As far as possible, use main keywords that connect to the theme and topic of your web portal. You may wish to avoid hyphens and underscores as they can confuse and mislead your site visitors. Complicated web domains are those that are very difficult to type and remember. Extra symbols and strange characters can put off web users.

Choosing a very meaningful and practical domain name is actually very simple and straightforward. You need to sit down and think over all possible combinations of good keywords and their phrases. If you want to choose a good name, you can start with a comprehensive list of prospective names and shortlist the best ones among them. When you create a list of good names, the next step is to check whether they are available for registration. To conduct this important search, you will need to use an online tool that tells you about the availability of names.

Domain ownership identification tool is a very simple utility where you will find out who is the owner of the domain is and whether the name of your choice is available or not. This tool provides you the complete details of domain ownership including the date of expiry. Choosing a domain name is a trial and error exercise most of the good domains are already in use and you may need to work hard to create a good name. Domain name tools provide you a number of alternatives when the name of your choice is not available. You can pick the one from the list that best represents your theme and business idea.

If there is a domain name available for purchase, you can pounce on it and buy before someone does it. Domain name industry is a highly competitive industry and you never know when someone is going to buy your domain name ideas. While searching for a domain name think of all possible keyword phrases and wordings because most web users have their way of choosing products or services. Keywords play an important role while searching for domains by using domain name ownership online tool. If you do not find the domain name of your choice, you can always sift through the alternative list to choose the best one. Most of the online tools are efficient in providing a listing of most probable choices that eventually allow you to find a domain name that best represents your business theme, topic, style and tenor. Another emerging trend is to buy expired domain names from registrars. You will need to be very careful while buying an expired domain because the name that you wish to buy may have a shady past. However, expired domain market is a very good place to find those domain names that are not available in the fresh domain name market.

The general rule of thumb is to buy a domain name immediately when it is available in a domain ownership tool. It is always better to buy the domain name of your choice even if you are not creating your web site right now. Never ever, allow someone to buy your domain name. You may regret your decision of not buying your domain name when it was available.

John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web site called www.expireddomaingain.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

The domain system is a tree-structured global name space that has a few top level domains.  The top level domains are subdivided into second level domains.  The second level domains may be subdivided  into third level domains, and so on.
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While the initial domain name “ARPA” arises from the history of the   development of this system and environment, in the future most of the top level names will be very general categories like “government”, “education”, or “commercial”.  The motivation is to provide an   organization name that is free of undesirable semantics.

Notice their words: “top level names will be very general categories…”  Recognize the categories listed, it’s .gov, .edu and .com TLDs. There are also ccTLDs with are country specific such as .us and .ca for the USA and Canada respectively. As of this moment right now, here are ALL OF the top level domains per IANA:

AC, AD, AE, AERO, AF, AG, AI, AL, AM, AN, AO, AQ, AR, ARPA, AS, ASIA, AT, AU, AW, AX, AZ, BA, BB, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BIZ, BJ, BM, BN, BO, BR, BS, BT, BV, BW, BY, BZ, CA, CAT, CC, CD, CF, CG, CH, CI, CK, CL, CM, CN, CO, COM, COOP, CR, CU, CV, CX, CY, CZ, DE, DJ, DK, DM, DO, DZ, EC, EDU, EE, EG, ER, ES, ET, EU, FI, FJ, FK, FM, FO, FR, GA, GB, GD, GE, GF, GG, GH, GI, GL, GM, GN, GOV, GP, GQ, GR, GS, GT, GU, GW, GY, HK, HM, HN, HR, HT, HU, ID, IE, IL, IM, IN, INFO, INT, IO, IQ, IR, IS, IT, JE, JM, JO, JOBS, JP, KE, KG, KH, KI, KM, KN, KP, KR, KW, KY, KZ, LA, LB, LC, LI, LK, LR, LS, LT, LU, LV, LY, MA, MC, MD, ME, MG, MH, MIL, MK, ML, MM, MN, MO, MOBI, MP, MQ, MR, MS, MT, MU, MUSEUM, MV, MW, MX, MY, MZ, NA, NAME, NC, NE, NET, NF, NG, NI, NL, NO, NP, NR, NU, NZ, OM, ORG, PA, PE, PF, PG, PH, PK, PL, PM, PN, PR, PRO, PS, PT, PW, PY, QA, RE, RO, RS, RU, RW, SA, SB, SC, SD, SE, SG, SH, SI, SJ, SK, SL, SM, SN, SO, SR, ST, SU, SV, SY, SZ, TC, TD, TEL, TF, TG, TH, TJ, TK, TL, TM, TN, TO, TP, TR, TRAVEL, TT, TV, TW, TZ, UA, UG, UK, US, UY, UZ, VA, VC, VE, VG, VI, VN, VU, WF, WS, XN–0ZWM56D, XN–11B5BS3A9AJ6G, XN–80AKHBYKNJ4F, XN–9T4B11YI5A, XN–DEBA0AD, XN–G6W251D, XN–HGBK6AJ7F53BBA, XN–HLCJ6AYA9ESC7A, XN–JXALPDLP, XN–KGBECHTV, XN–ZCKZAH, YE, YT, YU, ZA, ZM, ZW

So unless you somehow managed to register one of those (not a domain WITHIN one of those but one of those actual TLDs), you don’t have a TLD… It’s not open for discussion, you don’t. You have a “second level domain” according to the people who designed the dns system. Please stop telling people you do, or trying to sell a TLD. You just sound stupid to people who know better.

Next look at the ‘age’. Since you’ll pick up these domains on their way out, the age stays with it. It’s one way to make a site appear older than it really is… but that leads to some ethical questions that this isn’t the place to discuss.

Move on the GR and GRN – these are Google search results for the domain with and without the extension respectively. Related to those is GIDX which is the number pages in Google’s index for the domain. GBL will give you the number of backlinks on other domains pointing to that domain.

Similar to all the Google colums, there are columns for Yahoo, Altavista, Ovation, etc. And over on the right there is a very complete search filter section.  You can filter of TLD (TLD is the top level domain – com, net, org, etc. or a country like .us, .ca, etc.) as well as looking for domains with certain terms in them, or excluding, or with based on any of the columns listed. And you can do compound searches: .COMs containing “host”, excluding “adult”, with 10 to 500 Google backlinks, for example. It’s really quite powerful.

The price you see listed is on top of the regular annual registration fee, but considering they have many that start at $5 it’s quite reasonable compared to some services.