If someone already has registered the domain you are interested in you will probably need to choose another. If however the domain name you are interested in is the name of your company or relates to a particular product you sell it may be worth checking to see how the domain is currently being used. Type in the address into your web browser and check out the site. Occasionally you may find that there is just a "placeholder site" or that the site isn't being used. If this is the case it may be worth contacting the current owner of the web address to see if they would be willing to sell it. It's likely if you do this that you'll end up paying significantly more for the web address than if you simply chose another.
Very occasionally you may find that you have the right to dispute the ownership of a particular website address if it uses your company name or a trademark etc. This topic will be covered in another blog post.
To check out who currently owns a domain check the end of the web address to see if for example it is a ".com" address, a "co.uk" etc. If it contains a ".uk" you can check out it's registration details by going to www.nominet.org.uk . On the right hand side of the screen you'll see a small box entitled "WHOIS". Type in the web address into the box missing out the initial "www." - for example to check the BBC enter bbc.co.uk and then click onto Lookup. You'll typically find an address for the person or organisation who registered the domain and sometimes get an email address.
If the domain name ends in e.g. a ".com" or ".net" and doesn't contain a country code (e.g. uk for the United Kingdom or .es for Spain) then you should initially check the whois database. For the WHOIS database go to www.whois.net and enter the address into the box called domain lookup. Again miss out the "www." so for example to check out the www.barclays.com site enter "barclays" and then select ".com" from the drop down list. Click Lookup and it will come up with a message saying "sorry the domain is already taken". Below this message will be a link called "view WHOIS" (See who owns this domain). Click onto this link to view where the domain is registered to.
Sometimes the information may not be stored with WHOIS in which case you will generally find a link to the site where the details are stored.
