The ABCs of Domains

by Kyle David on January 10th at 9:04 am EST

When working online either as an established business or a startup, your domain choice is critical. It will not only be something that you display on business cards, advertisements, and correspondence, but it should also be part of your brand. In the old days it used to be your telephone number that you wanted to make memorable. Remember the Carrot Top commercials for 1-800-C-O-L-L-E-C-T? I think if you asked the average college age student what a collect call is, they would think it’s one of those calls they get when they don’t pay their credit card bill on time. Times have changed.

When selecting a domain, you want something memorable that can be spelled phonetically. For example words like: surprise, collectible, convertible, exceed, existence, etc are horrible to have in your domain name, because there is a high chance that the user will misspell the words and therefore not see your site.

Additionally, too many people search for domains by simply what is available as a .com address. This can back fire big time. You want to ensure you are registering all domains .com/.net/.org so that someone doesn’t come along and grab yourdomain.net when you are getting popular. In the 2004 Senatorial election, candidate Rick Santorum made headlines because of his highly popular google bomb… someone registered his name under a different spelling and posted some not so popular information about him. Read more about the most notable google bombs here.

Finally, combinations, fat fingers, and c/v’s (when someone types a ‘v’ instead of a ‘c’, which is very common). We recommend using a domain typo generator like this one to ensure that your name is protected. Register them all in .com/.net/.org . People are often tempted to try to get away in the domain game with just a single .com address, but should success enter the picture, that can be a costly penalty. From being in the web business for almost 15 years (yikes), I’ve seen everything from the kid who registered appleipod.com and the subsequent lawsuit, to political candidates being creamed at the hands of google bombers. Make sure you are covering your bases.