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Comment by vtlynch | Hacker News Reader

>I immediately gravitate towards the keyword descriptive dotCOM. It instantly exudes trust & authority

Strongly disagree. As a result of this type of thinking, I find that the majority of "keyword descriptive dotCOM" domains are usually click-bait or shady content marketing.

Sites like "VacuumReviews.com" are almost always full of content focused on SEO not quality, and questionable financial motivations.

But I guess if the general public still likes those types of domains it shouldnt affect their value.

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I can see your point of view.. What I was trying to convey - albeit poorly - was a more holistic view of the domain, ie. the domain on the side of a truck. The domain on a tablecloth. The domain on a bumpersticker.

If I saw a plumber driving around Atlanta with www.AtlantaPlumber.com on his truck, #1 - it'd be easy for me to remember, and #2 it'd be a more positive than negative perception of that business.

This is even more important if your business uses e-mail to communicate with customers.

I used to own a print business with a .net domain name. We'd often tell a new customer our e-mail address at the end of our first phone call. But too many times customers would just type .com in the e-mail address and then assume that our business has lousy service.

After a few months I paid a cyber-squatter (if that is still the appropriate term) $1600 for the .com version of our name and I never regretted that decision.

author here:

yes.. this..

side story, a friend of mine owns a city dotCOM name that also has a university with the corresponding .edu..

He receives email regularly from students pleading (to teachers) for an extra day for thesis completion or a gpa bump : )

People click strong and authoritative names. Generic domains often are strong and authoritative, but they aren't the only example of strong and authoritative names. I think your article misses this point.

One thing I would mention is that many people know that names like "BikeTours.com" were the first to be registered in the early Internet days, and these days do carry a degree of trust through age.

Are there plumbers in Atlanta that aren't fully booked without having nice domain names?

If they are fully booked, they should be raising their prices.

Are you the author of this post? Is there any way to contact you?

oop.. I guess I should mentioned that I'm the author.. you can ping me on twitter if that works.. or here : )

Please add your twitter handle to your profile. :)

done : ) I'm a HN noob.

The general public no longer types domain names.

They type what they want into the search box of Google or Bing. Domain names now only matter to the extent that search result ranking algorithms prioritize hits in the domain name.

As for myself, I am automatically wary of domain names that do not include a known trademark, and have no plausible reason to exist (and pay its own operating expenses) aside from advertising.

Without even visiting "vacuumreviews.com", I immediately presume it is operated by a vacuum cleaner company that presents false or biased reviews, to drive consumers to purchase their product. Such a site would only ever be visited by someone researching a vacuum cleaner purchase, and few would bother returning once that need has been satisfied to leave an honest review there. Guaranteed useless to click on the link.

Just pick a memorable and appropriate trademark for your business, and use a non-squatted variation on that as your domain name.

> The general public no longer types domain names.

I partially disagree. My opinion is that the general public has learned to type the first letter/s of a site they've previously visited, into their browser url bar. The median Pinterest user on the Web is not going to Google to get to Pinterest.com, even if a small percentage of users do so. Typing those first letters into the browser has become radically more common for the typical user than using a search engine for sites they visit regularly. The majority of Web users have long since figured out that typing into the browser reveals sites from their history.

I tend to agree with your view, or am biased because it reflects my pattern. However I would add, browsers (Chrome at least) have a bit of a dark pattern that pushes people towards a search making searches very common although not always needed/intended.

For example, when I type the first 4 letters of my bank's URL, the omnibox has 3 suggestions prior to the direct bank URL even though it's a site I frequently visit and google knows that. They want me to search "BANK NAME" because then I'm more likely to click on the top link which of course is an ad.

>For example, when I type the first 4 letters of my bank's URL, the omnibox has 3 suggestions prior to the direct bank URL even though it's a site I frequently visit and google knows that. They want me to search "BANK NAME" because then I'm more likely to click on the top link which of course is an ad.

This is strange. For nearly every letter on the keyboard, Chrome's first suggestion in the address bar is a site I regularly visit. I.e. for p its paypal.com, for e its ebay.com.

There are almost no cases where the first suggestion isnt a direct URL. I wonder what settings differ between us.

You shouldn't use Chrome

You missed the general point. The discussion is about unknown domains. If I was looking for vacuum reviews, I wouldn't type vacuumreviews.com but rather search for vacuum reviews. If was was looking for football scores, I wouldn't type footballscores.com but rather search for football scores. The former used to be a common way to browse before the advent of search engines.

That's not to say that there is no SEO value for footballscores.com; there is.

