Are singular or plural domains better?
POSTED BY Rick Latona IN Featured, Web Sites

This is a subject that has been on my mind a lot lately.

The domainer in me would naturally gravitate to the plural of a domain in most cases. After all, a store called refrigerator.com doesn't make as much sense as refrigerators.com. Just how big is their inventory?

Since relaunching Latona's and refocusing my brokerage company on revenue generating websites that get their traffic primarily from search I've been paying much more attention to search volumes of keywords. It astounds me to know that "refrigerator" gets nearly four times the searches as "refrigerators". I suppose it makes sense though. The consumer only wants one of them.

With a keyword like "tickets" the plural is nearly always better. Naturally because people don't like to go to concerts, games or shows alone.

Then there's the entire category of names that completely change meaning when you pluralize like "trust" and "trusts".

My friend David Clements is selling cheesecake.com. It appears the singular, like the one he has, gets an amazing fourteen times the volume of "cheesecakes".

Some major ecommerce terms get exactly the same volume with or without pluralization like "mobile phone" and "mobile phones".

All things being equal, I'd take the plural any day.

In the vast majority of keywords I've researched the plural still wins over. This is especially true with short one and two word terms. However, there are cases where the singular completely annihilates the plural. It's worth checking each time.

I've found with long-tail terms the singular usually wins like "Georgia Car Insurance Quote" rather than "Georgia Car Insurance Quotes". Higher up the tail, closer to the body you'd find that "Car Insurance Quotes" gets more traffic than "Car Insurance Quote". Fascinating stuff.

"Land Mortgage" gets more than "Land Mortgages".

Another keyword I find interesting is recipe. Depending on the type of recipe you get different results. "Chicken Recipes" is much greater than "Chicken Recipe". I guess the surfer wants to eat Chicken more than one way. The same is true with "Hamburger Recipes" and many more. If you look up "Hummus Recipe", "Banana Bread Recipe", "Meatloaf Recipe" or many others, the singular wins out. How many kinds of banana bread can you eat?

I don't think I'm telling anyone anything they didn't already know. I was just in the mood to rant.

  • Patrick

    That is why i always reg the singular and plural domains if i can.

  • Rob

    The answer to your post title is "It depends". I don't think there is a blanket answer.

  • Michael

    that's a stupido... it depends on whether the singular or plural is the best way to say what you want to say.

  • http://www.facebook.com/FinancialAid Kevin Davis

    I have WaterproofSmartphone/s.Com and the singular gets more traffic than the plural which I thought the plural would get more.

  • http://twitter.com/EmergingDomains Emerging Domains

    The Google pull-down menu suggests phrases and words, so that a word that started out popular, might get MORE popular based on that pull-down menu. When I typ in
    refr
    into Google, "refridgerator" appears top of the pull-down menu. Likewise, start typing, "tickets," and the plural is offered as the first choice.

    That said, the Google engine seems to operate semantically, so that it gives equal opportunity to the singular and plural on most domains, as far as SERPs, I have found.

  • http://www.tablets.com Aron: Tablets.com

    Plural shows that you're selling products with many choices: laptops.com | shoes.com etc.

    Singular shows a brand name or service in one field: computer.com | copier.com etc.
    Those could be used for many types of businesses in the field.

    The plural, in my opinion, is best used for ecommerce.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Graham-Johnson/872290435 Graham Johnson

    To me the plural would be a better bet as it includes the singular and depends on whether or not both are developed but always best to get both if you can.

    I have a singular of a developed plural and get their mail as well!

  • http://www.BestLaptop.org Jay M

    this is noteworthy as well.. "Car Insurance Quotes" is too broad of a perspective and we will have quotes coming in from different insurance companies hence plural "quotes" as there wont be just one quote, whereas when we say "Georgia Car Insurance Quote" that means from this particular insurance company (Georgia company) there is going to be only one quote AND THEREFORE the singular "quote".. so yeah terms singularity or plurality totally depends on how english makes sense ;)

  • http://www.GolfingCarts.com Jay

    Rob, totally depends!

  • Chip M.

    Even when dealing strictly with commerce, as mentioned it depends. Land is better than Lands. You have to think of the name as a brand and what would work best. Also take exact searches into context when evaluating the singular. That exact search number for "computer" also includes "New Computer" "Computer Games" and "Computer Errors"

    Some singulars that are better than plural (IMHO)
    Chicken
    Pizza
    Horse
    Hot Sauce (Maybe I'm just hungry)

  • jayjay

    Plurals are in their element too with e-commerce sites. A good example would be phpcoders.com vs phpcoder.com. Say if your where looking for a coder to hire you would gravitate towards phpcoders.com as it's keyword pertains to a marketplace/community of coders to chose from more so than one individual who may not be able to cater to your needs as your requirements maybe outside his/her expertise.

  • http://bernav.com Shayen: Brandable Domains

    We must to setup a website on the domain name that makes the most sense when choosing between the singular and plural of the words in domain names.. There is one thing that we definitely should do is purchase both the singular and plural variation of domains and redirect the not as good sounding domain to the best sounding domain.

  • http://www.register-web-domain.in Domain registration

    Which is the better domain

  • Jay Whitehead

    @Chip M. You've raised a good point here, There are many instances where the singular does make sense more so than it's plural term (if it has one at all!).

    In some of your examples the words are in a unique noun class where there is no valid plural and/or if it has a plural it has a different meaning than its singular form.
    Food items like spaghetti, macaroni, fish, etc..

    spaghettis.com ???
    macaronis.com ???
    fishes.com ?

    some do have a valid plural from but are not that common and sound rather obtuse.

    Post note* Just surfed though wiki and found a class of words known as defective nouns [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Defective_nouns ] that are only in plural form, an opposite class would be for the singular.

    entry for "plurale tantum" from wiki:
    [..]A plurale tantum (Latin for "plural only"; plural form: pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the plural form and does not have a singular variant for referring to a single object[..]

    -thx wiki for making me smarter than a 5th grader! :) ~

  • http://www.register-web-domain.in Domain registration

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  • Lda

    I recall back in (was it 1999 ?) Loans.com sold to BOA for $3Million ?.
    I've never before or since heard anything about Loan.com.
    Is there a comparison story - anyone ?

  • Peter

    mostly plurals eg:wintercoats.com & winterjackets.com any day better than coat and jacket

  • http://www.OkanaganServices.com Cam

    Which of my two domains do you like better?
    http://www.FuelInjector.ca or http://www.FuelInjectors.ca valuate says the singular is worth more but I like the plural for a resale.
    Cheers,eh!

  • http://www.great-quotes.com/quotes/category/Life Quotes about Life 852

    Hi,

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