Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

Hacker News is a good example of a terrible domain name with a memorable product name. But I still think it's kind of a problem: I probably sat down at a computer and typed "Hackernews.com" a dozen times when I first started visiting this site. (Which then screws up the auto complete when using that computer the next time). It's just how my brain works and how I use the internet (and it's never been much of a problem with other sites in the past) ... In fact, it wasn't until I discovered hackerne.ws that I stopped having a problem, because I'd automatically start typing "hackernews" and catch myself and add the period before the "ws".

Mostly unrelated, but since the article praises Chrome's Omnibar, can anyone answer why Chrome's autocomplete is so much slower and crappier than Safari's? Again, it's partly a problem with how I choose to use the internet, but I've visited the google search for "da" a few dozen times when trying to access Daring Fireball in Chrome since I need to pause for a full second before the auto complete catches up with what I want. I never had that issue in Safari.

> The last reason getting the perfect .com is less important than it used to be is simply because others have proven you can succeed without it.

This seems to be the core thought behind the idea that domains aren't very important. It's the worst reason of them all too.

You can succeed with all kinds of hindrances. You don't need great design, technology, marketing, or anything else to succeed. There are really no prerequisites to success. There are examples of success in every permutation.

The job of the entrepreneur is to increase their odds by doing everything they reasonably can. For 99% of startups that means getting a high quality .com domain name.

Isn't there still a strong SEO advantage to having a good domain?

My understanding was that a big part of domain 'authority' comes from having a topic-relevant domain of a reasonable age, but my SEO knowledge is a few years out of date so that may not be true nowadays.

They mention bit.ly as a success and helping popularize alternative domains for startups. But isn't this a bad example? There have been domains seized by the Libyan government (http://www.circleid.com/posts/libyan_government_has_seized_v...)

Think twitter would have gone as viral if it was called "smsdispatch.com" or "sms.com".

It wouldn't have.

Names fit a particular purpose. What is good for one purpose (selling to the corporate market for example) then "sms.com" might be worth the money. Another situation, maybe not.

Naming and branding is important because based on psychological principles and things that have been around forever it is important. (Sorry that I don't have time to point to the underpinnings of the research and basis for this statement.)

Ev's argument is also like saying the name of a movie is less important. You can always find isolated cases where the name wasn't that important like "the social network" and counter it with movie names like "goodfellas" "godfather" "rocky" the list is endless.

As John Gotti Jr. said to the interviewer on 60 minutes "la cosa nostra" like the way that rolls off your tongue? The fact is people do like cool names.

Someone domains names maybe like cheapgreenshoes.com, but shoes.com is rocking.