So, you say that people are more interested in "web content about Facebook" than "web content about weather", and they aren't typing in "facebook" to get to facebook.com, and going through google (likely unintentionally)?

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=weather,facebook

I actually watched a friend google Facebook and go to the website through the results... It seemed so strange to me. Maybe some people have become trained to do that? I've only seen it once but it stuck with me as odd.

Lucky you. Even informatics students go further:

1. Type google.com into the address bar. They don't know that modern browsers can directly redirect search input to your favorite search engine. 2. Type the domain (including extension) to the google search input. 3. Click on the first link.

I honestly fear the future.

The most horrifying part is that they probably do this every time they want to visit that domain, and don't even know what a bookmark is.

Never mind about writing <html><head></head><body><ul><li><a>link1</a></li><li><a>link2</a></li>...</ul></body></html> and using a simple list of their favorite links as their home page.

My only consolation is that when these people grow up and have some money to spend, the HN crowd will all look like Odin, with all the magic we can work using our mastery of the runes. I bet I sacrificed some of my eyesight by sitting too closely to old, low-res CRT monitors, too.

That's the wrong comparison.

Agreed. Descriptive.dot.com domain names are the equivalent of generic cereal boxes. I want to go to Amazon for my books, not books.com.

I will never go to food.com, or glutenfree.com, or anything of the like. Amy's Kitchen on the other hand sounds compelling.

I trust my pets with rover.com, but dogsitting.com? No way.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Going by domain name is the equivalent of planting your business on the side of the highway. You're going to get a ton of traffic just based on walk-ins alone.

To have worked at a company who had one of the most profitable domain on the planet. I confirm!

Internally, we used to call it the money printer. It was so obvious that revenues were flowing because of the domain.

Quite curious now, give us a hint!

Not allowed to disclose.

What about taking the generic domain name and redirecting to a domain name for your actual brand?

Unlikely to work half as well.

>I want to go to Amazon for my books, not books.com.

Funny that, books.com seems to be owned by Barnes & Noble. I wonder what that domain cost them originally and how much traffic goes to it.

I have a feeling that the average internet consumer would sooner click dogsitting.com over rover.com

appointmentreminder.com

bingocardcreator.com

care.com

> appointmentreminder.com

except it's a dot org.

Since when is making money a questionable financial motivation?

I think it's unlikely you'll find anyone reviewing vacuum cleaners online because they love the engineering prowess exhibited by a Dyson. It's so they can make $3 off your Amazon purchase.

For all the talk of side projects and acquisitions and growth hacking and SEO, HN tends to have an inherent distrust of anyone attempting to make money online by any way other than subscription SaaS.

Making money isn't a questionable motivation, it's a biased one.

Just like "discount provided for an honest review" on Amazon, stuffing keywords in your URL for affiliate traffic is a very clear bias.

It's shouting "I profit from traffic, so I want to get you here by all means necessary" — this is less true as algorithms become more intelligent, but it's been my experience since the advent of the internet.

Now, of course — that's not always true. Some great sites have also relied on keywords and affiliate revenue... but I'd wager that a reputable site with a keyword based URL and affiliate links is a one in a million phenomenon (thenightlight.com is the best example I can think of)

tl;dr As an internet user I've been trained to equate all keyword stuffing with spam. It's like "banner blindness" but for keywords.

> I think it's unlikely you'll find anyone reviewing vacuum cleaners online because they love the engineering prowess exhibited by a Dyson. It's so they can make $3 off your Amazon purchase.

You'd be surprised. That's what differentiates the ad-based Internet from the good old Internet "by people, for people".

Personally, my way of searching for / evaluating a product is to find a legitimate (not sponsored) community around this product category and search the archives for recommendations and discussions. This makes it much easier to get real opinions and avoid various kinds of marketing.

Sure, marketers have been trying to game this technique since time immemorial. That's one reason I consider them malicious actors.

> the good old Internet "by people, for people"

Just like the good old days of America?

Neither was as great as we would like to think it was.

>I think it's unlikely you'll find anyone reviewing vacuum cleaners online because they love the engineering prowess exhibited by a Dyson.

There are literally dozens of sites for every niche and topic where people are writing about it for personal satisfaction. Rather shocking you would think that given the number of personal blogs that pop up on HN.

I agree.

Google and that concentrating on SEO brought us to a state where the Internet is full of content with descriptive domains/business names filled with content created for Google but not for the actual user. If you choose a more creative business and domain name and write good content for reals human it would still perform SEO-wise because of low bounce-rates and long duration times but experienced SEO content marketers will outperform you every time.

I think that's the Not-a-casual-user fallacy :P

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