How Important is a Good Domain?
April 9, 2008 by Rick Latona
You might be surprised to find out that I don’t think a great domain name is important to a business to have a successful web presence.
I completely disagree with people like Rick Shwartz who think that Hershey’s Corporation is stupid for not buying candy.com or Marriott needs to do some soul searching to find out why they didn’t buy hotels.com.
I agree with Madison Avenue when they try to explain to domainers on their panels that marketing executives would rather have a brand like M&Ms than Candy.com.
I myself have owned many successful websites that had lousy domain names. Was ConsumptionJunction.com a good name? Heck, I spent a small fortune on typos. You wouldn’t believe how many ways one could spell that name. That company has been sold and scrapped at this point but we had a good run before youtube.com. In 2000 our Alexa ranking was as low as 300 at one point. I wonder if the founders of youtube.com are wishing they bought videos.com while they are counting their Google cash.
What a good domain name can do is allow you to enter a market and compete with these big guys. They make it a little easier and sometimes a small edge is all you need. Yes, they also generate traffic and revenue if they are really good names but what makes them sell for far more than 20x earnings at times is that edge.
It’s the ability to call hotels in San Juan and tell them you are with sanjuan.com which gives that name so much value.
Just don’t believe the hype that a good name is necessary. They only help.
Just curious, I’m sure you must have let a few domains expire back in the day that would now be considered a good name. Yeah, hey sure forget about regrets and can’t change the past stuff.
Especially since you’re moving some generic names, but hindsight is a realkicker.
[...] Source: RickLatona.com [...]
Yes, I’ve certainly lost good names.
Well, good names are important, but Rick’s asking price is way too high. If he is willing to lower the asking price, I am sure those hotel owners would snap it.
You’re right Rick, I also think quality of services trump good name-domains, any time. Some big companies had built good reputations and clientele base over the year that they think good domains is just an “icy on the cake.” Actually, traffic is not everything. Although, it could help some obscured businesses but useless traffic can be a drain on a system. Frank Schilling would tell his experience with his good name “FactCheck.com”. In 2004, some useless traffic overwhelmed his servers that he had to point visitors to George Soro’s FactCheck.org. With no good name, I think good services and web-contents would push your site to the top of the RankPage. So I could see the reason why some businesses are not too crazy about keywords.
I couldn’t agree more
Just look at our small industry and see the names people use:
Examples:
dnjournal.com
dnzoom.com
freshdrop.net
dotweekly.com
thedomains.com
Those sites are successful because the content not the name.
Seyi you have the story on Franky’s FactCheck.com quite wrong
Rick,
I am afraid that I don’t completely agree with you on this!.. Businesses will have to spend more and more on SEO or PPC eventually when every business out there goes online. Only so many people can appear on 1st page on Google results..so, the name does matter in my opinion. just my 2 cents!
Thanks,
… or site like xkcd.com !
Rick has a point. Contents can be paramount.
IMO a good name will help out with a web presence and in the business world. If you think about you just redirect those names. So people that are looking for “money.com” will end up on CNN. So in a way its a form of advertisement. Just because you have a good name does not mean you can’t use your brand for the domain name. I think that if Hershey’s Corporation did pick up “candy.com” it would be a great move to drive TARGETED visitors to the site. Isnt that what every website wants?
Hi AhmedF, What did I got wrong? I wish you could elaborate. The story I told about Frank was written by Paul Sloan of CNN three yrs ago. I must have made a typo by putting Factcheck.org instead of GeorgeSoros.com but the point still holds. There are too much ados about traffic in the domain industry. Yes, traffic can be good for business but it does not always give the “greenback”. We all know that traffic that “don’t-click” could be as bad as strangers who eat lunch and disappear. Sahar Sarid recently contended that traffic is not everything. He emphasizes on banking on names that make senses – if a name does not produce cash now, it could be a goldmine in the future. Sahar could use Spyware.com as an example.
Now read this cites from Business 2.0 and you’d understand what I said about Frank: “…Cheney told viewers to look at Factcheck.com. Cheney had meant to say Factcheck.org, a site run by the University of Pennsylvania. Factcheck.com was one of Schilling’s. …Schilling had two options: Take down his servers, which could cost him tens of thousands of dollars in traffic to his other sites, or redirect Factcheck.com surfers elsewhere. The onslaught was useless to him, after all, since he only makes money when a visitor clicks on an advertiser’s link. No fan of the Bush administration, Schilling thought of an anti-Bush ad that financier George Soros had run in the Wall Street Journal. Seconds later, he pointed the surging traffic to GeorgeSoros.com, so that anyone seeking out Cheney’s record–and many millions did–was greeted with the message “Why We Must Not Reelect George Bush.”
Here is the full article (if you are interested): http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/12/01/8364591/index.htm
Sigh did you even read what you wrote:
“Frank Schilling would tell his experience with his good name “FactCheck.com”. In 2004, some useless traffic overwhelmed his servers that he had to point visitors to George Soro’s FactCheck.org.”
1. It wasn’t useless traffic
2. George Soros’ has no affiliation with FactCheck.org
3. It was pointed to GeorgeSoros.com
Hooray!
Finally confirmation that 99.9% of the rest of us are sitting on a potential gold mine!!! (Schilling, Schwartz,et al.. not withstanding)!!!
Now if I can just get my hands on a REALLY good developer.. I will be laughing all the way to the bank!
Toungeincheek.com (i wonder if that one is available?)
I agree with you give me the brand name every time, but in order to build it content is king…but only if users can find it and the generics ensure this without high long term marketing costs
a small bonus is mostt great names are still parked and NOT competing with brandable names in search
Given that the pricings for most of your domain-names are substantially based on that ethereal concept of intrinsic worth, this would have to be one of the most astonishing posts I’ve ever seen. Some might deduce that you’ve deliberately set out to shoot yourself, and your business, in the metaphorical foot. How can you justify sale prices above reg. fee after this post ??
Lda, I’m glad you asked. My prices are still below most auction sales. My beliefs are why I don’t think every domain is priceless like some large domainers think.
[...] so much value. Just don
quite disagree at this point as I discovered short, generic (country code) domains and brands being crucial to establish your company in special interest markets. It´s far more than a mere door opener on the long haul.
A well developed website is always worth an ex ante investment in a good name.
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Are domains more important than the website service/script? I don’t think one can just generalize it that way.
You are probably right with Spanish.com, but what if you’d owned Spain.com? The domain could very possibly carry the ugly turnkey site’s weight and still earn 5 digits a month! Think about majority of the country .coms.. they all could be successful with a simple $1-2k site.
In some niches, domains are more important while in others the website script/idea/functionality would be really critical.
If you take example from another niche: Social Networks. In this case, domain is not very important. In fact, I think the weirder and meaningless (but easy to remember/short/catchy) the domain is, the better it is for the website. If you owned the generic SocialNetwork.com or even Social.com.. I do not think it would do any good with the success of the site. In fact, it is so generic that the majority target crowd would consider it lame and wouldn’t want to be associated with it. Yes, it definitely could still be successful but you would really need a top idea and completely unique concept. In any case..I am a domainer and so I could be biased but thats what I think.
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