[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":63},["ShallowReactive",2],{"journal-is-that-business-name-taken":3},{"slug":4,"title":5,"pageTitle":6,"metaDescription":7,"heading":8,"lead":9,"displayDate":10,"publishedAt":11,"category":12,"readTime":13,"heroImage":14,"body":17,"cta":56,"next":60},"is-that-business-name-taken","Is that business name taken? How to actually check","Is that business name taken? How to actually check · Maarifa","Searching a name says nothing about whether it is free. Three registers decide it, and they do not talk to each other. How to check all three in ten minutes.","Is that business name taken? \u003Cem>How to actually check.\u003C\u002Fem>","You searched it, nothing came up, and you assumed it was free. Searching is not checking. What actually decides whether a name is yours, and how to find out properly before you print anything.","Sep 2026","2026-09-24","Practical","4 min",{"url":15,"alt":16},"\u002Fphotos\u002Fshop-sign.webp","An OPEN sign hanging in a shop window",[18,21,24,26,28,31,33,35,38,40,42,44,46,48,50,52,54],{"type":19,"html":20},"p","You have got a name. You typed it into Google, maybe checked whether the .com loads, saw nothing much, and decided it was free. Almost everybody does this, and it is the wrong test — not a rough version of the right one, a different question entirely.",{"type":22,"text":23},"h2","Searching is not checking",{"type":19,"html":25},"\u003Cspan class=\"lead-in\">A search engine indexes what is published.\u003C\u002Fspan> A register records what is claimed. Those are not the same set, and the gap between them is where people lose names they thought they had.",{"type":19,"html":27},"A domain can be registered for years and never show a website — it just sits there, invisible to a search, and entirely unavailable to you. A company can be registered with no site, no social account and no footprint at all. Somebody can hold a trade mark on a word and publish nothing whatsoever. In every one of those cases you will search, find nothing, and be wrong.",{"type":29,"html":30},"blockquote","Finding nothing when you search proves one thing only: \u003Cspan class=\"i-accent\">that nobody has published anything.\u003C\u002Fspan> It says nothing at all about who owns the name.",{"type":22,"text":32},"Three registers, and they do not talk to each other",{"type":19,"html":34},"\u003Cspan class=\"lead-in\">This is the part that catches people.\u003C\u002Fspan> A name is not one thing you can check once. It sits in three separate systems, run by different organisations, that do not consult one another and can quite happily disagree.",{"type":36,"html":37},"html","\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;flex-direction:column;gap:14px;padding:4px 0\">\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">01\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The domain.\u003C\u002Fem> Held by domain registries, one per ending — whoever runs .com is not whoever runs .co.ke. Registering a domain gives you an address and nothing else. It is not a claim on the name.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">02\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The company name.\u003C\u002Fem> Held by your national register — the Business Registration Service in Kenya, Companies House in the UK. It stops somebody else registering a company under a confusingly similar name in that country, and stops at that country's border.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">03\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The trade mark.\u003C\u002Fem> A separate register again, and the only one of the three that is really about owning a name in a line of business. A registered company name is not a trade mark, and people conflate the two constantly.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003C\u002Fdiv>",{"type":19,"html":39},"You can hold all three, any two, or just one. The unpleasant version is the common one: you register the company, build the brand, and discover two years in that somebody had the trade mark the whole time. The register you skipped is the one that decides.",{"type":22,"text":41},"What “available” means on a domain",{"type":19,"html":43},"\u003Cspan class=\"lead-in\">Do not use whether the site loads.\u003C\u002Fspan> A registered domain with nothing built on it looks exactly like a free one in a browser — a blank page, an error, a parking page full of adverts. All three mean taken.",{"type":19,"html":45},"The registries publish their own record of what is registered, and that record is the answer. Ask it and you get one of three honest results: the registry has a record, so the name is gone; the registry says it has never heard of it, so it is genuinely free; or the registry did not answer, in which case you know nothing yet and should not pretend otherwise. That third state is real and worth respecting — some registries simply will not talk to automated checks.",{"type":22,"text":47},"How to check properly, in about ten minutes",{"type":36,"html":49},"\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;flex-direction:column;gap:14px;padding:4px 0\">\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">01\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The domains, against the registry.\u003C\u002Fem> Check the endings you would actually use, not just the .com — for most small businesses the local ending matters more than the .com does.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">02\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The company register for where you trade.\u003C\u002Fem> Both have a free name search. If you will trade in two countries, that is two searches.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">03\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The trade mark register.\u003C\u002Fem> The one most people skip and the one that bites hardest. Search the word, and search things that sound like it.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Cdiv style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;align-items:baseline\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--serif);font-style:italic;font-size:24px;color:var(--accent)\">04\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan style=\"font-family:var(--body);font-size:19px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--prose)\">\u003Cem>The handles, by hand.\u003C\u002Fem> Instagram, TikTok and X refuse automated checks, so nothing can do this for you honestly. Thirty seconds each, typed into the app.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003C\u002Fdiv>",{"type":19,"html":51},"The first of those four is the slowest to do by hand and the easiest to automate, so we built \u003Ca href=\"\u002Fname-check\" class=\"tlink\">a free name check\u003C\u002Fa> that asks six registries at once — .com, .co.ke, .co.uk, .studio, .org and .io — and reports each as taken, free, or could not verify, rather than guessing at the ones that did not answer. It checks one handle, GitHub, and says plainly that it cannot check the rest. No email, nothing stored, and you can close the tab and never speak to us.",{"type":19,"html":53},"It does not check company registers or trade marks. Nothing that runs in a few seconds honestly can, and a tool that implied otherwise would be worse than no tool.",{"type":19,"html":55},"One honest caveat: none of this is legal advice, and for a name you intend to build a decade on, an hour with somebody who does trade marks for a living is money well spent. But most names die long before that — they die because the .co.ke went two weeks ago while somebody was still deciding. The ten-minute version is what stops that, and you can do it yourself this afternoon.",{"heading":57,"body":58,"button":59},"Found out it is taken?","A name that is free, memorable and actually sounds like you is the first piece of brand work, and it is the part we enjoy most. Tell us what you are building.","Help me name it →",{"slug":61,"title":62},"website-or-social-page","Do you need a website, or is a social page enough?",1790271834325]