

Curious to see the results and if a winner is chosen this time, it is certainly no easy task taking on the likes of google for broad search!
 
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I went with Incogne.com

I think Toki and search it and search cow are all better names in general but not for the purpose at hand.
 
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Think techie, vote unicrawl! :xf.wink:

But really, based on domainer votes, it looks like it comes down to toki for a madeup word, or searchit for something more descriptive. Decrawl is great if the focus was only decentralized indexing, but it was mentioned this needs to accomplish both regular search and blockchain which is why I put unicrawl / unicrawler in the mix! It might sound a bit tech-ish but plenty of engines use "crawler" to identify themselves, google is just so big no one hears much about them. WebCrawler and metacrawler.com were among some of the earliest search engines on the web. Now we have the likes of KinCrawler.com for genealogy, newzcrawler.com for a news aggregator, craftcrawler.com for craft brewery searching etc.. etc..

Curious to see the results and if a winner is chosen this time, it is certainly no easy task taking on the likes of google for broad search!
Uni crawl kind of conflicts with uni aka Uniregistry and all their services, and platform?

Lots of great names,
As echoed above maybe not all are the best choice for the concept at hand, but definitely have end user value.
 
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If a name should start (and further support) the positioning process, then what might work here? Rob says 'personal empowerment' is the position. If that's what it is to be, what type/direction of brandable domain names could help with that, for a search engine? Eg. empowr? …..?

Adding to this: Has the term 'empowerment' jumped the shark? And if so, or it's getting close to it, what term could be replacing it? Be a replacement for it? Could a brand name be found in that?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ies-how-empowerment-lost-its-meaning-feminism
 
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I see searchit listed withn a min offer of $32.5K, hopefully the buyer, and seller can agree on a price.
I'm curious as to who actually submitted SearchIt.com, as the domain itself is actually fully owned by GoDaddy (via their wholly owned subsidiary NameFind). Would be a shame if regular domainers in this contest were beaten out by a multi-billion dollar corporation who ironically they likely are all actually clients of .. but it is one of the top options at this point so far. That being said .. don't feel bad saying anything against the domain .. it certainly won't change GoDaddy's bottom line! lol

ADDED/Edit: Or maybe Namefind itself isn't owned by GoDaddy ("This site may be hacked")! lol
NameFind-GoogleError.png
 
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Uni crawl kind of conflicts with uni aka Uniregistry and all their services, and platform?
That was my first thought on that one as well. While in theory I don't think the final search product will be related to Epik in any significant way, why choose a name that adds to the overall "Uni" brandscape? If it was a decisively better name than all the others then maybe. Or if the "Uni" portion of the brand gave a significant on-target image to the targeted brand vision, but that isn't the case even if Uni is otherwise a good prefix and the combined Uni+Crawl has great word-flow.


I went with Incogne.com
The problem with Incogne is that it's too awkward to say (it's the -gne at the end). It doesn't flow off the tongue easily at all. Also while it doesn't necessarily completely fail the radio test, the fact it's awkward to say will mean that there will be a portion of people who just won't bother to try simply because they assume they'll get it wrong.


We have another late entrant: SURFA.COM
It's not bad at all. Not as phonetically strong as Toki, but still decent. A little more contextual to some maybe, but I personally really don't see any significant relation between "searching" and "surfing" in terms of branding imagery. In fact .. I always thought of Internet "surfing" as just randomly jumping around from site to site, so in fact, the exact opposite of targeted searching. That being said, while I don't give the name any extra points because it contains "surf", I don't really take anything away as I think most will see it more of a random brand .. and when looked at in terms of a random brand, while not spectacular, it's still far better than most of the other choices, so a name I would potentially include in a follow up round if there is one.
Anyone like that as an Anonymous Smart Search Engine name candidate?
Have you looked into ASSE.com .. with a silent E? lol ;)


NeoCrawl.com
Neo means new,fresh,recent,latest .
Unfortunately Neo is also too strongly associated with the term NeoNazi.


