How to Choose a Domain Name: 12 Rules That Actually Matter

To choose a domain name, shortlist five to ten candidates and run each through a few tests: can someone type it correctly after hearing it once, is it free of hyphens and digits, is a sensible extension available (a .com, or your country's code if you serve one country), is it clear of other people's trademarks, and does its history look clean. Keywords in the name do little for search rankings; Google's own SEO Starter Guide says they "have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs". Pick the name people can say, spell and remember, then check what it costs to renew, not only to register.

The 12 rules at a glance

Rule 1: Keep it under about 15 characters

Every character you add increases the chance of a typo, makes the name harder to remember and takes up more room on a card or a profile. Six to twelve characters before the extension is comfortable; up to fifteen works if the words are easy to spell. stripe.com and notion.com are six characters before the dot, canva.com five.

The technical limit is far longer: the DNS standard, RFC 1035, allows each label between dots to be up to 63 characters. The limit you will hit first is human.

If the short name you want is taken as a .com, a single clear modifier often works better than a long exact phrase: getacme.com or tryacme.com beats theacmecompanyonline.com.

Rule 2: Default to .com

.com is still what most people assume when they hear a name, and the numbers explain why: Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief counted 166.6 million .com registrations out of 401.6 million domain names across all extensions on 30 June 2026. If someone hears about a company called Alva and the real address is alva.io, a share of them will type alva.com and land somewhere else.

That is a habit argument, not a ranking one. Google's SEO Starter Guide says the extension "only matters if you're targeting a specific country's users, and even then it's usually a low impact signal", and that "otherwise Google Search doesn't care which TLD you're using". So take a good .com if you can get one, and do not overpay for a bad one.

Rule 3: The say-it-aloud test

Tell someone your domain name out loud, then ask them to type it. If they cannot do it correctly on the first attempt, the name fails.

This catches:

Try it with five people outside your industry. Their mistakes are the ones your customers will make.

Rule 4: The blind spelling test

Write the name down, show it to someone who has never seen it, and ask them to read it aloud. Hesitation or mispronunciation means a spelling problem the first test can miss:

Large companies can overcome an odd spelling with marketing spend. Small businesses usually cannot. Choose clarity over cleverness.

Rule 5: No hyphens, no numbers

Spoken aloud, a hyphen becomes "dash" and a digit becomes "the number 3, not the word". Each explanation is a chance for someone to arrive at the version without the hyphen or with the word spelled out. The exceptions are brands already known by their digits or punctuation. For everyone else, avoid both.

Rule 6: Run a trademark check

Before you commit, search the trademark registers in the markets you will trade in: the USPTO's Trademark Search in the United States, EUIPO's trade mark search for EU trade marks, your national office elsewhere, and WIPO's Global Brand Database, which searches many national and international collections at once. All are free.

A name that copies an existing mark can be taken from you through a UDRP complaint, and at WIPO the trademark owner's filing fee for a single-panel case is USD 1,500, a small price for them to take back a name you have built a brand on. UDRP disputes explained sets out the test. Availability to register and trademark clearance are two different questions.

Rule 7: Check social media handles

Your domain and your social handles should match, or at least be consistent. Check the exact handle on the platforms you will actually use, such as Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube. If the exact handle is taken everywhere, a consistent variation (getacme on every platform) is better than a different name on each.

Rule 8: Check the history

A name that looks freshly available may have been used before, for spam, phishing, link farms or adult content. Check its past in the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org), look up the current record with our WHOIS lookup, and run a backlink report; Moz is one tool for that. If the history shows anything concerning, choose another name. How to buy expired domains has the full audit if you are deliberately buying a used name.

Rule 9: Brand over keywords

Owning bestplumberindenver.com once looked like a shortcut to rankings. Google's current guidance is blunt: "the keywords in the name of the domain (or URL path) alone have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs", and its advice for picking a name is to "do what's best for your business". A keyword-stuffed name is also hard to say, hard to trust and hard to grow out of. Nobody tells a friend to hire bestplumberindenver.com; they tell them to hire Thompson Plumbing.

Rule 10: A country code if you serve one country

If your customers are in one country, its country-code extension (.de, .co.uk, .fr, .in, .com.au and so on) can be the better choice. Google's documentation on multi-regional sites describes country codes as "tied to a specific country" and says they "provide a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country". The same page warns that "some countries have restrictions on who can use ccTLDs", so check the registry's rules before you buy, and note that Google treats some vanity country codes, such as .tv and .me, like generic extensions.

The trade-off is reach: a country code says "local", which is what you want until you expand. Many businesses register both the country code and the .com. The ccTLD guide and best TLDs for European businesses go deeper.

Rule 11: Match the extension to the audience, and check its renewal price

Some extensions carry a clear association: .io and .dev with developers, .ai with artificial-intelligence products, .app with software, .store with shops. An extension your audience expects can reinforce what you do. But specialised extensions often renew at several times the first-year price. At Porkbun on 16 October 2026 (USD per year):

A .store that costs USD 2.57 to register renews at USD 43.77, nearly four times the .com. Read the renewal column before you fall for a name. The domain extensions guide covers the wider list.

Rule 12: Buy the obvious misspelling

If your name has a misspelling people genuinely make, register it too and redirect it to your main domain; at Porkbun's .com price that is USD 11.08 a year. Typical candidates:

One or two genuine misspellings are worth it. Twenty variations are a renewal bill for names nobody types.

Putting it together

Start with ten candidates. Strike out anything that fails rules 3, 4 or 6, because those are dealbreakers. Rank the rest on how many of the other rules they pass, then look up the survivors: our domain name generator checks a keyword across several extensions at once, and the bulk search checks a list. When you have a winner, how to register a domain name in five steps takes you through checkout, and what a domain name is covers the vocabulary if any of it is new.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a domain name be?

Six to twelve characters before the extension is comfortable, and up to about fifteen works if the words are easy to spell. The DNS standard allows up to 63 characters per label, but every extra character makes the name harder to type and remember.

Do keywords in a domain name help SEO?

Very little. Google's SEO Starter Guide says keywords in the domain name "have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs" and recommends doing what is best for your business. Choose a name people can remember and trust.

Is .com still the best domain extension?

For most businesses that serve more than one country, yes, because it is what people assume: 166.6 million of the 401.6 million registered domain names were .com on 30 June 2026. Google says the extension itself only matters for targeting one country, so a country code is the better choice if you serve one country.

Should I avoid hyphens and numbers in a domain name?

Yes, unless your brand is already known by them. Spoken aloud, both need explaining, and every explanation sends some people to the wrong address.

How do I check if a domain name is trademarked?

Search the free trademark databases for the markets you will trade in, such as the USPTO's Trademark Search, EUIPO's trade mark search and WIPO's Global Brand Database. A domain being available to register does not mean the name is free to use.