Naming a B2B SaaS turned out to look a lot like the search problems I deal with at work. There's a huge input set, a few hard constraints, and a pile of soft signals that are easy to overfit. I wanted a short brandable domain from an auction instead of a premium listing, so I set the hunt up as a pipeline: each stage is a filter or a manual check, and every count below comes from live auction data.
Snapshot: November 5, 2026, 03:07 UTC. Auctions change by the hour. Expect some of these prices to be higher and some lots to be closed by the time you read this.
Requirements and acceptance tests
The spec, written before I touched a single filter:
- a .com, .io or .ai for a B2B SaaS
- one or two words, with no digits and no hyphens
- a clean past, and no business still operating under the name
- an auction with enough time left for me to bid
- a budget that makes sense
- tech or startup backlinks as a nice-to-have, never as the goal
I also locked the acceptance tests in advance, since criteria written after you've seen the results tend to bend toward whatever showed up.
- Brandscore 70+ (a rating of how brandable the name itself is)
- KarmaScore 60+
- Moz Spam Score of 10 or lower
- Wayback history with no redirects, no 403 errors and no Asian-script pages
- none of the toxic categories: gambling, adult, crypto scams and the rest
- a past topic in tech, online tools or business services
- an auction end date between November 6 and 12
- no live product using the name
The query, layer by layer
I built one search in Karma.Domains and re-ran it after adding each layer, so I could see which constraint actually did the cutting. In pseudo-config form (this is my shorthand, not the tool's syntax):
market: auction lots ending Nov 5..12
name: tld in (.com, .io, .ai); words 1..2; length <= 12; no digits; no hyphens; brandscore >= 70
history: no redirects; no 403; no hieroglyphs; both toxic-category presets excluded
strength: karmascore >= 60; moz_spam_score <= 10
topic: past category in (Online Platforms & Tools, Business Services, Electronics & Technology)
Funnel output
| Step | Layer added | Domains remaining |
|---|---|---|
| A | All auctions ending Nov 5–12 | 10,000+ |
| B | .com/.io/.ai, 1–2 words, ≤12 chars, no digits/hyphens | 10,000+ |
| C | Brandscore 70+, clean Wayback history, toxic categories excluded | 10,000+ |
| D | KarmaScore 60+, Spam Score ≤10 | 1,535 |
| E | Tech and business past topics only | 472 |
| F | Auction still open on Nov 6–12 | 440 |
| G | Rows reviewed manually (sorted by bids, KarmaScore, Moz DA, Karma Metric) | 42 |
| H | Full reports opened | 9 |
| I | Finalists | 4 |
Rows A to C are flat because the result counter stops at 10,000, so all they tell you is that the pool is large. Short, clean, brandable names are easy to find on auction. The pool only starts shrinking once you ask for reputation. The strength layer took it to 1,535, the topic restriction to 472, and removing lots that end today left 440.
For the manual pass I sorted those 440 by bids, KarmaScore, Moz DA and Karma Metric and read 42 rows. Most failed in seconds. Some names still belonged to running brands (an e-signature tool, an events brand, an AI research project). Others had Arabic, Spanish or Indonesian pasts, or a crypto history. A big group had referring domains that appeared only in Semrush, which I read as noise in the link data. Nine lots earned a full report and four of those reached the final list.
False positives: three lots that passed every filter
These are worth more than the finalists as a lesson, because nothing in the metrics flagged them.
