How to find domains related to trending keywords

NFTs, DAOs, Metaverse. People would have stared at you and scratched their heads if you said these words (or acronyms) a few years ago. But now, they are popular words thanks to the emergence of new technologies and trends.

When new terms become popular, it can create demand for domain names that contain the words. This creates an opportunity for savvy domain investors who get in on the action early by registering relevant domain names.

For example, PlanetNFT.com was registered in January 2021 and sold for $49,999 in August 2021. NFTDex.com was registered in February 2020 and sold for $25,000 in May 2021. Dao.finance was registered in September 2020 and sold for $9,888 in February 2021.

Finding trending words

The first trick to registering valuable domains before they’re snapped up is to keep an eye out for trending words. 

Here are some places to find trending keywords:

• Google Trends – see trending search terms on Google search. Just be careful not to register domains containing trademarks, as a lot of the trending searches are brand names.

• Twitter – follow people on the cutting edge of technology and new ideas to look for hot buzzwords.

• Trade and tech publications – keywords are often popularized in niche communities and expand from there. Research journals, academic forums, and niche technology sites are great places to hunt for keywords.

Of course, finding available domains for a hot word can be difficult. You might need to register domains before the buzzword goes mainstream, and there’s always the risk the word flames out and is no longer popular. At the same time, if you wait for the word to show up in a mainstream publication like The Wall Street Journal, it might be too late. So strike early, but don’t go crazy registering too many domains for the latest buzzword. 

Finding corresponding domains

So you have a few buzzwords you think are catching on. Now, how do you find relevant domains to register?

One of the coolest tools is right here at Namecheap: Beast Mode. Beast Mode search makes it easy to search across hundreds of top level domains and try word combinations.

Here’s how to use Beast Mode to find relevant domains for your keyword.

1. Enter the keyword. You can enter up to 5,000 keywords in Beast Mode, but I recommend doing one at a time for this purpose.
2. Select which top level domains (e.g., .com, .xyz) you want to search. You can select all 500+ of them or select categories like finance or audio & visual if those are relevant to your keyword.
3. Choose prefixes/suffixes to add to your word. This is where the magic happens if the keyword you like is already registered in most extensions. Here, you can add words to the beginning or end of the keyword, such as get[keyword] or buy[keyword], and search across all top level domains.

Evaluating domains

Once you have a list of domains available to register, you’ll want to take a step back and think about which ones have the most potential to resell in the future. 

For example, a keyword related to technology probably doesn’t make sense with a .hockey top level domain. (I say probably because eth.hockey sold last year. Eth is short for Ethereum, a blockchain. That’s a head-scratcher.)

Again, to reiterate a warning: it’s possible your trending keyword won’t trend for long. So it’s wise to start with a handful of registrations until you’re sure the word is going to enter the popular lexicon.

Have fun

You can get sucked into finding new keywords and corresponding domain names. Beast Mode makes searching endless combinations super fast. It might even be addicting. 

So go find a hot new term, play around with Beast Mode, and find some new domains!