Domains are the home addresses of the World Wide Web. Each and every internet site can be reached under a globally unique, explicit address con­sist­ing of a domain name and a top-level domain (TLD):

www.do­main­name.tld

These addresses are de­cent­rally assigned through a network in­form­a­tion centre (NIC). This issuing agency is re­spons­ible for al­loc­at­ing domains within a defined territory of the DNS (domain name system). The DNS is struc­tured hier­arch­ic­ally, so when it comes to the top-level domain, .com, for example, everything that is located to the left of this top-level domain is subject to the rules of a cor­res­pond­ing NIC, which in this case is the company, Verisign.

So how do busi­nesses and private in­di­vidu­als obtain the rights of .com domains? Re­gis­tries like Verisign offer TLDs at regulated prices to domain name re­gis­trars (e.g. GoDaddy.com), which in turn go on to sell these acquired domains to private in­di­vidu­als and busi­nesses. However, such domain re­gis­tra­tions are only possible for domain names that haven’t been claimed yet. Those who are in­ter­ested in pur­chas­ing an already-occupied domain name need to find its current owner and offer them a price for it. We’ll show you just how this process works in the following para­graphs.

Domain Checker
  • .uk
  • .co.uk
  • .com
  • .org
  • .online
  • .net
  • .uk
  • .co.uk
  • .com
  • .org
  • .online
  • .net

Re­gis­ter­ing a domain

Re­gis­ter­ing a domain is a quite simple un­der­tak­ing and only takes a few minutes of your time. Once you’ve thought of an ap­pro­pri­ate domain name, the first step involves checking whether or not the address is available. Domain providers often have a cor­res­pond­ing search mask set up spe­cific­ally with this task in mind. After a search is executed, results will appear in­dic­at­ing the status of the desired domain name’s avail­ab­il­ity; generally al­tern­at­ive proposals are also suggested in case your preferred domain name and top-level domain have already been assigned to a different owner. Domain al­loc­a­tion operates on a first-come, first-served basis, making succinct and catchy word com­bin­a­tions under popular top-level domains, like .com or .co.uk, a highly sought after commodity. In 2013, ICANN (Internet Cor­por­a­tion for Assigned Names and Numbers) in­tro­duced a series of new top-level domains (TLDs) to combat issues arising from such scarcity. Once a re­gis­tra­tion for an available domain is submitted with the registrar, an ap­plic­a­tion is submitted to the NIC re­spons­ible for managing the desired domain’s cor­res­pond­ing top-level domain. Here, an ex­haust­ive register is ad­min­istered; this ‘WHOIS’ database is where all user data, including contact in­form­a­tion, is stored. Even domain users that have assumed complete re­spons­ib­il­ity for all content appearing under a given address are not con­sidered to be domain owners. Instead, domain re­gis­tra­tions are based on rental or lease contracts con­tain­ing yearly or monthly fees that go on to help finance technical in­fra­struc­ture main­ten­ance. Any profit that a user makes with their web project listed under such a domain remains with them. 

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Buying a domain

While we often speak of buying domains, what’s actually being bought and sold are the rights to use these domain names; it would be more accurate to describe these trans­ac­tions as rentals or leases. A domain is ‘sold’ when a re­gistered domain owner transfers their rights of use to a ‘buyer’. This, however, doesn’t make them a domain owner. The buyer is merely trans­ferred the rights and re­spons­ib­il­it­ies from the previous owner, including the monthly or yearly user fees. In order to purchase a domain’s rights of use, per­spect­ive buyers first need to locate the desired domain’s current owner. For sites with popular top-level domains like .com, .org, or .co.uk, etc., owner in­form­a­tion can be found through ICANN’s WHOIS search. Al­tern­at­ively, private re­gis­trars, such as IONOS, also offer services that help users zero in on this in­form­a­tion. But it’s not always the buyers who take the ini­ti­at­ive; com­mer­cial providers spe­cial­ised in domain trade often offer their contact in­form­a­tion on the home pages of available domains. This phe­nomen­on is known as domain parking. Ad­di­tion­ally, there are numerous platforms available that link pro­spect­ive buyers and sellers with one another. Once both buyer and seller have agreed upon a price and payment method, a purchase agreement is made. This should always be in written form and include the form­al­it­ies necessary for the trans­ac­tion: buyers are then required to register them­selves in their re­spect­ive NIC WHOIS databases as the new owners. This requires a signed trade request form to be handed in.

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