On the numbers, niha.io was the best result in the whole dataset: Brandscore 92, KarmaScore 100, Karma Metric 17, backlinks from google.com, apple.com and wikipedia.org, and a GoDaddy listing at $1 with 0 bids. Filters can't see what a name is doing away from its own domain. When I checked on November 4, the Niha digital business card app was still in the App Store and Google Play, selling paid subscriptions. A product that's still on sale means trademark exposure. There's a second failure mode too: a renewal by the current owner would just void the auction.
unlogged.io failed the same test. It had a Karma Metric of 25, Moz DA 23 and links from github.com, ycombinator.com and producthunt.com. The project is an open-source record-and-replay tool for Java, and its GitHub repositories and IntelliJ plugin still point to unlogged.io as their homepage, so the lapse looks accidental. An archive can prove that a domain's past is clean. It can't tell you whether somebody still depends on the name. This lot is also listed on nicsell, which doesn't show a start price.
manva.com broke on data quality. Bidding stood at $250 with 20 bids, yet 45 of its 211 archive snapshots are parking pages, the content changed topic 7 times, and the Karma Metric is 0. The link sources disagree wildly: Moz counts 463 referring domains, while Majestic finds 4 and gives it a Trust Flow of 0. Add a one-letter distance from Canva, and an auction that closes today, November 5, at 18:10 UTC.
The four finalists
gigagigs.com
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Auction | GoDaddy, $1, 0 bids, ends Nov 10, 19:44 UTC |
| Brandscore / KarmaScore / Karma Metric | 83 / 87 / 20 |
| Semrush AS / Ahrefs DR / Moz DA | 23 / 9 / 19 |
| Moz Spam Score, Majestic TF/CF | 10, 3/10 |
| Referring domains (Moz / Majestic / Semrush) | 169 / 14 / 1,403 |
| Wayback | 49 snapshots, 2022–2026, all English, all HTTP 200 |
GigaGigs ran a micro-tasking platform in Malaysia, and the archive shows its whole lifecycle. There's a working product from 2022 through 2025, then a "domain for sale" page, then a 2026 public notice that GigaGigs Sdn Bhd had stopped operating. For a brand name that's the best history you can ask for. The company shut down and announced it, so there's no renamed successor to collide with and nobody still trading under the name.
The donors are real startup press: pitchbook.com, startupblink.com, vulcanpost.com, owler.com, says.com, digitalnewsasia.com and marketingmagazine.com.my. Plain "GigaGigs" makes up 64.7% of the anchor sample, which is what you get when people simply name the company. The Spam Score of 10 sits exactly on my threshold, so I traced it to a cluster of scraper pages on zlutag.com, yelpad.com, mantaw.com and zomatt.com. Those are the standard auto-generated directories, and a disavow file handles them. Moz DA fell from 29 to 19, ordinary decay for a site that went dark.
Decision: take it, for gig, freelance, staffing or workforce software. "Gigs" is part of the name, which limits the products it can carry.
growmotely.com
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Auction | Dynadot, $69, 5 bids, ends Nov 6, 19:59 UTC (same lot on DropCatch and Gname) |
| Brandscore / KarmaScore / Karma Metric | 75 / 100 / 1 |
| Semrush AS / Ahrefs DR / Moz DA | 6 / 38 / 33 |
| Moz Spam Score, Majestic TF/CF | 1, 4/16 |
| Referring domains (Moz / Majestic / Semrush) | 232 / 106 / 2,252 |
| Wayback | 35 snapshots, 2022–2025, all English, all HTTP 200 |
This is the best link profile in the run. Growmotely was a remote-hiring marketplace based in Austin, and the donors match: weforum.org, entrepreneur.com, digitalocean.com, adp.com, sage.com, infoq.com, techtimes.com and a long tail of podcast hosts. In the anchors, "Growmotely" takes 41.3% and "growmotely.com" 21.9%. Most of the remainder are statistics other sites quoted from its research ("74% of professionals").
The weak points are decay and timing. Moz lists 77 deleted referring domains next to 232 live ones, so the profile is shrinking. A Karma Metric of 1 means link mass and content signals are close to zero after a long stretch offline, and Google returned no indexed pages. Public company trackers mark Growmotely as closed; it had announced a shutdown by December 2024.
