How to choose a domain name?

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How do you choose a domain name? Do you use firstnamelastname.com for your professional blog or do you keep that one for personal use?

I used to blog a lot, 1 domain with my name in it and 2 others with made up names, but I used my name on all the sites and when you looked me up I owned the first page in Google search and if I remember correctly at least half of the second page. My namesakes didn’t stand a chance. I loved it.

I got bored, stopped blogging, became annoyed with having to update my Wordpress blogs and removed them deliberately creating broken links and in a couple of months I had almost completely disappeared from Google. Now people find my namesakes and they come up to me saying “I saw your photos, nice work man” … they’re not mine, “lovely recipe you put online” … I can’t cook, “I didn’t knew you played in a band” … I don’t, “I am following you on instagram” … whut!, etc. It’s hilarious.

I want to start blogging again about coding and my progress without using my name, so I don’t want my name to show up in Google searches, but I want to be able to say, when necessary, that’s my site. Do you use keywords in your domainname or do you use a completely made up name?

Which TLD (top level domain) do you want for a blog about coding? Do you prefer .com, .net, .io, .tech, …, or your country code and why? Price?

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.com is always preferable, no matter what. New start-ups are gravitating towards .io and .tech to make themselves look more innovative and “in it”, but at the end of the day, it can’t beat .com. Let’s say your website is called amazingapp.io. Chances are unless they are visiting it from a hyperlink or search engine, they will remember it as amazingapp.com and visit there first.

And I think firstnamelastname.com is great for a personal website. But since that’s not what you want, I guess you should pick something that sounds both professional but also reflects yourself, or the content you are mostly going to be writing about.

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.com is from a commercial point of view still the best choice.
I guess it also depends on where you are living. Most (all of them?) companies in the USA have a .com, but in Europe most companies have a country code TLD, plural if they are active in more than one country or they use .eu. As far as individuals and organizations in Europe are concerned, most use their country code for TLD for personal and professional use except when they are active in more than one country. What the situation in Asia, Russia, Africa and Latin America is, I don’t know.

PS: How many people actually type in a url these days?