The same name, everywhere at once
This tool takes a single name and checks it across a wide set of extensions in one request. It answers the question people actually have when their first choice is taken: where else can I get this exact name?
How to choose between what comes back
A sweep frequently returns a dozen available options, and they are not equivalent. Four things separate them.
- What your audience expects. If your customers are ordinary consumers, they will type .com regardless of what is on your business card. That is a real cost, not a matter of taste. If your audience is developers or investors, .io and .ai carry no such friction.
- Renewal economics. Several of the extensions in a sweep are sold at deep first-year discounts. Compare the renewal column, not the registration column.
- Eligibility rules. Country-code extensions frequently require a local presence, a declared nexus, or identity verification. Being able to register something is not the same as being entitled to hold it, and registries do audit.
- Technical requirements. A handful of extensions carry conditions buyers do not expect — most notably that some are on the HSTS preload list, which makes HTTPS mandatory before the site will load in any modern browser at all.
What the extension signals to a search engine
The extension is one of the few naming decisions with a defensible effect on where you are found, and the effect is narrower than the folklore suggests.
Country-code extensions have long been treated by search engines as a strong indication that a site targets that country. For a business trading in one market, that is a genuine advantage, and in several European markets the national extension outperforms a generic one for local trust as well. The corollary is the part people skip: the same signal that helps you at home works against you abroad. A national extension tells a search engine what your audience is, and it is not a signal you can easily override later.
Generic extensions carry no country signal at all. A .com, .net, .org, .io or .shop is geographically neutral, and location is inferred from everything else — the language and substance of the content, a real local address and telephone number, the currency and shipping options, the local coverage and links you attract. A handful of country-code extensions that are marketed globally are generally treated as generic rather than country-specific, but that classification belongs to the search engine, not to you, and it can change.
What the extension is not worth is a ranking bonus. No extension ranks a page that has nothing to say. The common and expensive mistake is registering a separate national extension for every market and then running six thin sites, each with a fraction of the content and none of the authority, where one properly localised site would have done better. Register a national extension because you actually operate in that market — a real entity, real support, real fulfilment — not in the hope of a shortcut.
Saying it out loud
The extension has to survive the telephone, the podcast, the conference introduction and the voicemail. This is the test that a sweep cannot run for you, and it is the one that most often decides whether a non-.com choice works.
The specific failure is that people hear what they expect. Say dot co and a fair number of listeners will hear, and type, dot com. The same applies to any extension that is a near neighbour of .com in sound. The traffic leak is annoying; the mail leak is worse, because a message sent to your name at the wrong domain leaves your control entirely and you will usually never know it was sent. If the extension you take has a close .com neighbour, acquiring or at least monitoring that neighbour should be part of the decision, not a later regret.
Two checks take a minute each and are worth more than any amount of deliberation.
- The dictation test. Say the full domain once, at normal speed, to somebody who has not seen it, and ask them to type what they heard. If they need a second pass, or if you find yourself spelling anything, the name will cost you every time it is spoken.
- The email test. Read out a full address on the domain — a first name, the at sign, the name, the extension. Addresses are dictated far more often than URLs are, and a domain that is fine on a billboard can be painful on a phone call.
Names built as domain hacks, where the extension completes a word, are elegant on screen and consistently difficult aloud. That does not disqualify them, but it does mean they suit brands whose growth comes from search, links and screens rather than from people repeating a name to each other.
When to take a different extension, and when not to
Taking a non-.com extension is a reasonable, common, and often correct decision. Very large companies do it. The circumstances where it goes wrong are narrower and more specific: when the .com equivalent is held by a competitor, when the .com is held by someone whose content would embarrass you, or when your brand is primarily communicated verbally, where the extension has to be spelled out every time.
If the .com is simply parked or held by a domain investor, that is worth knowing too — an unused .com can often be acquired, and the price may be lower than you assume.
When the sweep shows everything taken
A fully taken sweep is telling you something a partially taken one does not. The problem is not the extension market; it is the name. A single word that is registered in twenty-five extensions is a word that many people have wanted, and no amount of further searching will change that.
Three responses are productive, in roughly this order.
- Extend the name rather than the search. A compound of two ordinary words is far more likely to be free across the board, and it survives being spoken in a way that a respelling or a hyphenated variant does not.
- Find out who holds the one you actually want. Check whether it resolves, whether it has mail configured, and where its nameservers point. A name parked or dormant is a name with a holder rather than a business, and holders sell. A name running a live operation in your sector is closed to you, and knowing that early saves weeks.
- Look at the extensions you dismissed on reflex. A sweep sorts by nothing but availability, and the option that reads oddly on first glance is sometimes the right one once you have applied the audience, renewal and verbal tests above.
What is rarely productive is registering the last extension standing purely because it was the last one standing. An extension that requires explanation every time it is used is a permanent tax on the brand, and it is almost always cheaper to change the name.