What's in a domain name?

While Google bombs and sites that operate as giant search engine optimization hacks can make it difficult to find what you're looking for on some search engines, sometimes it's even harder to get to the page of a product or service you saw a promotion for while out and about.

The sad truth is that nearly all of the good domain names are taken. We see it in the products we look at every day that have slight misspellings, missing vowels, or letters tacked on before, after, or sometimes in between regular words. These names can be incredibly hard to remember when it comes time to market a service, and in Japan companies are starting to realize that.

To compensate, companies are placing resources into making their official home page the top search result instead of going for the easy, and often times, expensive domain name. On a trip to Japan, blogger Cabel Maxfield Sasser noticed a barrage of ads for sites that did away with a long form domain (such as http://www.washingtonpost.com/) and instead put the company name in a search box. Of course part of this is because of Japan's phone-savvy culture, where even on the best phone keypads or mobile browsers, typing in extra letters can be a pain.

One of the domain-less ads seen on Japanese public transport.

(Credit: www.cabel.name)

Sasser has posted a pictorial of the ads on his blog, many of which feature a mouse cursor on the search button of a made-up search box. In my own experience I've seen enough URLs of pretty great start-ups that end in .net, .us, or other odd .com names that I know would confuse my friends and family if they tried to type it into their browser's navigation box. Telling them to simply search for it, or read our blog post about it ends up being easier.

We don't spend a lot of time talking about SEO on Webware, but clearly it's important for these companies with odd .com domains or spellings if they're trying to reach mass markets. Services such as YouTube are now ingrained in people's heads with that spelling, but because it was so easily confused for UTube.com meant that Universal Tube & Rollform who owned the domain switched businesses entirely last year to cash in. The .tv's and .fm's have helped with video and audio services, but clearly going forward the land grab for domains might not be nearly as important as making your service the top search result.

[via BoingBoing]

[rurikbloodaxe]

Interesting take on domain names, but it doesn't educate your readers on the importance of even TRYING to purchase a domain that describes their product service generically.

Many domains, although purchased, can be bought for under $1000, and can literally capture the product/service category online for the business that owns that domain. If you take a domain like "galvanizedsteeltubing.com", you will see that Google adwords list seven companies listing these keywords in their search results. What do you think the user will click on, regardless of adword keyword pricing, when they see the EXACT DOMAIN NAME REPRESENTING THE SEARCH PHRASE?

In every example, attempting to purchase your company's product/service generic domain name is MORE valuable than attempting to create an SEO juggernaut to position your company's website in the top ten search results. Number one value of owning the generic descriptive domain of your company's product/service is that YOUR COMPETITORS will eventually wish they owned that domain, so the domain will increase in value every year you own it.

That's the foundation. The reality is also the fact that "branding" that generic domain in your ads pulls potential customers in who are looking for that exact product/service. They may forget the name of your company, but they WON'T forget the product/service they need. So when they type that domain name into their browser or search engine will lead them to YOUR company. Not only is it impressive to customers in the sense of your position in the ability to provide the product/service they are searching for, but also the elite quality of the fact that you own the "category killing" domain name.

That domain name will work for you 24/7/365 -- the power of the domain never dies as long as you own it. No other advertising expense competes with a generic domain name.

Even if the right domain name costs you $20,000, that domain name will increase in value, your competitors can't get traffic from it if potential customers type it into their browsers, and you can brand your company with it -- blatantly... If this doesn't make sense, just type in "BABY.COM" -- a generic domain -- and see who owns it. If a billion dollar a year company understands this concept, then it's time small companies figure it out too.

Summary: Just because a domain name is owned by someone, find out if that "someone" is a competitor, or just a domainer speculating. If it's the latter, you may be in luck. Make an offer, get that domain before your competitors do.

[bubazoo]

no see, the problem with domain names now, is the spammers are takiing all the good names for themselves, so they can make a buck or two on the name. I think its stupid that any spammer can just grab a name anytime they want to, from godaddy or whatever for $8, then turn around and sell that name for $1,000+ thats just not morally right. I've lost count of all the domains I've owned that have been taken over by spammers, because I didn't renew the name at godaddy that year. I don't mind selling a name to somebody, but not a spammer, and godaddy for example, lets customers get away with thatt way too easily. thats why the ad-aware and spyware problem is so bad on the internet nowadays, its getting way too easy for anyone to just grab a domain name and turn around and sell it for a decient profit. its rediculus, they need to put a stop to all that, spammers should not be allowed to just grab any domain name like that. there should be like ethics involved in that.

In Japan, posters with URLs display a barcode known as "QR code". Their DoCoMo phones are capable of translating QR codes to URLs and enable them to surf accordingly.

My point is, the URL system is not friendly to non-English cultures and some of them--like the Japanese--are finding ways to work with it :)