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Although I understand the desire to have clean fast loading sites, it is not the typical site and not in my experience representative of the best of the net.
To me even that, um, how should I put it, uh, "world" graphic of WW is a bit, uh, sparse or, uh, lacking? (no offense, big guy!) I know obviously that WW is a real quality site, because the content stands out. But it seems the exception that defines the rule...And...it seems to me the reason for it being that way is that WW is going with what search engines like. Titles in H1 Tag. Lot of text. Lots of content. Descriptive links. Not too much graphics.
But I think a dash of graphics doesn't hurt a site at all. Am I alone in thinking like this?
Absolutely. Google's primary concern is to be loved by the user, not the webmaster.
Google is a business. Their biz is based on getting eyeballs. Without eyeballs there's no revenue.
If Google feels a specific algo tweak will raise their overall search quality, as experienced by their users, they will tweak, no matter what. It's their job to do so.
What if the idea is *not* to build a brand? If I sell just fuzzy blue widgets, then I may just register fuzzy-blue-widgets.com because the domain name screams out to the potential buyer I sell what he wants. This makes a lot of sense when the commodity sold tends to be a generic one. Promoting the hyphenated domain name is superior because then the potential customer doesn't have to try and parse out where the breaks are. It is immediately obvious. Of course, it makes sense to register also the non-hyphenated version to avoid someone stealing traffic from potential customers who heard of you by word of mouth.
[or purple-penguins.com vs purplepenguins.com, as was suggested to replace the widget!]
Whilst it wouldn't be nice to do it if widgetfinder.com was a proper site, if it was just a `holding page` or the like, I think it's fine. And have done it. And a year on, widgetfinder.com is still a holding page.
It would be totally ridiculous. I've been here before many times... but I'll trot it out again:
What is the punter going to remember from the side of a truck:
www.napoleonsbakeryinengland.com
or
www.napoleons-bakery-in-england.com
Only an idiot would choose the first. So what's the problem with the hyphens?
There is none! It's in the mind of webmasters who have forgotten there's a real world out there and who want to ban anything that doesn't suit them. No wonder the industry's paranoid.
Fortunately I don't think Google will take the slightest notice of this nonsense. To start penalising sites because some webmasters try to make their domain names easy to read would degenerate into a farce.
So long as the user finds at a multi-hyphenated domain name they find what they want to buy is being sold, they likely will be happy. The only reason to tweak would be if on a search for fuzzy blue widgets fuzzy-blue-widgets.com came up #1, and fuzzy-blue-widgets.com was really just a porn site. Those multi-hyphen domain names doing well generally are relevant for the search.
Exactly the point I already made. Forcing the punter to mentally parse out where the word breaks are, rather than making it obvious with the hyphens, makes no business sense.
I agree, what should matter is the quality of the site.
Some people think Keyword-keyword.com sites are more spammy?
Probably so, but how about penalizing for the easily detected spam IN the site
(hidden text etc.)?
I believe the branding thing is way overrated anyway (on the web)
People who search for keyword-keyword etc, apparently are not affected by -branding.If I owned a great brand name (developed off line) I'd still put up a few keyword-keyword sites to steer those people to my brand name.
Everybody wants a great COKE- like name, but they should remember
that took years and years to develop, without the constant deluge of competition and information we see on the web.
....my twocents
<a href="http://www.brandname.com">Brandname</a>
and your competitors are linked with
<a href="http://www.keyword-keyword-keyword.com">keyword-keyword-keyword</a>
They will slaughter you in the SERPs. There is no way around it with the weighting geared toward incoming link text. With the way links SHOULD be formed for best UI, you would have:
Many people are looking for <a href="http://www.brandname.com">the best keywords with great service</a>.
but how often does that happen in the real world? I'm not suggesting a ban or even a penalty for keyworded or hyphenated domains but I do believe that keyworded domains are taking over the SERPs and leaving branded websites abandoned because of poor incoming link text.
A different way of rating the incoming link is needed other than just what the link text is. A relevance from the page, or occurance of the keyword on the page linking in, etc. This sort of localized search PageRank would probably be a technological hurdle at this point.
Just putting up a few keyword-keyword sites does nothing to help your main page SERP. You have to get those keyword-keyword sites to have incoming links.. forgetting about the thousands you might already have going to your main brandname (without keywords in the anchor text).
Brandnames do have a purpose-- creating return visitors and customer recognition. With a keyworded domain, the customer might find you easily in the SERP but once they find the well-branded site through a link, they're more likely to remember that name. Not to mention, in any competitve arena, all the keyword-keyword-keyword.com domains are already taken.
Hmm...
Google.com
Yahoo.com
Adobe.com
Amazon.com
Go.com
Real.com
Hotbot.com
Tucows.com
Apple.com
Apache.org
I'm not going to get into the hyphenated keyword domain versus branding argument again.
The best domain name is one that is short and easy to remember. Barring short, make it easy to remember. Joining the crowd of keywords lacks creativity and adds nothing to the personality of the business. ThinkGeek.com with its slogan of "Stuff For Smart Masses" does quite well. Much better I think than if they had chosen geek-shirts-mugs-gadgets.com
Who looks at the domain name anyway, its the site that matters!
