Tag archive
branding
9 articles
Domain Hacks: When the Dot Is Part of the Word — and Who Actually Owns the Suffix
From del.icio.us to instagr.am: how domain hacks work, why .io and .tv are ccTLDs (not gTLDs), what Google’s generic-ccTLD list changes for SEO, and the registry risks most naming guides skip.
Memorable Brand Names: What Verified Naming Stories Actually Teach
A practical naming guide built on Slack, Kodak, Zillow, Stripe, Flickr, and Warby Parker—without the recycled myths about domains and backronyms.
Short Domains vs Descriptive Domains: What Works
Zoom (4 letters) vs Booking.com (descriptive)—both work at different price tiers. YC data: 36% brandable, 0.2% literal EMD. The split is budget × pivot risk × channel.
The Psychology of Domain Names
Alter & Oppenheimer's PNAS fluency research, Atom's 77% trust survey, and GrowthBadger's .com memorability data show domains trigger pre-conscious judgment—before your headline loads.
.co Is Colombia's ccTLD Selling Itself as .com's Missing Letter — gccTLD, Typo Tax, and the 2025 Registry Handoff
3.3M names migrated to Equipo PuntoCo in October 2025, 96%+ registered outside Colombia, gccTLD treatment that is not "identical to .com," the one-letter typo tax—and why the old guide's AIO boilerplate and unverified startup Mad Libs failed audit.
AI Domain Generation in 2026: Why Availability-First Beats Brainstorming
With 166.6M .com names taken and ~94% of short domains gone, LLMs expand the idea space—but only pipelines that verify RDAP/DNS in real time produce names you can register.
The .ai TLD in 2026: 1M+ Registrations, $90 Wholesale, and Who Actually Wins
Anguilla earned $85M+ from .ai in 2025—47% of government revenue. Here is the registry economics, startup adoption data, and what to verify before you pay premium prices.
Brand Name vs Domain Name: When Exact Match Fails (2026 Framework)
Only ~46% of VC-backed startups get exact-match .com. Stripe, Notion, and Linear prove alignment beats identity—here is the decision tree for legal name, product name, and URL.
The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Domain Name in 2026
A receipt-first framework: brand-first vs descriptive naming, Atom's 77% exact-match trust data, YC's 31% .ai shift, and the five checks we run before every registration on NewName.ai.