What is a domain name?
A domain name is the name you type into a browser (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape) to get to a site on the web. For example: www.thespeedtest.com

What does it mean to register a domain name?
To preserve order on the Internet, and to ensure that no two people ever own the same domain name, there is a central registry of all domain names maintained by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In order for you to own your domain name, your name and business information must be added to ICANN's database. This process is called registering a domain name. Only ICANN approved registrars can register your domain name.

What's in a good domain name?
A good domain name is short (1 to 3 words), easy to remember, and representative of your business.

What is a domain name pointer? Why might I need one?
A domain name pointer is simply a domain name that "points to" another web site. For example, following both these links: http://www.forsaleinsisters.com and http://www.forsaleinbend.com will take you to the same web site.  That is because forsaleinbend.com is a pointer to forsaleinsisters.com.

Domain pointers can be handy for several reasons. One popular reason to own a domain pointer is to shorten or improve your web site address. For example, you may have a free web hosting account with a long web address and you would like to project a more professional image with a short domain name. For example lets say this is Fred web site address:  http://www.freewebhost.com/webpages/fredsusedcar/.  Bob doesn't like this cumbersome address so Fred buys the domain name: freds-usedcars.com. Fred then has his hosting company point this domain name to his original site. Now he can use the freds-usedcars.com address on his business cards, emails and advertisements.

Also, businesses often find that they profit from owning more than one domain name or domain name pointer. When a searcher can not remember a domain name, they will often type in likely domain names trying to find the site. Because domain names are cheap, you can easily buy several domain names similar to your main domain name, all of which refer to your site.  For example, if your site is named joes-sports-bar.com you may wish to also buy joesportsbar.com (one s), joes-sportsbar.com, and joesbar.com. If assigned as domain name pointers, all of these domain names when typed into a browser, would refer to your site.

Other uses for domain pointers include using them to track marketing campaigns (i.e. putting a specific domain name on a certain advertisement and tracking how many hits are received to that domain name) or to target a specific market segment (i.e. using separate domain names to focus on separate aspects of a business).

What is domain name parking?
Because domain names are selling at such a rapid rate (over 10,000 per day!) many people choose to buy and save their domain names even though they have not yet built the web site associated with the name. This is called domain name parking. 

Are domain names really going that quickly?
Just check out the facts:

• In 1995, roughly 100,000 domain names were registered. Since then, over 30 million have been registered.

• 97 percent of the words in Webster's dictionary have been registered.

• Every single "all a's" domain name from a.com to aaa..aaa.com (63 characters) has been registered.

• There are over 50,000 possible one, two and three-letter domain names, all of which have long been bought, even the ones that don't make sense (ie. z, 11, chz, e1q, f-4, etc.) Many of these are owned but not in use (i.e. parked). At auction, these domains easily fetch between three and four figures.

• All common English names have been registered.

• Some people have argued: there are roughly 31,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 domain names available, counting the 37 characters in the English alphabet, plus 10 digits and the hyphen. How can we possibly be running out? Very easily. The largest English dictionary has only about 290 thousand entries. Of these, about 200 thousand words are in use today. An average person has a vocabulary of only 15 to 20 thousand words and uses only about 2 thousand in a week's conversation. When you consider that 31 million domain names have already been registered, you can easily see that good domain names are going fast. After all, it may be available, but who wants a domain name like "nzdkkipa3cp-il183j-gsl.com?"

How do I know if my domain name is taken? How do I go about getting my domain name or names? How much does a domain name cost?
To check and see if your domain name is taken, use our free domain name search tool. You can search as many times as you like.  If someone has taken your domain name, you can check to see who owns it.  

How does DNS work?

The DNS system is a huge database, in fact, it is the biggest database in existence today.  When you register your domain with a registrar like www.godaddy.com, the registrar point the domain to what is called an authorative DNS server.  This server is usually located at you web hosting company.  The Athorative server then begins broadcasting the IP address that is associated with your domain.  This then populates around the internet and takes anywhere from 0 to 72 hours for all the DNS servers to hear about it.  Once this has occurred, people can start typing www.yourdomain.com.to get to your site.