CNET.com published an article tonight entitled “Do URL’s matter Anymore?”
My favorite quote from the article is:
“Perhaps there are those generic words that people absent-mindedly type, perhaps just out of boredom. I don’t know, URLs like kitchen.com. Or music.com. But could this still be a significant number?
How many people really do bother to type URLs these days?””
The author ChrisMatyszczyk expresses his believe is domains are old news and search is where its at.
Of course this article brought out all the domain haters and there are plenty of comments already including this one:
“””I always thought it smarmy how people traded up url’s. Now we are entering an age where it is more important to know how to find information than to remember lots of info. Keywords are better than remembering web urls.”””
However the most accurate comment in my opinion was:
“”Do people actually pay Chris Matyszczyk for nutty advice like this? If so, they’re wasting their corporate dollars.”””
Go read the article.
Really an amazing lack of knowledge for someone who wrties about Tech.
On the other hand this is the same CNET.com which owns the domain radio.com and has it going just to a parked page.
I used to react to articles like this, but I now have a different perspective. I’ve had a revelation and now believe that, yes, they are 100% correct. Domain names don’t matter, search engines are God, dotCom is equal to dotInfo, branding no longer matters and your audience memory retention factor from your advertising will never effect your bottom line. In 1997, I quickly realized that techies knew absolutely zilch about sales and marketing. Perhaps they are hard wired that way. Regardless, I agree with them now and they are welcome to sell any of their dotcom generics and geodomains to us for $100 a pop because they didn’t want them for that price in 1997. It’s the least we can do.
David
Maybe they CNET will sell you Radio.com for $100, there not “using” it.
Mike:
Exactly. I’m always here for them.
One of the key selling points to advertisers for my geodomain names is: “20% of my traffic is type-in, which can’t be bought on Google.”
Thanks, David!
–Except domains end up at the top of search
–Get better response when used as the call to action line on a four line Google Adsense classified
–Have built-in tiny url that’s conducive to social media and allows the brand to stand out in 140-character messages that are quickly replacing Google as the source of search and referral
–Augment brand names to provide multiple avenues of customer reach or to segment marketing campaigns that extend TV spots online, close the sale and track the source of the lead
–Will always be re sellable assets that liquidate cash from failing or failed businesses (ie. what did CNET do?? toysrus?)
etc.– etc.– etc.
David … maybe you can relieve them of the burden of renewing TV.com.
Anthony:
For TV.com I’d sweeten the pot and offer them $500 (or as a techie told me last year when he offered us that much for one of our generics, “Did you consider that I’m offering you more than 60 years of registration fees?”).
CBS bought CNET including TV.com and all the domains for $1.8 billion
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2009/05/cbs-cnet-integration-one-year-later.html
and the original post including some vintage finds from Edwin and Frank Schilling
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2008/05/cnetcbs-its-all-about-domains-and.html
I’ve actually seen commercials on TV where instead of providing a URL, the call-to-action is “Go to Yahoo.com and search x” The problem is first not all search engines have the same results obviously so it must be specified. People aren’t always going to remember to type in Bing.com and may just go to Google. This scenario is equivalent of the .net site losing traffic to the .com because its what people are used to. Second, to have a call-to-action like that means that the site ranks number one for a desired keyword. It’s not necessarily easy to rank that high, especially for a competitive keyword. Domains aren’t everything true, but they do help and they can give an instant upperhand.
I wonder at what value they would carry radio.com on their balance sheet.
Owen
Correct and CBS owns over 100 broadcast radio stations and Last.FM which the bought in a separate transaction for $280 Million and yet they park Radio.com.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/cbs-acquires-lastfm-for-280m/
I like that out of all the generics he could have used, he chose Kitchen.com as an example. If he would have mentioned Songs.com instead of Music.com, Anything.com would have been 2 for 2.
^^ Congrats to Anything.com for the publicity (as if a mention from CNET could actually open the faucet any wider for those domains. 🙂
The author, Chris Matyszczyk is “a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.” Does that put a different perspective on things?
As such, this may (or may not be) the view of the publisher. 🙂
How is this newsworthy anyway?
