Example.com alternative

Question

Let's say you want to provide an example url in documentation somewhere. The correct thing to do is use example.com, since that is the defined location for such things and anything else you come up with is likely to be actually registered somewhere and serving up who knows what to your readers.

My questions is, what do you do if you need to provide 2 contrasting examples? The best I've seen is site1.example.com and site2.example.com, but that doesn't always cut it. Any other ideas?

Update:
Accepted @Yuval's answer, since it is the most technically correct response. However, due to forces beyond my control I'm actually going with Jekke's (tempuri.com).

Answer 1

You can also use tempuri.org, like is used in many XML-based examples.

Answer 2

Use example.net and example.org.

Per RFC 2606, they are all reserved (Wikipedia summary).

Answer 3

I'm wondering if you can squeeze in some character into the URL that would make it invalid if cut and pasted into a browser. A little like 555-XXXX numbers in movies.

Answer 4

There is also example.net and example.org. If you need another, I don't see a problem with using a domain you already control.

Answer 5

RFC 2606 also reserves the TLD (Top-Level Domain) ".example" so you can use "foobar.example", "something.example", "stackoverflow.example", etc.

Unfortunately, all these names include the string "example" and therefore are not distinguishable enough in documentation. I hope there will be an update of RFC 2606 one day, with more names.