Registering a Domain with Google Domains

A quick tutorial demonstrating how to register a domain name using Google Domains.

This video demonstrates how to Google Domains to register a domain name and considerations for how to choose a domain name. You can find the video transcript and additional notes underneath the video. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions, or if we need to make an update to the video.

A few notes:

• If you have multiple Google accounts, be sure to log into the correct one (the one you want to use to manage your domains). It’s easiest to manage if they’re all in one place. You can login to Google Domains by going to domain.google.com (or alternatively just google something like “domain name registration google” and it should be one of the first results.
• It’s also easy to transfer previously registered domains to your Google account. Just go to domains.google and click Transfer. Follow the prompts to complete the domain transfer.

Video Transcript:
Davey here from Davey & Krista where we help creative service based businesses build brands that book. Today we’re chatting about finding and registering a domain name using Google Domains. Now to get to Google Domains, all you have to do is Google, Google Domains. It’s going to be the first result, or you can go to domains.google and you can get to it that way. Now, there are all sorts of ways to register a domain name, but we love Google for a couple of reasons.

First, a lot of people already have a Google account, so any domain that you register here is going to be tied to that Google account and it’s just one less password and username to remember.

The second reason is that Google Domains, it’s just really easy to use. It’s intuitively built, so the things that you’re trying to find are probably located in the in the places that you go to find them.

And third, it’s even easier to add Google email and the rest of the Google suite tools if you register your domain name through Google Domains. And the G-Suite, the Google-Suite are tools that we use in our business everyday. The Google-Suite just gives you access to Google docs and Google calendar and Google sheets and all the other Google tools, and it’s tied right to your business.

So two other considerations before we actually find a domain name: First, your domain name and your business name don’t have to be the same. They absolutely should be related. Your domain name should absolutely be recognizable and related to your business name in some way. But here’s an example: Our wedding photography business, our photography business is located at kristaajones.com, but our business name is Krista A. Jones Photography. And the reason that we didn’t use kristaajonesphotography[dot]com is it’s just too many characters for people to type in. But kristaajones.com still recognizable, yet at the same time, shorter.

Another consideration is what ending you’re going to use. You don’t have to use.com, so for your business there might even be a more appropriate ending to use or something that’s a little bit more fun. So for instance, if you’re a photographer, you can use [dot]photography or you can use [dot]studio. Now keep in mind that if you notice that X, Y, Z photo, you’re really trying to get xyzphoto[dot]com because that’s the name of your business and you notice that it’s gone. You could pick up xyzphoto[dot]co, but you might not want to do that. You might think about renaming your business because XYZphoto[dot]com and XYZphoto[dot]co are so similar that there’s probably going to be some confusion there, but that’s for a whole another discussion.

The point is that you can choose from different endings here… and the list goes on and on.

Alright, now let’s get to actually finding a domain name. All you do from the main screen here, just type in the domain name that you’re looking for. Just as an example, I’ve used WXYZphotography[dot]com because I know it’s available. So if I press enter here I’m going to be taken to a results page that’s similar to the page we were just on. So here you’re going to see the results. This is not only going to let you know whether or not that domain is available, but it’s going to give you various variations of that domain. So you can see down here WXYZ[dot]photography is also available. Because it’s a premium domain, it’s a little bit more expensive then [dot]com, but what you’re going to want to do is just find the domain name that you’re looking for.

You can browse the different endings by just tabbing over here to all endings. And one thing that I’m going to recommend is that if you pick up WXYZphotography[dot]com, you might consider picking up WXYZ[dot]photography and WXYZphotography[dot]photos just so that others can’t pick it up and you kind of guard your business name and your domain name that way. If you don’t, it’s not a huge deal, but something that we generally recommend people doing and you don’t have to go crazy here. Like you’re not going to pick up every single potential variation of your domain name, but you probably want to pick up two or three of the main ones. So once you find a domain name, all you do is add it to your cart, and go through the payment process.

And then once you’ve done that, it will bring you to a page like this. And anytime you go to domains[dot]Google[dot]com, if you’re logged into your Google account, the one that you use to purchase the domain with, it’s going to bring you a page like this. And you can see all the domains that you own. You can, you could build a website right from there, but you could also set up email, access DNS, access your settings from here as well. And when you go to actually launch your Showit website you’re gonna wanna make sure that you know where this DNS panel is for sure. So that’s really all there is to it. If you have a question, leave that question in the comments of this video and we’ll make sure that we get back to you. If you want to request a tutorial on something, you can also let us know by using the form on our website at daveyandkrista.com/showit. If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe so that you are kept up to date with all of the latest videos from daveyandkrista.com.