If you haven’t registered your own name as a domain name, what are you waiting for? Chances are someone else has the same name as you — check here for the U.S. — so do you really want Mr. or Ms. Same Name the neo-Nazi or adult film star claiming your domain?
I checked the availability of domain names for some fellow grad students and well-known professors and I was surprised to find that almost all of them were unclaimed. These people put a lot of energy into building their reputation (and universities invest thousands in them), but they’re too modest (?) to buy their own domain name.
Meanwhile, anyone can snatch their name, set up shop, and leave people wondering what they’re up to in their free time. One of my sociologist friends is apparently moonlighting as a make-up artist, and who knew that Robert Putnam was practicing law in California?
Register now
Google your name and see who you’re up against, or better yet, head over to a domain registration site and see if your name is available, especially as a .com, .net, or .org. (Get all three if you can.)
In the past I used GoDaddy to register domain names but now I use 1and1.com because there’s no additional cost to register privately, which prevents your address and telephone number from being listed online. The total cost is just $5.99 a year.
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7 comments ↓
Lawrence Summers spells his name with a ‘u’, unless you weren’t making a reference to the former president of Harvard. I own the .org, .com, and .net domains for my name, and have been trying to decide which I should have my primary netresidence going forward.
Shoot, of course you’re right, Jeremy. I’ve edited the post using my backup example.
I think you made a good move by getting all three domains–I did the same thing. One suggestion is that until you decide which one to make primary (and I think it makes sense to stick with .com), you can have the .org and .net addresses forward people to your .com site. Currently, your .net and .org sites are basically blank. There’s probably no big gain from forwarding, but it’s another way to have people end up at the site you want them to find.
Yeah, I intend to set up the forward, but I’ve been generally lackadaisical about my web presence which is strange considering how continuously I am online.
I didn’t bother getting .net and .org, because back then they still cost $35/yr and I didn’t quite see the point. Having a vanity domain name is certainly nice, but what really matters is whether there is a specific Web site to go along with it that has some juice.
I agree about having a website to accompany the name, Eszter. That’s basically Part 2 of this post. First, stake your claim, then put something up, otherwise Google won’t pay much attention (and neither will anyone else).
Since i saw this post come across my feed, i had been thinking that i should go grab at least the .com version of my name (what with it being shared by a famous cricketer and apparently an aspiring middle-school musician at the moment). Today i finally got around to doing it (also through 1&1, who incidentally has been doing my hosting for about 4 years now), and found out that i actually had a free domain to register with my hosting account, which i wasn’t even using. Score!
That’s great, Jimi, and I like how you’ve already got that address set up so it forwards people to the Selected Works site (which I had never heard of before, but looks great).
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