Decision: reserve. For HR or remote-work software it's the strongest candidate, but it closes on November 6, possibly before this post reaches you.
molp.com
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Auction | DropCatch (private seller), $1,200, 32 bids, ends Nov 9, 20:00 UTC |
| Brandscore / KarmaScore / Karma Metric | 75 / 92 / 1 |
| Semrush AS / Ahrefs DR / Moz DA | 2 / 6 / 5 |
| Moz Spam Score, Majestic TF/CF | 0, 1/8 |
| Referring domains (Moz / Majestic / Semrush) | 18 / 6 / 1,706 |
| Wayback | 130 snapshots, 2016–2026, 104 English and 26 Slovenian, all HTTP 200 |
Four pronounceable letters on a .com. MOLP was a small SaaS for monitoring field teams, and its archive is a decade of uneventful snapshots: zero parking, zero risk tags. Link equity is minimal (failory.com, protopars.com, cocoasoft.com, acitygroup.com). Semrush claims 1,706 referring domains while Moz sees 18 and Majestic 6, which is the usual Semrush inflation.
Decision: only if the name is the actual requirement. 32 bids confirm the demand, the price will keep rising, and nearly everything you pay goes to four letters.
carrenet.com
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Auction | Dynadot, $59, 2 bids, ends Nov 6, 19:59 UTC (also on DropCatch and Gname) |
| Brandscore / KarmaScore / Karma Metric | 75 / 98 / 0 |
| Semrush AS / Ahrefs DR / Moz DA | 5 / 6 / 27 |
| Moz Spam Score, Majestic TF/CF | 5, 23/12 |
| Referring domains (Moz / Majestic / Semrush) | 201 / 22 / 2,239 |
| Wayback | 72 snapshots, 2019–2025, French |
Trust Flow above Citation Flow is unusual at this price, and the donors explain it: sugarcrm.com, clubic.com, developpez.com, edenred.fr, relationclientmag.fr, decideo.fr and goodfirms.co. Carrénet was a French CRM consultancy. The archive records its move to Cloudity, and Google still shows a Cloudity page title for this domain: "Études de cas - Découvrez nos témoignages clients" (in English, "Case studies: read our customer testimonials").
Decision: reserve, either for a CRM product aimed at France or as a 301 donor. It's a weak English brand, and the company behind it still exists under another name.
Picking one
Scored against the criteria I fixed at the start, gigagigs.com is the only finalist that passes all of them. Its links come from real startup press, its company closed in public instead of renaming or continuing to sell, the auction has five days left, and the opening price is $1 (GoDaddy, 0 bids, ends Nov 10, 19:44 UTC).
Each of the others fails on one axis. growmotely.com has better links, but it closes in a day and a half and is already decaying. molp.com is the better name at ten times my budget. carrenet.com is French, and its previous company is still operating.
Post-acquisition tasks
If the auction goes my way, these come first:
- Run a quick trademark search for "GigaGigs" in each market I plan to sell in.
- Write a disavow file covering the scraper cluster (zlutag.com, yelpad.com, mantaw.com, zomatt.com and similar).
- Ship a real product page on gig and freelance work, the same topic as before, so the press links still make sense.
- Keep the old closure notice off the new site and avoid implying any link to the former company.
Rules I'd run on any auction domain
- Write the success criteria before the first search and don't loosen them afterwards.
- Treat Semrush referring-domain counts as a hint until Moz and Majestic confirm them.
- Parse the archive for events. A published shutdown is a green flag; a rebrand tells you the old company is still running somewhere.
- Search the name away from the domain: app stores, GitHub, LinkedIn, product directories.
- Check every listing of a lot, because the same domain can sit on several platforms with different end times.
- Inspect the anchor distribution. The company name at the top is the normal pattern, and one money keyword at the top is a red flag.
- Measure decay. Deleted referring domains and a falling DA show how quickly the value is draining.
- Drop any lot whose end time falls before you can bid, whatever its metrics say.
Snapshot taken November 5, 2026, 03:07 UTC. Auctions change by the hour, so some of these lots will have ended or repriced by the time you read this.
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