kw1.ws or kw1-blah.com?

Which is better?

[IITian]

I have to decide. There is a kw1 I am targeting. Using allinurl, I found about 5 million pages have that keyword in their urls. This kw1 is a well-known brand.

I can get decent links to any one of my choices. I am expecting to be mostly found through Google search on that single keyword kw1. Which choice is better?

I am biased towards kw1.ws. What about you?

[cabbie]

One advantage of kw1.ws is that you know for sure that its not an expired domain and without any of the baggage sometimes associated with buying an expired domain.

Alan

[IITian]

cabbie:

One advantage of kw1.ws is that you know for sure that its not an expired domain and without any of the baggage sometimes associated with buying an expired domain.

Alan, I checked after buying that name and found out that it was owned by a business for some time - by checking Google's cache. Business apparently was a genuine one. In case of kw1-blah.com it will be likely a new domain. ;)

[cabbie]

Sorry to hear that llTian.I didn't think that .ws names had been around long enough for them to have expired already.I hope its clean.

Regards Alan

[xbase234]

If you intend on communicating this url in print, radio, TV, or word-of-mouth, it is a rule of thumb to go with the .com. Or plan on hearing the dreaded echo, "dot what?" every time you try to give out your url to someone.

Another factor would be whether or not kw1blah.com (no hyphen) is available, instead of kw1-blah.com. This simplifies things quite a bit.

I say go with the dotcom -

[IITian]

xbase234,

I see your point. I have three domains
kw.ws
kwblah.com
kw-blah.com

Second one is easy for people to remember. However, the first one might be easier to optimize for google since kw is part of domain and some claim that it plays a role in ranking. Third choice is slightly behind that followed by the second one.

[irock]

I can tell you that from my experience kw-blah.com is by far a much better choice than kwblah.com if you want to optimize for search engines... until they decide to lessen the importance of such 'domain trick.' I would recommend registering both if possible.

[dingman]

plan on hearing the dreaded echo, "dot what?" every time you try to give out your url

Count yourself lucky if you hear it! I've lost more than a few e-mails into the abyss of a company I have no assiciation with because I own family-name.org, and people assume I must mean family-name.com, which belongs to a copany founded by a guy who happens to have the same last name I do. Usually I just get told that the e-mail bounced. (On occasion, I even get mail that should have gone to them!)

[cabbie]

I personally feel from my observations that Google can now recognise the different keywords in a url e.g. kw1kw2.com is now no different than kw1-kw2.com.At least in the titles,maybe its different for anchor text.