Ask HN: How do you find domain names that don't suck and are still available?

aniketh · on July 4, 2008

why not try http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html and http://www.dotomator.com/

ScottWhigham · on July 5, 2008

Wow - some neat names popped up!

zacharye · on July 4, 2008

Wow - fun for hours... ;)

zacharye · on July 4, 2008

Be creative, be flexible, be willing to seek out help from people more creative than yourself. If all that fails, spend money...

The past couple of years has made things a bit easier though. Drop a vowel or two, check out international domain registrations, etc.

Stubbs · on July 4, 2008

"be willing to seek out help from people more creative than yourself", well I made a start by asking you guys :-)

The way I try and do it is write down the main subject, then words related to that subject and then feed those into something like bust-a-name or wordmaker.

However I'm fiding that this method produces less and less results, not helped by the fact my latest project is based in a popular area (Soccer)

zacharye · on July 4, 2008

:)

Soccer is indeed a rough area. Why not take a look through your elevator pitch and single out key words that describe your value proposition / problem that your product solves. Play with those for a while and concentrate on synonyms as well. You may find that takes you in some good directions.

CompanyGardener · on July 4, 2008

kickscorner.com slidetackling.com forthekicks.com

These are available. Not sure if they're good or relevant.

Stubbs · on July 7, 2008

You definatly don't want to be slide tackling on an astroturf pitch :)

I found a domain in the end www.whos-playing.com (DNS changes trickling through now)

It's the name I wanted all along, but without the hyphen, I got so fed up of looking, I decided to take whatever hit the search engines dish out for using them (if any).