How to Choose a Domain Name in 2026: 10 Rules and What to Do If It Is Taken

The name you wanted is taken. The registrar's suggestions are thenameukltd.com, the-name-online.net and a .biz that nobody will ever type, and the cursor is hovering over one of them because you want to get on with the website.

Stop there for twenty minutes. How to choose a domain name is a decision you will live with for years, print on vans and invoices and read out over the phone, and the rules for getting it right are short. This guide gives ten of them, the twelve checks to run before you pay, what Google has actually said about keywords in domains, and five ways to get a name that someone else holds. Verisign's industry brief counted 401.6 million registered domains at the end of June 2026, so the good short names are mostly gone and method matters more than luck.

How we judged

1. Memorable and sayable. A name that survives being spoken once, down a bad phone line.
2. Available in the ending that fits. Not merely available in some ending.
3. Legally safe. Clear of registered trade marks and existing companies, checked on the free government registers.
4. Future-proof. Not tied to one town, one product or this year's fashion.
5. Google's own statements. What its search team has said about domains, rather than SEO folklore.

10 rules for a domain name that lasts

1. Pass the radio test. Say the name once to someone who has never seen it and ask them to type it. Carter Heating passes. Karter Heeting, 4Seasons and anything with a silent letter fails. If they ask "how do you spell that?", you have your answer.
2. Keep it short. Aim for under 15 characters before the dot. Long names get typed wrong, wrap on business cards and shrink to nothing on a van door. The very short names went years ago, so two plain words is the realistic target.
3. No hyphens, no numbers. Every hyphen is a sentence on the phone ("carter, hyphen, heating") and every number raises the question of digits or words. The name you can read out without punctuation wins.
4. Avoid words with two spellings. Colour and color, grey and gray, Jo and Joe, and anything that might or might not have an s on the end. If the business name has one of these, buy both spellings or change the name.
5. Match your trading name, or change the trading name. Customers search for the name on the sign. If the company is not registered yet, choose the company name and the domain together so they agree.
6. Pick the ending by customers, not by price. A business that sells in the UK is well served by .co.uk. A business with customers abroad usually wants the .com. The pair costs less than one month of most software. Our guide to which domain extension to buy goes through the options.
7. Do not chase keywords. Leeds Plumber Cheap is not a brand, and it does not rank better either, as the section below explains.
8. Read it as one word. Domains have no spaces. A shop called Pen Island discovers this the hard way. Write your shortlist in lower case with no spaces and look for the accident.
9. Picture the email address and the van. Write yourname@thedomain.co.uk on paper. If it is too long for a card or looks strange, so will everything else.
10. Buy the name, not the variation. When your first choice is taken, a different word almost always beats thenameuk.com, the-name.com or thename.biz. The last section shows the better options.

12 checks before you pay

Two of these deserve a sentence more. The trade mark search on GOV.UK lets you search by keyword, and a registered mark in your line of business is a reason to choose another name, because a domain that infringes a mark can be taken from you through a dispute process. The Companies House checker tells you whether a company already uses the name, which matters even if you are a sole trader, because customers will find both of you.

What Google actually says about keywords in domains

The oldest piece of domain folklore is that a name stuffed with search terms ranks higher. Google's John Mueller has said the opposite several times: a keyword domain gives no recognisable SEO advantage, having a word in the domain does not make a site more relevant for it, and the words in the ending such as .plumbing or .live are ignored for ranking altogether. Search Engine Journal has collected the quotes from his office-hours sessions.

What ranks is the site: pages that answer the question, mentions and links from other sites, and a name people search for by itself. A brandable name earns that last part. A keyword name never does, because nobody searches for "leeds plumber cheap" hoping to find a company called that.

When the name is taken: 5 ways to get it

1. Try the ending that fits, not the one that is left

If carterheating.com is gone and you trade in Leeds, carterheating.co.uk is the better name anyway. On Jobbit's search on 7 October 2026 a .co.uk or .uk was £11.88 a year and a .shop was £11.14. What you should not do is take the .net or .info as a consolation prize: customers will type .com and land on your competitor.

2. Change a word, not the spelling

Add a verb or a word that says what you do: getcarterheating, hellocarter, carterboilers. Do not drop a letter or double one. Misspellings send your customers to the correctly spelt site, which is not yours.

3. Find the owner and make an offer

For .com and the other global endings, the registry's RDAP lookup shows the registration date, the registrar and, unless privacy is on, the owner. For .uk, Nominet's WHOIS does the same. If the details are private, the site itself often has a contact page, and a polite email asking whether the name is for sale costs nothing. Pay through an escrow service or a marketplace, never by bank transfer on trust. Marketplaces take a cut: Afternic, which is owned by GoDaddy and absorbed Dan.com in 2024, charges a flat 15% commission to the seller. One rule to know: ICANN's transfer policy locks a domain for 60 days after a change of owner, so you may not be able to move it to your own registrar straight away.