@Rob Monster suggested to post this name and get feedback from this thread. You can provide us your inputs.
Searchator .com
Not a bad name at all .. certainly better than many of the ones listed. Not top notch phonetically, but still not too bad on that front .. however the -ator and ater alternate spelling suffixes is actually the biggest thing against it. Although admittedly that never stopped "Gator" domains from becoming extremely popular. ;)


What about Lookue?
Very short, descriptive and memorable, so brandable.
(Only 1 syllable and suitable as a verb; Lookue it!)
Lookue('s pronunciation) = Look;
like Google = Googl [-ue / -e is not pronounced]
This is definitely a 2 syllable domain with too many alternate spellings (radio test failure).

Otherwise, if your argument is that the "ue" portion is silent, then the name is even less appropriate as silent letters on a made up word unfortunately results in a 0% grade on the radio test.


Lookue('s oo) is ideal for the logo;
as eye(s) / glasses / spectacles.
I will agree with you on that .. I like double O's in brandables .. unfortunately in this case it's the "ue" end of the domain that really hurts this candidate.


I really like SearchCow. Out of all of them it was the only one which invoked a strong image in my mind. Very easy to remember.
Don’t cows move slow, and mosey around, that is the image I get? A leisurely search engine.
What's fast about "Cow" is that it only takes 3 characters to spell it .. lol. I also don't think the imagery of a cow is too negative .. they are slow animals, but nobody hates them and they can make for a fun image .. unfortunately I think the drawback here is that it might be seen as one of Tucows many projects. Which despite "SearchCow" actually being a decent name, for the same reasoning as UniSearch, for me it kinda takes it out of the running if it's to be in Epik's overall portfolio.


Koadle. Would of been great name
Radio test failure unfortunately.


Nice analysis @Ategy.com
Good points to think about.. I also sent Querch.com (Query+Search) as one of names... I thought it sounds well to say ''Querch it..."
Other names.. Incogne ...
I really like the sound of Querch. But there are too many potential alternate spellings. Namely the most obvious Quearch/Kearch (if the implication is that it's to be partially derived from "search"), but then also Kerch, Kursh, Curch.


If passing the radio test is important - and I don't think any domain 100% passes this test - toki could easily be confused with toky, tokey, tokie, tokee, and any similar name that has a Q in place of the K.
As I previously mentioned, I definitely agree on this point. However the fact it's only 4 letters and so phonetically strong does offset that considerably.


Show attachment 127100
I'm disappointed my entry Chainds.com didn't make the list, as I think it's a fantastic brandable, short (7L) memorable and pronouncable. Short for Chain (D)omain (S)earch, Chainds.com I think would have gotten some "love" or like here at NamePros! In the meantime, I voted for SearchIT, a great name for this project!
When it comes to brandables containing acronyms, it's imperative that the acronym portion be 100% obvious to virtually the entirety of the target market. So there's definitely an issue there. Also the "chain" part is a technical term that pretty much everyone not into crypto will not see the context here.


For long term branding, I would only consider a pronounceable 4 Letter .com preferably a one syllable, for that reason I choose: ZUWK
That's one of the problems I see with DuckDuckGo, is their name, it's too long and you would never hear someone say, just "DuckDuck It" when they want to search something.
I agree that single syllable domains should be given significant bonus points for such a project .. particularly given the potential budget making it an actual possibility. I think the issue with Zuwk is that most would spell it Zewk, or even Zuke. Yoxt is a single syllable 4L as well and actually passes the radio test .. maybe it's the phonetics of "oxt" that gave people a hard time, otherwise I can't think of a reason why it only has 2% of voters supporting it. While Toki is 2 syllables, they flow extremely well together and result in a very strong sounding still very short brand. Although IMO .. "Toki it" = Fail, "Yoxt it" = Fail and "Zuwk it" = Pass .. but not sure how much strength Rob is giving to the "verbability" requirement .. doesn't appear to be a requirement given the list of candidates. I actually submitted a short fun fast and techie sounding 5-letter single-syllable domain that does pass the "verbability test", but was a little late with emailing it to @Rob Monster.


