Every word on this site, in plain English

Buying a domain comes with a vocabulary nobody teaches you. Here is the whole of it, defined once, in the same words the rest of the site uses.

Domain terms

The words the domain trade uses. They are the same everywhere, not ours.

TLD
The ending of a domain name, like .com, .ai or .io. Short for top-level domain.
TLD coverage
How many of the other endings for the same word are already taken. Wide coverage means people want the word, and that the name is harder to replace with a cheaper ending.
TLD fit
How well the ending suits the word itself, like a technology word on .ai. A good fit gives a future buyer a cleaner story.
One-word domain
A domain built around a single meaningful word before the ending, like atlas.com. There is only ever one of each, which is what makes them scarce.
Registrar
The company you buy and renew a domain through, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy. It does not own the name, it only registers it for you.
Marketplace
A site where owners list domains for sale and buyers make offers, such as Sedo or Afternic.
Aftermarket
Names that are already registered and offered for sale by their owner, rather than free to register at the standard fee.
Escrow
A neutral third party that holds the buyer’s money and the domain until both sides have done their part, then completes the swap. It is how large domain sales avoid either side going first.
Premium domain
A name the registry or the seller prices above the standard fee, usually because the word is short or in demand. The higher price often applies to every renewal too, not just the first year.
Expiring domain
A registered name whose owner has not renewed it. It goes through a grace period, then usually an auction, and only becomes free to register again if nobody takes it.
Transfer lock
A setting that stops a name from being moved to another registrar. The owner turns it off at their registrar before a sale or a move.
Hold
A status that takes a name offline: it stays registered but stops working. A registrar or a registry sets it, often over an unpaid bill or a dispute.
Grace period
The weeks right after a name expires, when its owner can still renew it at the normal price. Many registrars park or auction the name during this time.
Redemption
About 30 days after the grace period, when the name is deleted but only its last owner can still restore it, for a fee. If nobody does, it moves to pending delete.
Pending delete
The last stage before an expired name is released. Nobody can renew or restore it any more; once the registry releases it, anyone can register it.
Drop
The day an expired name leaves the registry and anyone can register it again. We give an exact day only on endings whose pending delete period we have measured, and only when we saw the name move from redemption into that stage.
Ask price
The price the current seller is asking today. It is where a negotiation starts, not what the name finally sells for.
Renewal
The yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.
List price
The price a registrar publishes for an ending, before any coupon or bundle. It is what anyone pays who simply adds the name to the cart.
Year 1
What a new domain costs to register for its first year. Registrars often lower it to win the sale, so it can be far below the renewal.
Transfer-in
What a registrar charges to bring a name you already own over from another registrar.
Renewal trap
A cheap first year followed by a renewal at least twice the first year and at least $10 more. The low price wins the sale, and the yearly fee afterwards is where the cost really is.
Cheapest renewal
The lowest yearly fee among the registrars we compare for an ending. Over several years it matters more than the first year.
Confirmed change
A registrar price that moved and still read the same on the next daily check. A price that moves once and comes back is never counted.
Promo price
A temporary first-year discount on an ending. The renewal that follows is billed at the registrar’s normal price.
Estimated value
A model’s estimate of what a name could sell for. It is an estimate and nothing more: never an offer, and never a price anyone has actually paid.
ROI
Return on investment. Here it is the room between the estimated value and the price, written as a percentage of the price, so names at very different prices can be compared.
Liquidity
How easily a name could be sold again, and how long that would take. A name many businesses might want moves faster than one with a single plausible buyer.
Brandability
How well a word works as a brand: easy to say, easy to spell from hearing it once, easy to remember, and free of awkward meanings.
Search volume
How many times a month people search for the word. It measures interest in the idea behind the name, not demand for the domain itself.
CPC
Cost per click: what advertisers pay for one click on this keyword. A high figure means businesses are already spending money to reach people who type the word.
WHOIS
The public record of who registered a domain and when. Most owner contact detail is hidden by privacy rules, but the dates are not.
RDAP
The modern replacement for WHOIS. Registries answer it with the same registration facts in a form built for machines to read.
DNS
The system that turns a domain name into the address of the machine serving the site. Its records also show whether a name runs a real site, an email service, or nothing at all.
Nameserver
The server that answers for a domain on the internet, telling browsers and mail where to go. Changing it moves the site or the mail to another host.
Backlinks
Links pointing at a site from other sites. Search engines read them as votes, so a name that once earned many of them arrives with a head start.
Domain rating
A 0 to 100 score from an SEO data provider, estimating how strong a site’s incoming links are next to every other site it measures.
Topical authority
How strongly search engines associate a site with one subject, built up from everything it has published about that subject over the years.
Spam score
A provider’s estimate of how likely a site is to be treated as spam, based on patterns it shares with sites that were already penalised.
Trademark
A registered right over a name inside one line of business. Owning a domain gives you no trademark, and a domain can collide with somebody else’s.
USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office, the public register searched to spot obvious trademark conflicts early. Searching it is a first check, never legal clearance.

Unique Domains features

What each part of the product is, and what it is for.

Screener
The main screen for finding one-word domains: the whole catalog in one searchable table, with the evidence behind every row.
Radar
A saved search or a naming brief that keeps running. It carries the brief, a deadline, your saved names, your finalists and a client review link, so you keep watching a market instead of rebuilding the same search.
Signals
What your Radars bring back: a new matching name, a price move, a status change, an expiry window closing.
Watchlist
A tracker for names you want to come back to, with your own tags and notes on each one.
Appraise
A value estimate for one name or a whole list, run through the appraisal sources you pick and plotted on one shared axis.
Analyse
The full decision report on one domain: the summary, what it really costs, the trademark check, reputation, past use, and where to buy it.

Ask AI about Unique Domains

Related pages