4. Use a broker

When the owner does not answer, a broker will chase them. GoDaddy's Domain Broker Service charged $99.99 per name plus 20% of the sale price when we checked its pricing on 7 October 2026, and the fee is not refunded if the owner says no. Brokers make sense for a name you must have, not for a name you would quite like.

5. Wait for it to drop

Domains that are not renewed are deleted after a grace and redemption period, and some registrars sell backorders, which are a bid to register the name the moment it is released. GoDaddy retired its own backorder service in October 2025. The honest warning is that an owner with auto-renew on will never let the name drop, so this is a lottery ticket, not a plan.

If the name you want is your own registered trade mark and someone else has registered it to sell it back to you or to trade on your reputation, you do not have to buy it. For .uk, Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service, administered by WIPO since 7 July 2026, offers free mediation first, then a summary decision for £200 or a full expert decision for £750, with no VAT on either. For .com there is the equivalent UDRP process. Both need evidence of the mark and of bad faith, so a trade mark registered early is the thing that makes them work.

Should you buy more than one?

Buy the .co.uk and .uk pair if you can. Since Nominet released the reserved .uk names in July 2019, the shorter .uk version of your .co.uk may belong to someone else, so it is worth checking and taking it while it is free. Beyond that, be sparing. The .net, .org and .info versions of your name protect you from nobody, misspelt versions are rarely typed, and every extra name renews every year. Our comparison of the best place to buy a domain in the UK shows what those renewals cost at each registrar.

How an AI agent helps you choose a domain name

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Manus and Meta's Muse will all generate a list of names from a prompt. The list is only half the job. An agent that can check things finishes it.

• Generates 50 names from a brief. Tell it what you do, where, who for and the tone you want, and it returns names sorted by the ten rules above.
• Checks availability live. It searches every ending for the shortlist and reports which are free and at what price, so you only fall in love with names you can have.
• Runs the register searches. It searches the trade mark register and Companies House for each finalist and reports what it found in plain English. That is a starting point, not legal advice.
• Reads the history. It looks each domain up on the Wayback Machine and in search and flags a past life you would not want.
• Registers and connects the winner. On Jobbit the agent registers the domain with privacy included, hosts the DNS, issues the certificate and connects the name to the site it builds. Our guide on how to buy a domain name shows the seven steps it is doing for you.
• Makes the name look like a business. It drafts a logo and a one-page site to match, as in our guide to making a logo for your business. The Free plan gives 100 credits a day with no card, and Go at £7 a month keeps one small site live on your own domain.

Your plan for this week

• Day 1: write a three-line brief: what you sell, where, and three words you want the name to feel like.
• Day 2: generate 50 names, by hand or with an agent, and cut them to five using the ten rules.
• Day 3: run the 12 checks on all five. Expect to lose two.
• Day 4: read the survivors down the phone to three people and keep the one nobody misspells.
• Day 5: buy it with privacy and auto-renew switched on, then ask the agent on Jobbit to connect it to a site.

Frequently asked questions

How do I choose a good domain name for a small business?

Keep it short, easy to say and spell, free of hyphens and numbers, matched to your trading name, and in the ending your customers expect. Then run the free trade mark and Companies House searches before you pay.

Should my domain name match my business name?

Yes, as closely as the available names allow. Customers search for the name on your sign and your invoices, and a domain that matches it is the one they will guess. If you have not registered the company yet, choose both at the same time.

Do keywords in a domain name help SEO?

Google's John Mueller has said that a keyword domain gives no recognisable advantage and that the words in the ending are ignored for ranking. A memorable brand name that people search for by itself does more for you than a keyword.

What should I do if the domain name I want is taken?

Try the ending that fits your market, change a word rather than the spelling, or find the owner through the RDAP or WHOIS lookup and make an offer through a marketplace with escrow. Brokers and backorders are for names you cannot do without.

Can I buy a domain name that someone else owns?

Only if the owner agrees to sell. Marketplaces such as Afternic and Sedo handle the payment and the transfer, brokers negotiate for a fee, and the domain is locked against moving registrar for 60 days after the change of owner. If the name is your registered trade mark and it was registered in bad faith, a dispute process may return it to you without a sale.

How long should a domain name be?

As short as a clear name allows, ideally under 15 characters before the dot. Two plain words is a realistic target in 2026, since most single words were registered long ago.

Can an AI agent come up with domain name ideas?

Yes, and on Jobbit it can also check which ideas are free, search the trade mark register and Companies House, look up the history, register the winner and connect it to a site. The search is free, the Free plan gives 100 credits a day with no card, and Go is £7 a month.