domainname.com or domainame.com

combine the adjoining letters or not?

[lethal0r]

im thinking about purchasing a domain where the last letter of the first word and the first letter of the last word are the same. i'd like to know what people think is the best option:

domainname.com
domainame.com
domain-name.com

personally i prefer the first one, and im not really a fan of hypens.

Tom

[Malteser]

I prefer the domainname.com choice as well.

Although I would also get the domainame.com and redirect it to be on the safe side.

[edited by: Malteser at 12:20 pm (utc) on July 19, 2006]

[leadegroot]

I think you will have better luck with the 'search engine identifying the keywords from the domain name' aspect with the doubled letter.
I try to avoid hyphened names, myself
I would also pick up the singled-letter version and 301 it :)

[John Carpenter]

I'd choose domainame.com as the primary, but register all three (301 redirect from the secondary names to the primary one). The misspelling could actually create an original brand (see e.g. "DirecTV"), which SEs are said to love.

[opifex]

Just from experience .... all this depends on your targetted audience, mydomain.com and my-domain.com might be less effective than xyz-domain.com. IF the promotion intent is purely recognition of the name by people, then the semantics may have a bit of importance. If your site is well constructed and has real content and is properly promoted, the search engines do the work. One of my personal domains has an address that is an expression in Spanish .... it's also a German and Dutch word. My keyword search results are from content - NOT the name. The same applies to another domain I have that actually is the name of the tourist destination. Maybe 1% of site entries and searces based on the name alone.
Don't sweat the small stuff!

[lethal0r]

thanks for some good replies :)

[wmuser]

domainname.com