Short Domain Names good for Google?

Does Google care how long a name is?

[donok]

I have a client that currently has a 22-letter-long domain name - she's concerned because she noticed all the top domains that use her search words (competitors) have much shorter names. Does this matter at all?

My thought was that these people have probably been around longer - when shorter names were available - and that's the only reason they are ranking high. Does that make sense?

Most of her clients will arrive by AdWords, so she's not too concerned about having a name that's easy to type. But, then I was thinking the longer the name, the more fly-by-night a site looks. I think I'd rather shop at jims-cheap-pants.com than a keyword packed a-place-to-buy-pants-for-cheap.com -- any thought?

Thanks in advance - Don

[King_Fisher]

My feeling is the shorter, catchier domain name is always better but not always available!...KF

[surrealillusions]

the shorter names are certainly more memorable. So if someone has

shortname.com and someone visits them, then, next they want to but cant remember the name, type "shortish name" into google, and they should appear, however, have a long name, and people aren't going to remember it to well especially when they cant remember shorter ones.

But that is about repeat traffic more than anything else..

:)

[donok]

Any thought s on whether Google takes this into account for rankings?

[surrealillusions]

I haven't heard anything about Google using it as a ranking method.

Its a bit unfair really if they do, if your business has a natural long name, and one of your rivals as a shorter one, and google gives your rival preference purely on the length of the name.

Plus half of the german language wouldn't do very well with google ;) :p

:)

[buckworks]

It would make little sense for the length of the domain name to be a separate ranking factor because on its own it wouldn't say much about either the relevance or the quality of the site.

If it affected user response it might have an indirect effect, though. If users thought that a-place-to-buy-pants-for-cheap.com looked cheesy, they likely wouldn't link to it or pass the URL around as often as jims-cheap-pants.com.

Over time that might give an advantage to the site with the shorter name, but the advantage would be rooted in better user response, not strictly because of the character count in the domain name.

[ZydoSEO]

To my knowledge the search engines could care less about the length of a domain name.

[maximillianos]

I agree with everyone here. It would not make sense for Google to base part of your site's rank off length of domain name.

Statistically there may be a relationship between short names being active on the web longer, and hence more backlonks, etc. But if you were to compare a long domain and a short one both of same age and backlonks, my guess is you will not see a difference.

Branding is another issue. :-)

[HuskyPup]

To my knowledge the search engines could care less about the length of a domain name.

As a generalisation this is correct however Google definitely loves keyword domains therefore if all your SEOing is done correctly plus you have widgetexamplekeyword.com/tld then you're onto a winner.

YMMV!