His choice of the word URL instead of Domain tells you something:
Hard-core techie! They always hated domainers and anything with commercial bone in it’s body.
They are purists that want the Net to go back to how it was in 1993.
And….ture…as was mentioned they know nothing about business/marketing/branding etc…..
Here is proof of techie myopia … the 2 TOPmost people that started a
search engine to compete with Google are techies. With their genius thinking and they went with stupid domain name that could not even pass the radio test nor the print test nor the tv test.
http://www.cuil.com/info/management/
Generic Keyword Domain Names Easily Dominant!
in search – adwords PPC ads – the name of the game is getting as much of your ad bolded as possible. it is proven to bump up your CTR and thus lower ad spend and thus drive your ad further up the ladder closer to that coveted #1 spot often times paying less for click than the guys in lower positions pay for their ads.
having said that why would anyone say that domain names dont matter? because if i typed in stomach exercises into the search box in google i am more apt to click on the ad that has stomach exercises in the title, in the description and in the destination URL (domain name) and 3 times more likely to click on the ad that has http://www.StomachExercises.com as the destination URL and a good percentage of these folks actually still skip the search altogether and just type in stomachexercises.com in the address bar. yes lots of people still operate this way.
i never have but thats just me – people make HUGE mistakes by advertising to what they would respond to versus advertising to what the world actually responds to.
these days if you want a good quality score and lower CPC and higher ad position you need to go the extra mile and create separate ads for EACH keyword or kw phrase and also (the part that everyone neglects to do out of laziness) is to create a separate landing page for EVERY keyword or kw phrase that is focused tightly around that keyword – the landing pages, then as a group, can funnel the traffic into your actual website where you will have many articles and lots of info on lots of different topics – but if you just create a couple ads for a hundred different keywords and send all that traffic straight to your website you are absolutely blowing it! and believe the guy with the stamina to outlast everyone from and ROI and conversion standpoint is the guy who goes the extra mile and does 5-10% more than everyone else.
remember: you only have to create the ad and the landing page once (of course you can and should always test and tweak) — after that its mostly great targeted traffic on autopilot often times for less money per click than the guy 3 spots beneath you because his quality score wont be as good as yours.
there are many people out there selling these last 5 paragraphs in a report for $10 or as part of a $67 e-book. i know because i’ve bought them.
i hope this helps anyone out there who previous to 5 minutes ago was convinced that domaisn dont matter.
buy all the available dot coms in your niche and create separate ads for each and separate landing pages for each and redirect that traffic to your main money domain (which can be named anything – that domain is the one that really doesnt matter much – but in a perfect world your main money domain is a catch short memorable .com)
i have been thinking about creating an e-book filled with useful pointers and tips – short and to the point – taking the highlights i have gleaned from spending entirely too much money on online advice – most of which has been bunk – but there have been some really nice golden nuggets mixed in there.
does anyone think a book like this would sell if i priced it around $17 and gave some nice bonuses?
this is my first market test question ever so please if you have any opinions on the subject i would love to hear feedback.
thanks,
ez
LOL! whoever owns stomach exercises dot com just got a nice quality link!!
whoever you are you’re welcome – i didnt even think that would happen. oh well!
Hi Mike,
I jumped on the grenade for all of y0u guys here (and of course hogged up some “special promotion” of my/client’s domains) but the points are true and clear. I made the point for David Costello, I made the point for Lisa (in the comment section.
Most of all, I think I clearly and simply laid out what domains are (not URLS) and their value to a company. Now, those who know me will know which comment is mine, because my name is *ahem*, a gaming handle as opposed to my working name. (I know, I dog people for not identifying themselves, but I think this is “unfriendly territory”. My comment won’t be hard to figure out, and they PRINTED IT! LOL)
http://news.cnet.com/8601-17852_3-10276727-1.html?communityId=2101&targetCommunityId=2101&blogId=71&tag=mncol;tback
I hope I stated the obvious well enough to make even those techie guys who lost out in nabbing great domains when the time was right to think twice about writing idiotic articles like this one. (Maybe it wasn’t so idiotic. Maybe they purposely suckered us in to get some comments and traffic from our community).
thanks big Mike
Stephen Douglas
http://www.successclick.com
alias…