I’m Mostapha. I buy and sell names from Morocco. The useful test is still a café: I say the name once. If the other person writes a different email, the name lost. Psychologists call the easy version processing fluency; the brain likes what it can process without work. Million-dollar headlines are a different article: what record sales actually show. They are outliers. Your bid is not Voice.com.
The Domain Value Checker has lines for memorability and pronunciation because those are the machine’s attempt at this test. They are not a substitute for your mouth. How we score. FAQ. Letters plus a buyer: what actually determines value.
What “sticks” usually shares
- You can say it on a noisy street.
- Two people spell the same string.
- It could sit on a card without a lecture.
- It does not need a hyphen to be understood.
That is brand as a human object, not as a keyword. Naming a company: startup naming and a name that can still work after you grow. The U.S. Small Business Administration still starts with a name you can actually use.
If the name only works as a search query, you are holding SEO costume. Intent mismatch: the metric will not save it. Extra spellings so “someone finds you”: two names, one business.
What fails even when a tool is warm
Clever vowels. Digit-for-letter tricks. Hyphenated leftovers. Generator piles that pleased a model at 1 a.m.: an AI brand is not automatically worth buying. Fashion suffixes hoping the ending will do the memory work: a new extension is a bet. An AI yield on an unsayable string: not a reason to buy.
Marks still beat fluency. A name that “rolls off the tongue” and collides with a brand is a complaint: WIPO UDRP, our guide. History still beats a pretty sound: snapshots first.
Decision
- Say it. If they cannot repeat it, delete the row.
- Checker — read memory and pronunciation, not only dollars.
- History and marks. Then one ask: before you buy / before you sell.
Keep the Google row. “Why some sell for millions” was the old bait. The useful psychology is smaller: can a stranger carry the name across a room?