Searchenginejournal.com, just wrote a post asking What is “The Best Domain Extensions When a .COM is Not Available” and seems to conclude it’s another .com
“”What do you do when the domain name or suffix you want is not available?””
“You may want to evaluate whether another gTLD (generic top-level domain) would work. The core group of gTLD’s is comprised of the com, info, net, and org domains. As well as the restricted gTLD’s, which includes, biz, name, and pro domains.”
If .info works for you, your problems are solved! But let’s be serious, nothing sounds better than a .com domain. Generally speaking, a .com domain is what a searcher types in first, it’s easy to remember and eliminates the guessing game.
Alternatively, if you determine that a different gTLD just doesn’t cut it for you, you might be better off making a change to the domain name. At this point, its time to get creative. Start writing down as many variations of your brand’s name as you can think of. If you have to, add in hyphens or abbreviations.
Using my company’s website as an example, instead of tmprod.com, I could go with something like:
trademarkproductions.com
tmproductions.com
thetmprod.com
tmprodoffice.com
tmprodagency.com
tmdigitalagency.com””
The story goes on to mention the new G’s, ccTLD and domain hacks but clearly the lean of the story is find an alternative .com if the one you want is not available.
The story also chats about the pro’s and con’s of using a domain broker, consider taking legal action if your business has already started and even waiting for the domain to drop (although it doesn’t mention the best of the drops go into auctions where you have to pay up anyway)
You can read the whole story here:
