What are the pros and cons of using ignored words in domain names?

Words like "and" or "the" etc.

[JS_Harris]

Customer #1 owns "WidgetsinNY"
Customer #2 owns "WidgetsNY"
Customer #3 owns "Widgetsin" and uses categories to add "NY" into the uri.

Since we're now at the stage where two and three word domains like these are harder to find I'd like to know if what customer #3 is doing will help or hurt his cause? If stop words were truly ignored people would be snapping up every extremely popular generic term + random ignored word to compete against the generic term alone.

(exact search terms in domain names is dominating right now in my sectors which is why I'm asking)

edit: thats pros and "cons" in the title, sorry, no option to fix it.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 9:44 am (utc) on Oct. 27, 2008]

[tangor]

Given the proliferation of domain names (and it will only get worse) the so-called stop words will become important and not even Google can ignore that, not if they wish to continue the claim they index everything.

Keep it simple, of course, but get the best name possible.

[IanTurner]

<stop word> + <generic> hads been quite effective for a while now. People do seem to have been snapping up quite a few of them.

[JS_Harris]

I agree that stop words are becoming more prevalent, their order is more my concern right now, i'll try to explain a little further what I'm getting at.

<generic word> + <stop word> + search assist completion = Serps weight given to (generic + stop) or (generic + stop + auto completed word)?

Many generic terms have two keywords with a stop word in between. Widgets in NY, Widgets of steel, showtimes for widgets etc. Adding the stopword "the" in front of widgets is common but the in-between stop word is much less used since it creates an unfinished short sentence. Of course you can finish the short sentence in a uri by adding the various terms as categories and search engines respond well.

PPC (the generic + stop word variety) isn't ignoring the in between variety of stop word. I'd love to give examples for you to load up on Google's keyword suggestion tool but think of a 3 word short sentence that is commonly searched with the word "the" in between. Next look up the "generic + stop" stats and you're going to see that indeed the stop word is far from ignored for ppc/stats purposes. Serps may not highlight the stop word but stats are most definitely kept for them (on broad searches the monthly traffic figures are in the 8 figure range for some in between stop words!).

The new .me domains have created quite a mess in my opinion. When building a site for "Widgets in NY" you can now grab "Widgets in .me" and have a NY category... and it's still catchy and very targeted. I don't see a rush to grab many of these but am curious... are they an untapped goldmine or will search engines ignore the word in ppc/stats as well moving foreward.