surely sex.com must rank as high as it gets for value...
interesting question...
Harley
1. Yahoo = is an interjection, so it's part of the fundamental vocabulary; it's bound to sell. Spontaneity degree: 2/5
2. Google = a scientific term with a short range of usability (used to be). Has the advantage of double "o" and symetric "g". Spontaneity degree: 4/5
3. MSN = abbreviation of a technical syntagm (Microsoft Network). Includes a brand name with brand-loialty, and a technical term. Abbreviations are a trend today, and the term will definitely sell as it is backed-up by an software colossus. Spontaneity degree: 1/5
Of course, those Spontaneity degrees reflect my personal opinion, which could be considered as unadvised/superficial.
The point is that if you have a short domain name that does not include numbers, you're on the right track. If the words (preferably "the word") in it are part of the daily vocabulary and does not include any hypherns, you're one step ahead.
If you had worked at ARPA and got your hands on some fine-looking domain names, you are probably on a golden island reading this from your laptop. It's all a matter of "first come, first serve", so I suppose we should only choose abbreviated domain names. Shorter and rather persistent.
The ones I sometimes envy are the ones that I keep editing out of our threads here, from places where we should be using example.com -- that domain name that is permanently off the market so it can be used in discussions and code samples. But these are all real and viable domain names:
domain.com
mydomain.com
mysite.com
yoursite.com
...etc.
ATW shows something like 220,000 inbound links to domain.com -- and I'll bet almost all of them are accidental. The question is how to brand one of these generic naturals. Given how many are for sale, owned by re-sellers and so on, it's not an easy thing to do.
>>You either use a word from the fundamental vocabulary (such as the ones related to body parts, relatives, basic human activities etc.), a controversed historical/religious economic/tabu subject, or start your own brand name using serendipity.
In marketing or sales, at different times there's either selling the steak or selling the sizzle. Descriptive names pretty much represent the steak, but how about domain names with sizzle, that represent basic human emotions, evoke emotion, or create a mental imagery that could be a basic representational selling point for the type of product or service?
It makes sense when we look at the names of some of the most popular magazines on the newsstands and the different types of imagery they represent. Those had to have been well thought out by the marketing people, why wouldn't the same thing work with domain names?
>>For the big sites, branding of the domain is everything.
Maybe it can be even for some of the smaller sites some of us would tend to have.
example.co.uk
or other country specific example domains.
.us and .ca seem to be set aside as the .com but the .uk is registered.
In terms of the most valuable domain names then if you discount existing brands that have been built such as msn.com or google.com then anything very generic that descibes a product or service that is ideally marketable online would command a massive premium. The reason for this is that it costs millions to build a brand such as msn.com but you get a massive head start if you have a memorable, generic name such as domain.com
Such names might include <example.com> etc. These names are not only instantly memorable but they command a greater amount of trust from the public even before they have bought a product or service from a company using the domain.
The public may perceive for example that a company operating a web site at books.com would be a large organisation when in reality they could just as easily be working from their spare bedroom.
Obviously .com generic domains are generally the most desirable followed by .net names, but country specific names for countries with a large amount of ecommerce such as the UK (.co.uk), France (.fr), Germany (.de) and others would also command a large premium for names such as shopping.co.uk etc.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:37 am (utc) on Feb. 14, 2004]
[edit reason] lets not be specific - especially if you have an interest in the specific ;-) [/edit]
Premium generic internet real estate.
This would be perfect for law fims or other partnerships
should the "&" be allowed in domain names - so far only the "-" is ...
This would be perfect for law fims or other partnerships
That would get confusing since it's part of the query string...
etc..
As long as the internet is as it is these types of names will grow in value
These types of names..need no search engines..they generate their own traffic through natural typ-ins ..
yahoo.com type names can at anytime fold and be nothing more than a footnote in history.and the name yahoo.com will get no traffic...nothing worthwhile anyways...
But Women.com ,sex.com etc. they'll always have traffic.. as long as the web is as it is..
absolutely agree on the .co.uk and .de extensions of similar names holding serios value.
Shak
tedster, I had no idea that these names really existed. Now I understand why it's recommended to use "example.com" instead of "mydomain.com" when we post a fictitious url on Webmasterworld ;-)
My wife belongs to numerous women's groups, and in their template code they included a specific url indicating to place a url there. That specific domain was purchased by some porno company, and suddenly everyone in the group (and hundreds of others) found themselves linked to a very explicit site. Not just one or two links, but dozens per page and tens of thousands of pages. Caused some scrambling and red faces, let me tell you.
would be pretty good.
