Domain Name variations for a single site

Does it have to be more than one?

[apprentice]

I have repeatedly read that is it a good idea to purchase all possible domain name variations (i.e. long, short) for a site. For instance, consider the scenario where a site called '##Example' and its owner has managed to purchase '##.com' for hosting the website. In such case, ##example.com should also be purchased. My question is why?

Is it just for consistency, is it for copyright issues, is it for fun (!) since domain names are very cheap these days, is it for PR or is it a waste after all (of what it is an already overloaded IPv4 Internet?

Since the site is hosted in '##.com', presumably there is a 301 placed in '##example.com' pointing towards '##.com'. So what is the use of 'example.com' apart from catching any user who decides to type the long version of the domain? Is it advisable to submit '##example.com' to the search engines as well?

A good example of that is www*oxford.ac.uk that redirects to www*ox.ac.uk

In a similar way one might argue that it is even better to purchase the .net and .org extensions, apart from the domain name variations. What is your view?

Regards

[edited by: Webwork at 4:51 pm (utc) on May 17, 2006]
[edit reason] Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Nutter]

I bought a short domain with a hyphen when I originally started a company of mine. My thinking was that it was easier to fit on a business card than the full company name. What I realized it that it's really hard to spell out an abbreviated domain name over the phone, so I went back and registered the fullcompanyname.com (and .net / .org) just so I could say fullcompanyname.com over the phone instead of f-c-hyphen-n-a-m-e-dot-c-o-m.

[apprentice]

Thanks Nutter,

I agree about the hyphen issue. I was rather referring to a 'full' vs 'abbreviated' version of domain names for a website. For instance "Sao Paolo" dot com vs "SP" dot com. The way I understand it is that most people (especially companies) would purchase both domains, as to avoid any legal conflicts with anyone buying the domain and causing damage to their businesses in the future. I also presume that almost everybody would chose "SP" to be the hosting domain as a shorter URL looks better (not to mention it is hard to find one these days).

Regards