My previous article on brandable domain names¹—that is, available (unregistered) domain names which may be appealing to any entity looking to identify a potential name for a new brand launch—focused on the use of phonotactic (i.e. ‘readability’) analysis techniques to identify candidate names. In this follow-up, I consider the specific case of ‘wacky’ alternative spellings of familiar terms—more properly termed ‘sensational spelling’²—as potential candidates for brandable names. It is important to note that the focus in this article is on variants of generic, business-related keywords, rather than on brand terms; the latter category actually being the much more dubious—and potentially infringing—practice of typosquatting.

Sensational spelling—itself a sub-category of novel or invented terms more generally—has become increasingly popular in branding and marketing, particularly among newer or technology-focused brands³ (with familiar examples including Flickr, Reddit, Digg, Fiverr and Tumblr, in addition to older, more established brands such as Krispy Kreme, Weetabix, Blu-ray, Froot Loops and Playskool). The growth in appeal of these types of names is part due to the increasing shortage of available domain names and the crowded landscape of pre-existing protected trademarks. Use of such terms can make it simpler to identify available domains for use, and can make it more straightforward to secure intellectual property protection, but this is by no means a universal rule; trademark law is a complex area involving significant subjectivity, and issues regarding potential brand confusion and unfair advantage are relevant.

Nevertheless, an appetite for sensational spellings can certainly make it more straightforward to identify candidate domain names which are available and may be of interest to a would-be brand owner. Although the domain name landscape is crowded, there remain large numbers of unregistered options (even amongst .com domains as short as 5 or 6 characters), depending on the acceptable permitted degree of variation away from the ‘true’ keyword of interest.

Methodology

In this study, I consider the prevalence of ‘available’ .com domain names (i.e. those absent from the .com zone file) whose second-level names (SLDs—i.e. the part of the domain name to the left of the dot) are sensationally spelled variants of any of a number of popular generic business-related keywords⁴. A set of 34 keywords is used in this analysis, covering a range of business areas, though in practice any given entity seeking an appropriate name would be likely to focus on keywords relating specifically to their business areas (or other favoured terms). The analysis considers only 5- and 6- character SLDs comprising variants of 4-, 5- or 6-character keywords.

A range of techniques are factored into the algorithm used to generate variant spellings, including the use of vowel removal (as per ‘Flickr’ and ‘Tumblr’), character repeats, and the replacement of characters—or groups of characters—with others which are (for example) pronounced similarly. It is important to note that—as with any algorithm used to used to generate candidate brandable names—the output must be manually reviewed for suitability. This is particularly the case for sensational spellings, where some variants may not ‘work’ for the keyword in question. For example, a variant where a ‘g’ has been replaced by a ‘j’ will not be suitable if the initial ‘g’ was pronounced as a ‘hard’ consonant (as in ‘tingle’). As referenced in the previous study, it is also necessary to verify that any identified domain name is actually available for registration rather than simply being absent from the zone file (and unavailable) for some other reason.

Analysis

In total, 958 available domain names comprising variants of any of the 34 keywords in question were identified, with the top keywords (by number of identified variants) shown in Table 1.

It is worth noting that the exact numbers are somewhat arbitrary, being dependent on the number of substitutions deemed to be ‘acceptable’ for each of the characters or character-groups in question. Another point of significance is that (as mentioned previously) the sets of identified domains for any given keyword will vary markedly in ‘quality’ (i.e. the extent to which they comprise a convincing readable variant of the keyword in question). For example, the set of variants of ‘logic’ ranges from (at the subjectively ‘better’ end of the spectrum) logikq.com and logiqk.com, to loogec.com and loojic.com.

From the set of 958 candidate variant domains, a test group of 11 (identified through a manual analysis approach for filtering the results) were then registered in order to investigate their potential attractiveness for brandability and saleability. The assessed values of these domains, according to an AI-based domain valuation tool, is shown in Table 2. Six of the domains are valued at over $100, showing that this approach is capable of identifying credible brandable names.

Conclusion

The use of an algorithm to generate ‘sensationally spelled’ variants of keywords (or other preferred brand terms) of interest is another technique (alongside the use of phonotactic acceptability calculations, as described in the previous article) for efficiently identifying domain names which may be appealing from the point of view of potential brandability, from the enormous pool of unregistered candidate names. These techniques can be combined with others, such as filtering on the basis of favoured name prefixes or suffixes, to further focus on the names of greatest interest within the dataset. However, the sets of names thus identified will invariably need to be reviewed manually, in order to determine suitability from the point of view of readability, linguistic ‘feel’, and branding and marketing desirability.

Of course, simply the identification (and even registration) of a name provides no guarantee that it will be easily defensible from the point of view of intellectual property protection. It is generally necessary to conduct searches to verify any pre-existence of registered rights for a proposed mark (or similar variants); furthermore, trademark decisions are inherently subjective, and there is a requirement to navigate the landscape of (avoiding) brand confusion and unfair advantage, meaning collaboration with experts in the field of intangible asset management will usually be advisable.