2 builders who never spoke to each other

Settle the name and the domain before you build

Check nobody prominent already holds the name you plan to rank for, because a famous namesake takes the results page and your credibility with it, and prefer a coined brand you can trademark over your own name. On the extension, almost every domain at the top of the features studied here uses a .com.

The method

1. 01

   Check for existing holders of a name before you build on it, and prefer a coined brand you can trademark over your personal name.

2. 02

   Register a .com if you can, because virtually every domain at the top of this feature uses one.

What it returned

• 1983

  Justin's points: personal names generally cannot be trademarked, Nathan Barry could never have used the domain if he had been named Dave Barry, an author since 1983, the Screen Actors Guild refuses duplicate member names, and Coach is regularly confused with Coach.me. He registered the MegaMaker trademark in January 2017 to fight a name conflict of his own.

• 890

  890 of the top 1,000 sites were .com, and only three of the top 100 were not, all of them .co.uk. Next most common were .org with 25 and .net with 20.

Sources

• The Sites Dominating Google's Top Stories SERP Feature in 2024 - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · 890 of the Sites Use a .com Domain Extension · 2024-08-29
• How an NBA player ruined my lifeJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Is there a lesson here for you? · undated