The Trade + City Name Is Taken. Now What?

You typed in the obvious name for your business — your trade, your city, dot-com — and it's already taken. AustinPlumbing.com. DenverRoofing.com. Whatever fits your work and your town. Someone got there first.

That stings for about a minute. Then you move on, because there are good alternatives when your trade and city domain is taken. Some are just as easy to say and remember. A few are better than the one you wanted. Here's how to work through them.

First, find out who actually has it

Before you rename anything, check what's really going on with the name. Type it into your browser. Three things can happen:

• A working business site loads. A real company is using it. Leave it alone and build your own name.
• A parking page or "for sale" page loads. Nobody's using it. It may be available to buy.
• Nothing loads, but you still can't register it. Someone owns it and isn't doing anything with it.

If it's parked or idle, the name might be for sale. You can look it up on a public ICANN lookup to see when it was registered and when it expires. That won't always show you a contact, but it tells you the name is real and held by someone. When a name looks buyable, it's worth asking the price before you settle for a workaround. Sometimes it costs less than a week of ads.

Change the word order or add a small word

The fastest fix is the smallest one. Flip the order or add one honest word, and a taken name often opens back up.

Flip the order

If TucsonElectric.com is gone, ElectricTucson.com might be open — though in this case a big utility owns the first one, so pick a clearer trade word. The point stands: order matters, and one arrangement is usually easier to say than the other. We wrote a whole piece on this: Trade First or City First? Which Order Reads Better.

Add one plain word

A single extra word can free up the name without making it a mouthful. Good ones:

• Your last name — ReyesPlumbingAustin.com
• A specific service — AustinDrainPlumbing.com
• A neighborhood — SouthAustinPlumbing.com

Be careful with filler like "the" or "pro." Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it just makes the name longer for no reason. We sorted through which fillers earn their keep in Do Filler Words Like 'The' or 'Pro' Help or Hurt?

Change the location word

"City" isn't one fixed word. You have choices, and the taken name only blocks one of them.

• Use your suburb or neighborhood. If your metro's name is taken, the part of town you actually serve may be wide open — and it can help you show up for nearby searches.
• Use the metro instead of the city, or the other way around. A smaller town rolled into a bigger metro name gives you a second shot.

Which one belongs in your name depends on where your customers are. We broke that down in Suburb, Metro, or Whole City: Which Goes in the Name. And if your city is long or people spell it wrong, that changes the math too — see When Your City Name Is Long or Hard to Spell.

Serve two towns? Rethink the whole name

If you work across two cities, cramming both into one domain gets clumsy fast. There are cleaner ways to do it. We walked through them in One Trade, Two Cities: Naming a Business That Serves Both.

What about a different ending?

You'll be tempted to grab the same name with a different ending — .net, .biz, .co. Think twice.

Here's the problem. If AustinPlumbing.com is a real, working business, and you take AustinPlumbing.net, you'll spend years sending them your customers. People type .com out of habit. They'll land on the other company's site and never know they were looking for you. That's a headache you don't need.

A different ending can work when nobody owns the .com and it's truly free. It's a bad idea when it means playing second fiddle to a competitor who already has the .com.

Consider a name that isn't trade-plus-city at all

Plenty of strong local businesses don't have their trade or town in the name. A short, made-up word or a family name can be easier to say out loud and easier to remember than a long descriptive one. It won't spell out what you do, so your site's words and your Google Business Profile have to do that job. But a name people can repeat to a friend is worth a lot.

Mistakes to skip

• Don't add random numbers or hyphens. Austin-Plumbing-2.com is hard to say and easy to mistype.
• Don't pick a name you can't say over the phone. If a customer can't repeat it after hearing it once, it's the wrong name.
• Don't copy a nearby competitor's name too closely. Confusing customers helps them, not you.

The name being taken isn't the end of the search. It's the start of a better one. The right alternative is often shorter, clearer, and more yours than the obvious name you started with.

Want to see what's actually open for your trade and your town? Browse names by city or ask us about one specific name — it takes under a minute, and there's no pressure to buy.