31 replies to this topic

[DarrenC]

Domain names have to mean something - and both of your domains mean nothing, I would have no idea what type of services or products that your company provides.

I'd re-think your domain and get a .co.uk and .com URL.

[JohneeMac]

It took me months to think of my domain name but im quite pleased with it.

Media Surgery.

[jspope]

Hi!

An excellent free e-book that considers such issues is Steve Baba's Business Domain Names HOW TO Select & Buy an ELITE DOMAIN NAME.

In it he discusses why google.com is such an excellent domain, why initials, hyphens, or acronyms are inferior, why dot com is superior, domain naming strategies, and much more.

Regards,

Stephen :-)

Edited by jspope, 03 January 2005 - 09:40 PM.

[robinantill]

Not really, threeD.  If he's got a UK business and wants to show up in the UK search engines, he's much better off with a .co.uk domain name.

My site is based in the UK [snip] and we show up in the UK on google.com, google.co.uk and also when you only select UK companies in google.co.uk we show up. Try 'garden sheds' without the quotes.

However, the reason for this is that our site is hosted on a UK server and we found this out the hard way. Earlier this year we had to change servers and I approached a UK company and was offered a unique IP address which I thought would be good and transferred our web site to them. To my horror within the week my site vanished from the UK results and was completely puzzled. I don't know what make me check but I asked my hosting company where their server was and they told me, that has I wanted a unique IP address, they were hosting it in the US. I asked them to move my site to their UK server and my site reappeared within the week.

I have another site [snip] which is hosted on 1and1.co.uk and recently noticed that this site is not appearing in the UK results. I could not work this out but then saw an article that 1and1.co.uk were web servers were now based in the US. I am now in the stages of changing this to an UK server.

My other sites on 1and1.co.uk do appear in the google UK results when they have a co.uk suffix but all the sites with .com or .net do not.

The following sites are all hosting with 1and1.co.uk on their US server and you can try these options for yourself. Some are .com one is .net and some are .co.uk

[snip]

This means that if you have a .com or .net site and you host it on a server in the UK it will appear on google.uk, if they are hosted in the US then they won't. If you have a co.uk site then they will appear on google.uk even if the site is hosted in the US.

Edited by Randy, 12 February 2005 - 05:44 PM.

[Randy]

Welcome robinantill !

Sorry, I had to snip out the live urls so that we stay within the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]. Your contribution is much appreciated. Feel free to create a signature to include your site addresses.

Also, since it affects you directly you may also be interested in this thread that Ian started regarding localization.

[Jill]

Welcome robinantill!

[robinantill]

Hi,
Just an update on my site which was with 1and.co.uk and had disappeared from the google.co.uk UK results. I have now moved to an server based in England and my site now shows up in the google.co.uk UK results.
Regards.

[Jill]

Sounds good robinantill!

[cyoung35]

I don't feel the name was what made google the largest search engine, it was the marketing and technology. As far as the new URL...it sounds like your business isn't primarily generated online so I would go with something that is more conveniant for your visitors to type in if your using paper advertising. The shorter name is easier for them to type in the address bar. As far as remembering the URL I personally have a hard time remembering website addresses regardless what the name is. If your primary means of business comes from paper or non internet advertising then I would use the shorter name and keep the other web site up for redirect.

[ewc21]

For more saturated keywords used in domains such as "hotel" or "travel" it is easy to find long domains combining "hotel" or "travel" with other keywords since the generic keywords are easily snapped.

[spade82]

It's a really hard task these days to find an original domain. All seem to be already registered.

[Jill]

Really? I don't think it's hard at all. Just take two words that describe what you do, and make a new word out of it. Rarely will those two words be taken as a domain name, and you have an instant brand!

[musicbox]

longer name looks easier then the short name you stated.

[mal4mac]

Brett Tabke, in the excellent book "Google Hacks", recommends going for "Google.com" and not "MyKeyword.com" and cites the example of Goto.com renaming itself as Overture.com. So surely it is better going for memorable, totally off topic, single words, rather than two keywords joined together?

[Jill]

Brett Tabke, in the excellent book "Google Hacks"

Didn't Tara Calishan write that?