Have a new product or service? Starting your own company or group? Choosing your brand presence has lasting effects, and consistency across your domain and social media usernames is important to keep in mind so people can find you across the web.
Cambridge-based United Domains is helping you make these branding decisions for you. The company just announced relaunch of its services as Namecheck.com, a service that allows you to easily look up the availability of a brand name across a variety of outlets.
Prior to Namecheck.com you would probably go to a service like Go Daddy, and then separately check places like Twitter and Facebook to see what usernames and vanity URLs were also available. Now with Namecheck.com, you can check in one place with one click.
Namecheck looks up your brand availability across twelve different social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and LinkedIn. Aside from these prominent social media services, Namecheck also searches WordPress, Blogger, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Digg, Wikipedia, Last.fm, and even eBay. The only service I was hoping to see on there that I did not see were video hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
With regard to generic domain names, Namecheck searches for availability across eight types of domains: commercial (.com), network (.net), organization (.org), information (.info), business (.biz), me (.me), television (.tv), and company (.co). In terms of domains in different geographies, Namecheck searches domains in the US (.us), Europe (.eu), UK (.co.uk), Spain (.es), Germany (.de), Japan (.jp), China (.cn), and India (.in). The service also includes search of available trademarks in the US, internationally, in Europe, and in Germany.
When viewing results, green indicates availability (if you click on the result you’re taken to a registration page where you can claim the domain/name) and red means it has already been taken (in which case clicking on a result will show you info around who has registered it).
United Domains has registered 1.4M domain names for more than 250,000 clients including many Global Fortune 500 companies like Vodafone, Lufthansa, and Siemens. Every domain name registry with United Domains comes with automatic URL forwarding, email forwarding, DNS management, on top of customer service — which the company prides itself on. According to their website,
“Our top priority is getting you what you need: a domain name. We add in the features you want, like URL forwarding and simple control panels, and nothing more. We want the process to be a snap for you; a quick form to fill out and a few mouse clicks are all that separate you from your perfect domain name.”
You can learn more about Namecheck.com by following them on Twitter @ud_namecheck, Facebook and on their blog.
Can you see yourself using Namecheck.com next time you’re looking to choose a brand name? What other services do you wish Namecheck.com included?
