What is domain scoring?
Not all domains are equal. A short, memorable .com with a strong keyword is worth far
more than a long hyphenated string on an obscure TLD. Dotily's scoring engine quantifies this — giving
every domain a 0–100 score so you can prioritize your monitoring list.
The 5 signal categories
The score is a weighted average of over 20 individual rules, grouped into 5 categories. Rules that don't apply to a given domain (e.g. lock status on an available domain) abstain rather than penalize.
1. Basic structure
Length, TLD, and character purity (no digits, no hyphens). Shorter domains and trusted TLDs
(.com, .io, .ai, .co) score highest.
2. Trust signals
For already-registered domains: age since registration, remaining time until expiry, active DNS (A/NS records), transfer-lock status, email readiness (MX + SPF + DMARC), and DNSSEC. A domain that's been continuously registered for years with live DNS and a transfer lock reads as more established than a fresh, unconfigured registration.
3. Keyword strength
Does the domain contain high-value words — finance, health, tech, legal — or match a real dictionary word? We maintain a weighted keyword list plus an English dictionary; exact matches score highest, partial matches contribute proportionally.
4. Pattern quality
Penalizes leetspeak substitutions (0 for o), awkward hyphen placement,
spelled-out numbers, and IDN/punycode encoding — patterns that read as spammy or hard to communicate
verbally.
5. Linguistic clarity
Is it pronounceable? Easy to spell? We score syllable structure, vowel ratio, double letters, keyboard flow, repetition, and word-likeness against a trigram model trained on real English. Random strings score near zero.
How to use the score
Sort your domain list by score descending. Focus manual review on the top tier — these are the domains worth prioritizing when a drop window opens. Low-score domains can still be worth catching for specific reasons, but the score cuts down noise fast.