I think Google looks at the domain name. It appears to me that widgeting.com does better than other equal sites on a search for widgeting. Of course by the time I was looking for a domain name single words like that were long gone.
I agree. Take a gander at their domain names. I didn't see pizza-hut.com, international-business-machines.com or general-motors.com
They used pizzahut.com, ibm.com and gm.com ;)
Some bad examples here:
Google.com
Only keyword choices that would be obvious is search-engine.com and searchengine.com, and the whois shows they were taken before Google was around.
Yahoo.com
Keyword domain names work only if you have a very limited offering of product or services. Blue-widgets.com works if you only sell blue widgets. I thing e-mail-directory-search-engine-portal-news-shopping.com would be a little ridiculous.
Adobe.com
There is a generic term the public commonly uses for what a .pdf file is?
Amazon.com
Take a look at their home page. Hmm...books-cds-apparel-office-products-software-video-games.com is ridiculous too. Impossible for them to use a keyword domain.
Go.com
Again, too diverse for a keyword domain name.
Real.com
mp3-multimedia-streaming-audio-video-player.com?
Hotbot.com
Considering hits from them are near zilch according to my logs, I'd hardly consider this an example of success.
Tucows.com
Only keyword domain name that would have worked is software-downloads.com. Looks like tucows.com is older than that, so this is the only example that has merit.
Apple.com
Really rotten example. Apple predates the Internet, and have since the earliest days officially been Apple Computer, Inc. They couldn't register as a trademark "computer", so they were forced to use a brand name.
Apache.org
Bad example again. "Operating system" would not have been a registerable trademark.
>I'm not going to get into the hyphenated keyword domain versus branding argument again.
Wise move to avoid further looking silly.
>ThinkGeek.com with its slogan of "Stuff For Smart Masses" does quite well. Much better I think than if they had chosen geek-shirts-mugs-gadgets.com
Again, keyword domain names only work if you are selling a narrow product line.
The latter resolves to the obvious. The other 2 would lose if they got into a ICANN dispute. None of the three are e-commerce businesses anyhow.
[edited by: BGumble at 12:58 am (utc) on April 15, 2003]
Assuming Google was a "normal" site, they would be fighting an uphill battle to people searching for their primary keywords. There is only one "travel-agency.com" or "penguin-widgets.com" therefore Google's weighting of incoming link text is saying that there is only one real authority on penguin widgets-- it must be penguin-widgets.com because of how often other sites link to them with that text. I can barely find a difference now between allinanchor: searches and the normal search results for that keyword.
>>Tucows.com
>>Only keyword domain name that would have worked is software-downloads.com.
Again you said-- this is the only domain name that would have worked. So why should everyone have to fight over one domain name? With incoming link weighting, Google has said "software-downloads.com" IS the most appropriate domain for that search, no matter what other sites may be more relevant. Since software download is such a massive part of the web industry, certain players have managed to overcome and still become a real player with a brand name.
>>Yahoo.com
>>Amazon.com
>>Keyword domain names work only if you have a very limited offering of product or services. Blue-widgets.com works if you only sell blue widgets. I thing e-mail-directory-search-engine-portal-news-shopping.com would be a little ridiculous.
You forget how these sites started out and what their first domain name choices would have been if they opted for keyword domains. Amazon would've been "books-movies.com" and Yahoo could've been "web-directory.com" -- only in the dot-com bubble did they expand to cover such a wide range of products and services.
>>Apple.com
>>Really rotten example. Apple predates the Internet, and have since the earliest days officially been Apple Computer, Inc. They couldn't register as a trademark "computer", so they were forced to use a brand name.
Really rotten pun there. And this is a poor example because Apple is a company with one of the top brand recognitions anywhere. Because it predates the Internet, Apple has no need for "computer.com"-- let's think a little more locally about keywords and sites that we might have an effect over-- not the #1 giants of industry.
ROFL If you can't understand the value of a memorable name over a bunch of words linked with hyphens nothing I will ever say will change your mind.
The examples given are valid.
Catchy and memorable, or dull and plain. Take your pick.
>>Apple predates the Internet, and have since the earliest days officially been Apple Computer, Inc. They couldn't register as a trademark "computer", so they were forced to use a brand name.
You seem to miss the point, they could have chosen any name that was available. They opted for something short and sweet.
You can have your keyword domains, I'll take names that add a little bit of personality. We can agree to disagree.
First, I'm not against .net vs. .com, even though I think whenever I get a commercial domain, unless it's an ISP or something where another ending is better, I'll always go for .com, I never thought the domain extension was the basis for being downgraded on google. In fact, I think there should be lots and lots of legal extensions besides the paltry few they've given us.
(As an aside, I wish they had never made multiple dotted extensions like .ca.us for california, because that wreaks havoc with parsing code. How can you know in your code whether "something.ca.us" means that "something" is a subdomain of ca.us or or ca.us is part of the extension and the main domain is "something"...)
