WhyYouNeedThatPerfectName.com
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet”
-Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
A rose perhaps but not your domain name!
Welcome to the dotcom bubble! Here, any successful e-tailer should tell you that there’s more to a name than just
the name itself. This article serves precisely that purpose –against the backdrop of quality domain naming
strategies and styles, auctions, speculators and court conflicts, to convince you why your online endeavor needs
that perfect domain name.
There’s no point in coming up with that absolutely fabulous idea for online selling plus a perfect site to launch
from, as long as you don’t have ‘the’ name you need. Choosing a name that will eventually contribute to your brand
equity, profits, internet marketing and above all -your online credibility, shouldn’t be done haphazardly.
Especially, since it’s so easily purchased (for a low startup capital), easily maintained and one that, if you
choose, may be disposed off at a substantial amount. Intentionally or otherwise, your domain name becomes your de
facto brand name, a location or an experience your visitors relate to in the long run. Even if you plan to sell it
later on to prospective buyers, it is only an asset! Your challenge is to come up with that one name to funnel
visitors through.
Brandmeisters today seem to understand the significance of site names, especially since the emergence of a number
of me-too sites.
Like a Washington Post reporter put it – “feature for feature, service for service, discount for discount, even
annoyance for annoyance”, a number of sites may turn out to be a close match to yours. Quoting Rebecca Saunders,
author of the Big Shot series, “Names have to sound fresh and new even if the site duplicates one already on the
net. Names should stir the imagination or otherwise gain the surfer’s attention. Further site name should be as
simple as possible, they should be believable, and they should be easy to pronounce, pleasing to the ear, easy to
spell and therefore easy to look up on a search engine.” Here’s more on building your handle.
The ‘aha’ name
Domain name consultants will serve you innumerable dos and don’ts on internet domain naming – a feat that could
leave you grumbling with limited choices. Personally, your domain naming methodology need not be absolutely
conventional, as long as your imagination is not slave to impractical logic and common sense.
Begin with a paper, pencil and loads of patience. Consider seeking the advice of kith and kin, while you scramble
ideas in your brain. Follow closely on what you ought to and ought not to consider. For example, consider
characteristics, features, advantages and possibly anything that relates to your products and services. Now try to
come up with a domain name that either addresses that one fundamental concept of the site, or that weds two or more
key concepts in a single name. All the while, keep in mind, your site’s goals, the image you wish to portray and
your target audience. Don’t compromise on your image-how you want your company to be perceived and it’s relation to
your core business memorability. Jot down your list of ideas. Then narrow it down to those names you think are most
reflective of your products/services. Most importantly, determine if the domain name you like is available and that
it doesn’t violate any existing trademarks or copyrights. The last thing you’d want is your hard thought idea of
that domain name accidentally offending a fellow netizen. Make sure that it doesn’t mean something entirely
different in another language and that you don’t spare chance for the public to associate anything negative with it
(easier said than done!). Care for the ins and outs of classic and non classic approaches in domain naming? Read
on.
Unless you are a domain name squatter or a start-up capitalizing on domain names - save those tongue-twisters,
masqueraded phrases and unpronounceable names.
Your creativity levels, thought and effort should be directed towards one that’s short and sweet. Though, a long
name, embedded with your major keywords, can get your site a high search engine ranking, there is no reason you
should take advantage of the 67 character limit provided for domain names. Besides, you are too late now. The
record of the longest domain name has been set by a Welsh village, with its registration of
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com.
Concentrate on your visitors comfort levels. Leave them no scope for confusion and no loophole to err. Give them a
name they can easily guess (without having to quip over the spelling and the location of hyphens) and hopefully,
they’ll reciprocate with more clicks.
You could always rely on those prefixes (e, i, net, web, the, my) and suffixes (world, business, company, store).
The power of vowels unleashed, you’d generate a potential brand name. E.g. ebay.com, ivillage.com, pcworld.com,
smallbusiness.com
Lucky the business if it’s creator has that perfect proper noun to lend his site a name. Atkins.com named after Dr.
Atkins and Dell.com after its founder and CEO Michael Dell. A traditional business moving online could capitalize
on it’s established brand name. Even acronyms could yield quick domain names. Microsoft is an acronym for
MICROcomputer SOFTware and so is Yahoo for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.
Targeting search engine rankings – e.g. Yahoo that follows alphabetic classification of websites – consider site
names beginning with the digit 1 or the letter ‘a’. Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon.com, cites this as one of his
reasons for the name’s choice.
But for those of you driven by the age old myth – that search engines have a liking for words that are separated by
dashes- wake up! Today, when search engines focus on the site content, hyphenated names have no influence. Domain
names with or without hyphens is in itself a topic for a forum. A good idea is to register both options if possible
and redirect visitors to one site. Walmart.com never let go off it’s original registration (wal-mart.com), even
after it changed name. Now both names take you to the same site.
Think of it on a broader angle. A few dollars spend to secure all possible variants of your name (with alternate
extensions) will secure your visitors, otherwise likely to contribute to competitor site traffic. More - register
possible names your visitors are likely to associate to your domain. The retailer Buy.com registered the domains:
"10percentoffamazon.com," "10percentoffreel.com," and "10percentoffegghead.com”. Proctor & Gamble is an extreme
case of this blanket approach. It registered hundreds of generic domain names relating to all aspects of personal
hygiene and healthcare: pimples.com, badbreath.com, underarm.com, diarrhea.com etc. They advertise only one, but
use the others to bring traffic, and point all the domain names to one site.
