Domain name research
What happens to domain names at scale, measured against live registry data, with the method stated and the date it was true.
- 2 min readnamingavailability
All 620 short English words are already taken
We checked every common English word of three to six letters against .com and .net. That is 1,240 live registry lookups, no errors, and not one name free on either extension.
- 4 min readresearchmethod
How we measured 16,861 Product Hunt launches
The method behind four pieces of research, the decisions that could have gone another way, and the dataset itself as a CSV you can check us with.
- 5 min readnamingextensions
AI startups are choosing .ai half as often
Among AI products launching on Product Hunt, .ai fell from 26% to 12% in two years while .com rose. The reversal happened during the boom, not after it.
- 4 min readavailabilitynaming
Domain names are not getting longer
If the good .coms are running out, names should be getting longer and uglier. Across 5,538 launches and two years, the median .com is exactly ten characters in every single quarter.
- 4 min readnamingresearch
Four in five launches still register a domain
Across two years and sevenfold growth in launch volume, the share of Product Hunt launches with a domain of their own never left the band between 78.9% and 82.5%. Free hosting did not dent it.
- 4 min readnamingavailability
What founders do when the domain is taken
11,422 launches, matched against their own product names. Just over half get the name exactly. The most common compromise is not adding a word — it is dropping one.
- 4 min readavailabilitylocal business
Should you put your city in your domain name?
Registrars say yes. We ran 3,554 live checks: nine common trades were registered in every large US city we tested, 243 domains with no exceptions.
- 9 min readavailabilitynaming
Are all the good .com domains taken?
No — but the ones you would think of are, gone in the exact position you would put them in. Live registry checks on where the line falls.
Looking for names rather than numbers? Domain ideas by industry