Domain name registration & search should be one of the first things you do when you go building a website. A good personal web hosting site will typically offer to do this for you, but in any event, you need to make sure that you do a search well before you start building the site itself, for a few different reasons.

Imaging

The last thing you need is to pay your artist to design your “Game Lovers dot com” gaming website banners only to find out that that name is already registered… to an adult website.

Copyrighting

You have to make sure that, beyond simply ensuring your domain name is free, that the name you are trying to use is, as well. It is not uncommon for companies to sue one another over what name belongs to who. Why spend money registering a website that it turns out you will not have the legal right to use when all is said and done?

Research

You need to know what kind of domain name is even worth registering. When people think of, let’s say, cigars, they are likely to search for terms like “cigar,” “tobacco,” “smoke” and so on. They are a lot less likely to remember that there’s a great cigar review site called “TheReviewBoard dot com”. Always go with a clear, catchy, coherent site name over a clever one. A little research now on keywords and popular search terms may save you a lot of time, money and headaches in the long run.

Your best bet is to simply have a lot of backups in mind. Assume that your first five or so choices will be taken, and your next five might be. The internet has been around for a while now, and people are having to try harder and harder to come up with new domain names. Sitting down and coming up with a list right now will save you a lot of frustration later on.