2nd choice would be outside of a 4 letter and be SearchIt and then 3rd would be Searchful, but both of those are fairly long, although self explanatory
With Searchful, even if it's only 2 syllables it just seems a little too long and flowery/fanciful as opposed to something fast/techie (for lack of a more scientific reasoning .. lol). More importantly, it's one of the few domains that compares very well to SearchIt, where SearchIt is obviously a much stronger candidate.


i did not vote. i went through all 17 several times ,sounding them out and i did not like any of them.
I agree with you on the majority of them. But the two most popular choices (Toki and SearchIt), while having a couple other relatively minor potential issues, are very strong phonetically.


In the end, of all the domains considered so far, I still think SearchIt and Toki are the 2 strongest choices. But both have very different pros/cons (mostly pros for both) of their own .. not an obvious choice between the two. The only other names I'd have considered are Jaroo, Yoxt and possibly Surfa.
 
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That was my first thought on that one as well. While in theory I don't think the final search product will be related to Epik in any significant way, why choose a name that adds to the overall "Uni" brandscape? If it was a decisively better name than all the others then maybe. Or if the "Uni" portion of the brand gave a significant on-target image to the targeted brand vision, but that isn't the case even if Uni is otherwise a good prefix and the combined Uni+Crawl has great word-flow.



The problem with Incogne is that it's too awkward to say (it's the -gne at the end). It doesn't flow off the tongue easily at all. Also while it doesn't necessarily completely fail the radio test, the fact it's awkward to say will mean that there will be a portion of people who just won't bother to try simply because they assume they'll get it wrong.



It's not bad at all. Not as phonetically strong as Toki, but still decent. A little more contextual to some maybe, but I personally really don't see any significant relation between "searching" and "surfing" in terms of branding imagery. In fact .. I always thought of Internet "surfing" as just randomly jumping around from site to site, so in fact, the exact opposite of targeted searching. That being said, while I don't give the name any extra points because it contains "surf", I don't really take anything away as I think most will see it more of a random brand .. and when looked at in terms of a random brand, while not spectacular, it's still far better than most of the other choices, so a name I would potentially include in a follow up round if there is one.

Have you looked into ASSE.com .. with a silent E? lol ;)



Unfortunately Neo is also too strongly associated with the term NeoNazi.



Not a bad name at all .. certainly better than many of the ones listed. Not top notch phonetically, but still not too bad on that front .. however the -ator and ater alternate spelling suffixes is actually the biggest thing against it. Although admittedly that never stopped "Gator" domains from becoming extremely popular. ;)



This is definitely a 2 syllable domain with too many alternate spellings (radio test failure).

Otherwise, if your argument is that the "ue" portion is silent, then the name is even less appropriate as silent letters on a made up word unfortunately results in a 0% grade on the radio test.



I will agree with you on that .. I like double O's in brandables .. unfortunately in this case it's the "ue" end of the domain that really hurts this candidate.




What's fast about "Cow" is that it only takes 3 characters to spell it .. lol. I also don't think the imagery of a cow is too negative .. they are slow animals, but nobody hates them and they can make for a fun image .. unfortunately I think the drawback here is that it might be seen as one of Tucows many projects. Which despite "SearchCow" actually being a decent name, for the same reasoning as UniSearch, for me it kinda takes it out of the running if it's to be in Epik's overall portfolio.



Radio test failure unfortunately.



I really like the sound of Querch. But there are too many potential alternate spellings. Namely the most obvious Quearch/Kearch (if the implication is that it's to be partially derived from "search"), but then also Kerch, Kursh, Curch.



As I previously mentioned, I definitely agree on this point. However the fact it's only 4 letters and so phonetically strong does offset that considerably.



When it comes to brandables containing acronyms, it's imperative that the acronym portion be 100% obvious to virtually the entirety of the target market. So there's definitely an issue there. Also the "chain" part is a technical term that pretty much everyone not into crypto will not see the context here.



