Domain hacks explained: kern.ing, del.icio.us and friends

What are some famous domain hacks?

del.icio.us was the early one. flic.kr, bit.ly, youtu.be, instagr.am and t.co followed. They worked because they were pronounced as the word, looked clever in writing, and were short enough to type.

Newer generic extensions opened up hundreds more. Anything ending in -ing has .ing. .io finishes “stud.io” and “rad.io”. .ink, .ist, .ly, .me, .co, .ai and .art all finish words.

Not every promising ending is usable. .er would finish a great many English words, but it is Eritrea’s country code: IANA lists Eritrea Telecommunication Services Corporation as its manager and publishes no registry website or public registration process, so it isn’t an extension you can plan a brand on.

How do I find a domain hack?

Start from the words you’d want and look at their endings.

• Take every word you’d consider and list its last two, three and four letters.
• Match those against extensions that are open for general registration. Confirm openness before you get attached: an ending that exists is not the same as an ending you can buy.
• Split the word at the dot and check the label at the registry. “kern.ing” is a lookup for “kern” in the .ing registry.
• Say it aloud. If you have to explain where the dot goes, it’s a weaker hack.

Some tools generate these automatically. Webault writes them as one of its four name shapes — “cuts” — and checks each at the registry for its extension.

What are the risks?

Country codes. Many of the best endings are country-code extensions, run by national authorities rather than under ICANN’s registry contracts. Their rules, pricing and dispute processes are their own, and they can change. .ly is Libya’s. If your brand lives on one, know who runs it and what their published policy says.

Restricted extensions. Some endings exist but aren’t open: eligibility rules, or a registry that doesn’t accept public registrations. A restricted extension you can’t register is just a word.

Spoken use. “kern dot ing” needs a beat of explanation the first time. If your brand will be said on podcasts and phone calls more than it’s typed, weigh that.

Email. hello@kern.ing works fine, but some older web forms still reject unfamiliar extensions. Rare now, not zero.

When is a hack the right call?

When the word is the brand, the hack is clean, and the extension is open and stable. It’s ideal for tools, studios, newsletters and anything with a name that’s also a verb or a noun people already use.

It’s the wrong call when the split does the work the name should be doing. If “kern.ing” only reads well because of the dot, and “kern” means nothing to your audience, the hack is a trick rather than a name. Run the brief and compare the cut against the compound before deciding.

Plainly

A domain hack finishes a word with its extension. It’s short and memorable, often free, and depends on an extension you should check is open and stable before you build on it.

What Webault does about this

“Cuts” are one of the four shapes Webault writes from a brief. Each is checked at the registry for its extension, and hacks on extensions that aren’t open to everyone are never proposed, because they aren’t among the 532.

Questions

Related reading

• How to find an available .com in 2026 — the shapes still free in .com, and how to check them properly.
• Does your domain extension affect SEO? — what Google actually says about generic extensions, keywords and country codes.
• How to write a one-sentence naming brief — what belongs in one sentence, with five keyword lists rewritten.