Because domain names are selling at such a rapid rate (over 10,000 per day!)many people choose to buy and save their domain names even though they have not yet built the web site associated with the name. this is what's known as domain name parking.

Here are some facts that show why you are having trouble finding a domain...

• In 1995, 100,000 domain names were registered. Today there are over 30 million.
• There are over 50,000 possible one, two and three-letter domain names – ALL have been registered, even those that don't make sense (ie. z, 11, chz, e1q, f-4, etc.) Many of these are owned but not in use (i.e. parked). At auction, these short domains often sell for thousands.
• Every single "all a's" domain name from a.com to aaa..aaa.com (63 characters) has been registered.
• 97% of the words in Webster's dictionary have been registered.
• The largest English dictionary has about 290,000 entries, but only 200,000 words are in use today. An average person has a vocabulary of only 15 - 20,000 words and uses 2000 words in a week's conversation. When you consider that 31 million domain names have already been registered, you can see that good domain names are hard to find, and what' left are going fast!

Some people looking to steal domain names, or just make money, mail out official looking domain renewal notices designed to trick the customer into transferring their domain to another registrar and pay a fee that they didn't need to.