How important is the uniqueness of your domain name?

Posted by Corey on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by Corey
Published on 2011-01-28T03:35:55Z Indexed on 2011/01/28 23:39 UTC
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I've finally come up with a domain name that I like and is available. The name is nonsensical and doesn't translate into anything meaningful in any language, as far as I know.

It's something like "FOOBARite". (Don't steal that!)

I'm wondering about a few search issues. Results-wise, searching for it in Google currently returns about 15k results, none of which are relevant (dead Twitter pages, various unpopular online handles, and botched french translations).

However, Google starts off with a spelling suggestion, which removes a letter. ("Did you mean: FOOBARit?")

That returns about 250k results for several different and unrelated websites/organizations by that name. One is some technology provider, another is a sign-language organization, another is the name of a font... None of them seem particularly popular, there's not that much activity on any of those pages.

Anyway, the two are pronounced differently, they're just a letter off. Should I go with my idea or is this one-letter variation going to cause me problems? If my site becomes ranked well enough, will Google's spelling suggestion go away? I don't want users to search for my site name and be told they've spelled it wrong.

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