The firm is called Sold, but finding it isn’t easy

If you use a generic name like Sold and don’t own Sold.com, it might be harder for people to find you.

TechCrunch is reporting today regarding Sold, a firm that apparently make selling your used stuff easy. The firm has raised seed funding from Google Ventures, Greylock, and a couple other groups.

Which is all well and good. But the firm’s domain name is usesold.com.

Sold.com, where I first went to find out more regarding the comapany, is owned by Auction.com and is used for real estate.

Now, I’ll cut Sold some slack here. Right now it’s an app, so people who want it will often find it via the Apple or Android marketplace. And GetSold.com, which many app makers would have chosen, is by now taken. SoldApp.com is also taken.

But usesold.com? At first when I saw it I thought it was something like u sold or us sold.

If you name yourself something generic and common like this, you’re going to run into some problems.

First, it will be difficult to trademark and protect your brand. Second, if people want to find your website, following trying Sold.com they’ll probably go to Google. Ranking for something generic like “sold” on Google isn’t easy. To its credit, the firm seems to rank well on Google for the term “sold”. But it’s hard to rely on that.

I think the firm would have been better off creating a brandable name that still brings up the same connotation. It would be easier for people to find them.

You could argue that this is an example of why we need domains like sold.app. Yet I suspect Sould would have had to purchase sold.app from someone else (maybe even the registry), so it’s not like it would be freely available. Also, what if the firm pivots to an online marketplace in the future? Then it’s pigeon-holed into an .app domain.