I agree that single syllable domains should be given significant bonus points for such a project .. particularly given the potential budget making it an actual possibility. I think the issue with Zuwk is that most would spell it Zewk, or even Zuke. Yoxt is a single syllable 4L as well and actually passes the radio test .. maybe it's the phonetics of "oxt" that gave people a hard time, otherwise I can't think of a reason why it only has 2% of voters supporting it. While Toki is 2 syllables, they flow extremely well together and result in a very strong sounding still very short brand. Although IMO .. "Toki it" = Fail, "Yoxt it" = Fail and "Zuwk it" = Pass .. but not sure how much strength Rob is giving to the "verbability" requirement .. doesn't appear to be a requirement given the list of candidates. I actually submitted a short fun fast and techie sounding 5-letter single-syllable domain that does pass the "verbability test", but was a little late with emailing it to @Rob Monster.



With Searchful, even if it's only 2 syllables it just seems a little too long and flowery/fanciful as opposed to something fast/techie (for lack of a more scientific reasoning .. lol). More importantly, it's one of the few domains that compares very well to SearchIt, where SearchIt is obviously a much stronger candidate.



I agree with you on the majority of them. But the two most popular choices (Toki and SearchIt), while having a couple other relatively minor potential issues, are very strong phonetically.


In the end, of all the domains considered so far, I still think SearchIt and Toki are the 2 strongest choices. But both have very different pros/cons (mostly pros for both) of their own .. not an obvious choice between the two. The only other names I'd have considered are Jaroo, Yoxt and possibly Surfa.


Is @Ategy.com good at this or what?

Little did I know when we bought his FullVenue.com that we would be getting a Naming Strategy wingman!

I am going to keep my comments short in order to avoid injecting "interviewer bias" into the process.

The domain SearchIt.com does have a price. That specific name has some historical baggage as Google Fail-list related to malware distribution but it is still a contender.

Process-wise, we are planning to send the final 4 to the end-user poll this week and hopefully have a winner.
 
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I am going to keep my comments short in order to avoid injecting "interviewer bias" into the process.

Process-wise, we are planning to send the final 4 to the end-user poll this week and hopefully have a winner.

How about this for the next poll (assuming you have a need for one and it can be mechanically achieved as described below).

Let every member in good standing enter one or two names in an individual post(s). Within that post allow the person to state why they think that name would be a good fit for the search...without unnecessary logo or 'branding' graphics...just good old fashioned words.

Restrict (not sure if it could be done) comments criticizing names. This eliminates the sour grapes that may exist between two members from days past to unnecessary clutter the thread and create a general air of negativity.

I find it interesting and somewhat of a learning process to see why someone LIKES a name...the reason behind them registering it in the first place could get creative juices going in others. To read why someone DISLIKES a name brings to mind that old saying about opinions and sphincters.
 
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Wonderful set of insights by @Ategy.com . Good branding lessons for everyone.

A couple of more things for Epik to consider.

1) Usage of the overall EPIK brand. Are the individual products WatchMask, FullVenue, SearchEngine going to operate as separate entities without any link to Brand Epik ? OR They will relate to brand Epik in someway.
Example " Consider Microsoft : It has Microsoft Explorer, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Surface, etc. Note the second word in case of associated branding is close to a real word and functionally describes the product. In such case better to have a name describing "search" rather than made-up brandables. But if its a separate entity you can also consider new made-up words for unique branding.

2) What key feature would you want the name to highlight ? Is it Anonymous Private Search ? Is it search aggregator ? Is it the detailed search results from blockchain domains ? OR Do you want to keep a safe branding that says its just search ?

3) Trademark
With strict Intellectual property laws, it is better to get registered trademark for the name. One important step for that is to avoid names with existing products and operating domains. A trademark legal expert can guide more in the direction.

All the Best with the ventures

Regards
Leopard
 
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CrawlAt.jpg

New Contender? ;)

Did you Crawl at it?
Just Crawl at it!
 
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i like unicrawl, more make sense then the others
 
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Is @Ategy.com good at this or what?