Though generic names can’t be trademarked, are sources of controversy and usually unavailable (if not, costly),
your prospective domain name could sound of the genre of women.com, Hotels.com, Furniture.com, Art.com and
shoes.com. Nonetheless, the loss of uniqueness in generic names is a serious reason for their unpopularity among
namers. Now guess why Amazon was’nt named book.com and ebay not auction.com.
So, if the dictionary lets you down, do not fret to think of words that are arbitrary, previously unheard of and
totally unrelated. Yahoo, Google and BlueTooth.com don’t owe their origins to the thesaurus. Sometimes it pays to
be whimsy!
allthegoodnamesaretaken.com
In just around 2 years, the number of website names registered has grown from 200 to a voluminous 125,000 per
month. And as yet, already over 1.6 million domains have been registered, including the subtitle above! Chances of
you finding a 3 character .com domain name unregistered (not on sale!), are thin… very thin.
Here’s the good news. Everyday, around 20,000 domain names expire and get deleted. In addition to the generic
domain extensions such as .com, .net, etc. there are approximately 250 different international domains each with
their own two-letter country code extension. Speculations of new TLD (Top Level Domain) names include .firm,
.store, .arts, .info, .nom, .biz, .pro, .aero, .coop, .museum and .name.
So, don't settle for the first domain name you think of! Although the supply of domain names is diminishing daily,
it's better to expend more thought at the beginning and save money later. Don’t let the gold rush skate your
decision (and later leave you to regret over an unmarketable name). Then again, don’t sit just hatching ideas. Even
as you read this, someone halfway across the globe might be beating you to your choice!
Some are just registered by entrepreneurial opportunists hoping to make a fast buck by selling it on. If your
choice is taken, the easiest, cheapest and most reliable solution would be to register another name. Did you know
that the auction site eBay.com was the second choice of it’s creator after his initial pick EchoBay.com was taken?
A good name is a legal name!
Nonetheless, if you own a successful site, that just can’t do without that colonized ideal name, you better ensure
your pockets are deep because the owner at the other end knows that there’s nothing quite like the commercial value
of a domain name. The highest publicly known sale of domain name was the sale of Business.com for $7,500,000 to
eCompanies, a business incubator.
Domain names have been turned into a marketing bargain with its parking capability. A business can register or buy
a name for later use. And there are sites that do nothing but park potential names mostly sold for fire-sale prices
later on! A Belgian doctor, Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste owns well over 200,000 domain names. It’s a fine pursuit, if
you care to keep your distance from brand infringement. In the past, speculators have faced legal charges on
trademark violations from the bigwigs (including Microsoft) for having registered microsoftwindows.com,
microsoftoffice.com, AirborneExpress.com, CitibankMasterCard.com, HewlettPackardss.com, and Wall-Mart.com. Domain
name conflicts that grabbed headlines - Yahoo vs. "yahooka.com" (a marijuana site), Nissan Motors vs. Nissan
Computer Corporation. One that caught my personal appeal - Archie Comics company’s trademark driven domain dispute
with Veronica.org, a website set up by a loving dad in honor of his 2-year-old daughter Veronica!
From McDonalds to MTV, a lot of press on online brand infringement ( the hijack of popular brand names) has filled
the air. Even as I write this, Google Inc. is being challenged the right to use the name "Froogle" for its online
shopping service (a New York based carpenter owns Froogles.com - web shopping site).
Each year, about 250,000 cases are decided by the US federal courts. If you have no time to sort it out the good
old fashion, you should consider devising a strategic approach for domain naming, reflected in sound corporate
policy and executed with effective management. Toady it’s a topic of senior boardroom meetings where competent
professionals are assigned to conduct name searches (a less costly venture compared to the possible consequences of
dealing with a complaint of infringement.) Take lessons from corporate folklore on the long term effects of a
carelessly chosen domain name. People who learnt things the hard way include Art-U-Frame.com that paid $450,000 to
acquire the name art.com.
The crux
Your domain name is more than a ubiquity. You have no other billboard or bypass to your site. Statistics prove that
direct navigation or guessed URLs account for majority of the traffic to a site (64.43%), much more than the search
engines can bring (35.55%). Eat, drink and sleep on your idea before you move to register that killer name. Don’t
hassle, thinking there are nodomainnamesleft.com (that’s taken too!). Your share of homework should save you a lot
of misery down the road.
Besides, if you can’t trademark your design scheme, product idea and marketing strategy, here’s something you can.
Your domain name is perhaps the only thing that you can own on the Internet. Remember, there’s always more to a
name than just the name itself! Happy naming!
Liji is a PostGraduate in Software Science, with a flair for writing on anything under the sun. She puts her
dexterity to work, writing technical articles in her areas of interest which include Internet programming, web
design and development, ecommerce and other related issues.
Source: http://www.ezinearticles.com
Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (VNU Net via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News)
Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies. Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (Computing.co.uk)
Janie Davies, Computing , Friday 4 July 2008 at 10:21:00 A US court has ruled that Google must provide Viacom with details of users who have watched YouTube videos Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies.... Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (vnunet.com)
Janie Davies, Information World Review , Friday 4 July 2008 at 11:52:00 A US court has ruled that Google must provide Viacom with details of users who have watched YouTube videos Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies.... ...
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