The other point is, again, that I'm against programmatically downgrading kw1-kw2-kw3.com. But when the same keyword is repeated again and again with a "dash" and you do a keyword search for a very competitive keyword and all the kw-kw.com sites come up and they have similar clones for all keywords in that industry and they are all linked to each other and they all look identical (and identically ugly incidentally)...I would think after months of this google would figure it out...
Blue-widgets.com is quite memorable to me whenever I need a blue widget. International Business Machines sure worked in the long run.
If this is a big problem,hopefully after a while google USERS will figure out that spammy affiliate sounding domains sell spammy affiliate sounding stuff..
But if your ((cute short nonhypenated)).com sells spammy affiliate stuff, I got no sympathy. )
The size of the companies marketing budgets.
GM, Adobe, IBM, Pizza Hutt, Apple etc all have spent over $1,000,000,000 ( $1 Billion ) on marketing and branding in their companies lifetimes.
Companies running sites such as blue-widgets.com often have a $0 marketing budget. All they want to do is sell Blue Widgets via their internet site. They will never likely become household names or place an advert on TV during the Superbowl half time and don't have any intention to. I bet over half of them operate out of people bedrooms / home offices.
With their very limited budget they got to try and get exposure as cheaply as possible. They are not in the business of creating a long term brand.
Look at the results, enough people are out there using blue-widget.com domains to prove that their marketing strategy works.
Comparing blue-widgets.com to an ibm or amazon.com is just plain stupid [and people who do so are stupid too].
Amazon.com lost how many 100's of million dollars over the years? Perhaps if they used buy-books.com they could have saved themselves a couple hundred million in losses trying to create a online brand out of nothing.
If you've got a spare couple hundred million go with a zappy.com original domain name for your business. If you don't have that kind of cash dont expect any more than a tiny fraction of your business to come from the Internet.
Ecomagic, you are of course right: the vast majority of small ecom sites don't have the intent, the funds, and the determination, to go for a longterm branding.
What I do not understand however, is why a multiple keyword/hyphen name should give them an advantage.
As said before: the only possible advantage comes from exploiting holes in some SEs algos.
There are tons of such multiple keyword/hyphen names out there, and I bet 90% of those are nothing but cheap duplicates of other such sites. I don't blame anyone to go for this, as long as it works, but I wouldn't blame the SEs either for trying to put a stop to such a cheap exploit.
So I guess I agree with you: it can be a short term strategy to build lots of multiple keyword/hyphen domains. But personally I wouldn't try to base a business on that.
Hogwash.
All my business comes from the internet. The majority of my clients' incomes come from the internet. I have a grand total of one client out of 236 clients for 2002 that have a hyphenated domain name. Several clients have a keyword in the domain with no hyphen. None of them have the ad budget of Amazon, or Sony or Apple.
Branding should start locally. No one expects ma and pa web owner to cough up 2 mil for an ad campaign. They certainly don't have trouble sponsoring a local BMX bike tournament. Or the state karate championships. Or a bakeoff. (yeah, I thought that was funny too, but they are a bakery). Ezines are inexpensive and make for good branding. Simply writing an article that links to your site can start the branding process. Business cards, letterhead, a professional logo, all aspects of branding.
You said: "Companies running sites such as blue-widgets.com often have a $0 marketing budget" then followed it up with "Look at the results, enough people are out there using blue-widget.com domains to prove that their marketing strategy works."
Really? If their strategy is working why don't they have an ad budget? How does anyone expect to make more than pocket change without spending a dime?
Branding isn't for everyone, it takes work. It doesn't take a huge budget to be successful. It takes creativity, planning and the desire to create something more than a short term project.
According to your logic when I drive down the street I should be assaulted by Custom-Car-Parts, Teen-Clothing, Baked-Goods, and Fine-Glassware rather than FastRides, Hipsters, Pie In The Sky and Touch of Glass. There's a whole industry out there that thinks up names and slogans. If everyone wanted a generic name I don't think the marketing industry devoted to business names and slogans would survive. Obviously every business out there doesn't have multi-million dollar ad budgets. There are a few however that want to rise above the norm and actually put in the time it takes to create something unique, add a bit of creativity to their business.
I don't have a problem with someone buying cheap-viagra-discount-prices.com and creating a site. I own a couple of generic domains myself but those generic names aren't something I'm going to attach to a serious e-comm project. Serious projects require image planning, branding, advertising, etc, in short, a marketing campaign.
Most internet businesses fail. The reason they fail is because the people starting them fail to plan. People grabbing any old domain name are the same people that are going to hire any old designer and toss up a site to see if it works.
The people making it are the ones that spend a year or more researching the market, deciding on a name, getting a professional logo, hiring professional web designers and they formulate a plan.
The same rules apply to businesses in all mediums, tossing the rules out the window because the business is internet based is one of the first mistakes people make.
Branding can work for everyone - if you say 'I don't have the budget' you are defeated before you try.
Simple techniques like using the same logo and colours on your web site, stationery and business cards will all slowly but surely build brand awareness.
Generic domains don't contribute to branding so I don't use them in my business. If it works for some guy selling DVDs from his bedroom then good for him. I hope for his sake though he has a contingency plan if hyphenated multi-keyword domains go the way of doorway pages ;).
