Link: What to do when the domain name you want is gone
By Joshua on December 04 2007
Finding domain names is getting harder by the day and is amongst the most frustrating things a person can do. You come up with a brilliant name that is going to be fabulous for marketing and branding, you start to get attached to it, then you search and find that either an obscure company or nasty arbitrage site is already there squatting away your lovely idea.
Collis has some excellent suggestions for finding a viable domain name. One which he didn't mention that may work for local businesses is to include your state or city in the domain. For instance pizzaplacemeridian.com.