As a web developer, I can attest to the fact that
nearly all the good names are taken.
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"] [h3]What parts of the .COM space are registered? [/h3]You've thought up a brilliant idea for a new Web 2.0, AJAX-enabled web app, or you're about to release a thus-far-unnamed killer software app. Now you just need to find the perfect domain name for it to live at (and, in true new-economy fashion, you'll base your corporate name upon whatever available domain name you find).
You pull up GoDaddy and start punching in clever names, along with their many variations, only to find that they're all seemingly taken.
"This can't be!" you cry. "Has every possibility already been registered?"
Given that there are approximately 50 million .COM domains registered, it is indeed true that the low-hanging fruit domain names are overwhelming taken, and your chances of lucking upon an unnoticed available three-letter acronym (TLA) are close to zero, and your only recourse would be to haggle with domain speculators.
This is a great roundup of how many of which sort of domain has been taken -- every combination of up to three letters in .COM is taken and there're precious few four-character .COMs remaining. Most of these domains are "parked" and unused. The most popular domain-length is 11 characters, and there are 538 63-character domains registered, including DIDYOUKNOWTHATYOUCANONLYHAVESIXTY-THREECHARACTERSINADOMAIN-NAME.com.
Also in the survey is data about how many of the names found in the US Census are taken (all the male names, all but a few of the female names and all 10,000 of the top surnames). The survey goes on and on, with data on how much of the "ILOVE_____.com" space is taken, which characters are most commonly found at the start of domain names, and so forth.
If you want one of the 676 possible two-letter sequences, for instance for an acronym or abbreviation, you're out of luck: They're all taken. Even allowing for digits, giving 1296 combinations, again every single variation is taken. [/p] Of course, that's ignoring the fact that .COM registrars now mandate a 3-character minimum length, so it wouldn't be an option anyways.[/p] Of the 17,576 possible three-letter sequences, again every single one is already taken. Adding digits to the mix (note that I'm intentionally ignoring obtuse dashes for such short domain names, though technically they are legal from the second character onwards), giving 46,656 permutations, yields a larger number of garbage domain entries (either REGISTRAR-LOCKED, REDEMPTIONPERIOD, or with no nameservers), giving a false hope of 228 seemingly open domains, yet they aren't actually available. [/p] If you're dying to acquire great domains like [em]8VZ.com[/em] or [em]Q6X.com[/em], they'll free up within a month, though it seems evident that there are swaths of domain speculators acquiring every variant when they come available, so they won't go without a fight.[/p] Stepping up to four letter sequences, choosing among the 456,976 combinations, yields a vastly greater availability -- perhaps the set is a bit too large for domain speculators and their unlikely success with random sequences -- with 97,786 showing as open. A quick check verifies that most are legitimately available. "Choice" domains, such as [em]AGJV.com[/em], [em]EIYK.com[/em], [em]GZVW.com[/em], and [em]QFEV.com[/em]. Adding digits into the mix and there are a massive 1.16 million open domains, so long as you're looking for something like [em]7RG8.com[/em], or [em]U3JZ.com[/em]. Choose one and then manufacture a ridiculous backronym to explain it.[/p] Going to 5-letter sequences (yet another five-letter acronym? YAFLA?), and of course the possibilities are rich, again presuming that you're willing to accept an arbitrary sequence of letters and/or digits, creating a backronym to match. Using just letters you have a rich 11,881,376 possibilities, of which approximately 11,015,028 are unclaimed.[/p] [a href="http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2006/03/29.html"]Link[/a] Via waxy.org
