So You Wanna Register a Domain Name?

How many of us have come up with some great idea for a web site, only to attempt to register the domain name and come up empty. Imagine trying to register a computer sales-oriented domain today. I just tried and the best domain I could snare in the .com space was computerflex.com. (I didn't register it, so if you really want to launch computerflex.com, go right ahead. Just give me a shout-out on the site.)

It gets a lot worse if you want a domain that's short, common, or memorable. Dennis Forbes did a lot of digging and found out the state of the .com namespace is pretty dire:

• Every two- and three-letter combination is taken.
• Nearly 80 percent of four-letter combinations are taken. (QFEV.com is available, yeah!)
• 250,000 domains with more than 32 characters in the name are taken.
• Of the 1,219 male names listed by the US Census Bureau, 100 percent are taken.
• A whopping two of the 2,841 female names are currently available because they recently expired.
• Every one of the top 10,000 last names are taken.
• 7,000 domains incorporate the word "Yahoo."

Sweet fancy Moses, that's a lot of domains. Your best bet if you're looking for something reasonably typeable and memorable? Do what I do and go to nameboy.com, where you can input a couple of keywords and have the site come up with variants and synonyms. And please try to avoid getting something with a hyphen in it. Thanks.