Little did I know when we bought his FullVenue.com that we would be getting a Naming Strategy wingman!

I am going to keep my comments short in order to avoid injecting "interviewer bias" into the process.

The domain SearchIt.com does have a price. That specific name has some historical baggage as Google Fail-list related to malware distribution but it is still a contender.

Process-wise, we are planning to send the final 4 to the end-user poll this week and hopefully have a winner.

Would that put you in a disadvantageous place to use a domain like domain /it /com when there is a website domain /com running as the same ?
You may consider to open a second poll by doing something like as @Mister Funsky said above. I don't see any strong candidates in the current poll.
 
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Just thinking, Toki would make an excellent brand for cannabis industry (toke) May want to reserve the name for that space.
 
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@Rob Monster

Here some late entrants from me ))

Akur.com - associates with Accurate. Also, Akur means field, in Icelandic, if you want to have a story behind the brand, similar to "wiki" story. Basically, field of results, you are helping to organize in accurate, safe, decentralized way. Would also be in line with branding tradition of "Epik", where you have used "k" for "c", 4 letters VCVC.

SIET.com - pronounced as "diet", Has S and E in it, so you could put meaning behind the acronym.
 
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@Rob Monster

Here some late entrants from me ))

Akur.com - associates with Accurate. Also, Akur means field, in Icelandic, if you want to have a story behind the brand, similar to "wiki" story. Basically, field of results, you are helping to organize in accurate, safe, decentralized way. Would also be in line with branding tradition of "Epik", where you have used "k" for "c", 4 letters VCVC.

SIET.com - pronounced as "diet", Has S and E in it, so you could put meaning behind the acronym.
Siet pronounced as Diet??
 
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Siet pronounced as Diet??

That would be logical, yes. Another example: quiet. And when I write "as", I mean similar to, i.e. replace "d" sound with "s" sound.
 
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That would be logical, yes. Another example: quiet. And when I write "as", I mean similar to, i.e. replace "d" sound with "s" sound.
I still don't get how Siet is pronounced like Diet. In what language?
 
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I am going to keep my comments short in order to avoid injecting "interviewer bias" into the process.
I highly recommend you actually don't do that ... the more you give feedback the more people have have a clearer picture of what you do and don't want .. you'll get significantly better and more targeted results if you add your thoughts and comments.

The domain SearchIt.com does have a price. That specific name has some historical baggage as Google Fail-list related to malware distribution but it is still a contender. Process-wise, we are planning to send the final 4 to the end-user poll this week and hopefully have a winner.
It's for technical reasons like this where I'd think your best bet would be to have your team also participate in the selection process .. because at some point depending on the domains and the voters, you're going to end up with a name with more votes that is not the optimal choice .. and possibly not even a good choice.

For example .. if your budget would have been $5k on this contest, the clear winner here would have been one with a negative "De" context to non-technical end-users .. Decrawl! Did you notice how it went from 2nd place to a distant 3rd after I had you clarify who the end user target audience is?

I still don't get how Siet is pronounced like Diet. In what language?
I think what @Recons.Com means is that while the S and D are different, the "iet" is Siet is pronounced the same way as the "iet" is Diet.
 
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I feel it would be useful to note that Google was not a verb when it was launched. The sentiment of looking for a verb for a search engine is reasonable, but I feel becoming a verb is a decision made by your marketplace.

I don't iPhone a friend and I don't GoDaddy a domain. Both contain verbs.

I personally like using keywords in my brand names in order to attract search traffic, but if you are the search engine then surely keywords become moot. The reason Searchit.com has never sold is because it isn't a strong brand.

I see a sale for iSearch at $300K. They seem to have rebranded.

Toki is the best here but I think it will test as a 'cute' name which might not be the imagery you want.
 
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I think what @Recons.Com means is that while the S and D are different, the "iet" is Siet is pronounced the same way as the "iet" is Diet.

It is really a great name. But the pronunciation is like Diet?

I just don't siet.
 
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