The term "exact match" does NOT apply to hyphenated domains...

[eddieb]

Duracell brought out Procell to attack the industrial market, and for years did not openly advertise they were behind the brand.

Almost missed your little addition.
What point does that prove? They brought out Procell to attack the industrial market, a different market from their standard product. Whats wrong with that? Did they not relaunch as 'batteries.com'?
I fail to see your point and have better things to do with my time than continue with this. You may continue if you wish but don't expect a response.
As the saying goes "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something"

 

[domainseller200]

Yes of course, and to go the other way with newer companies to make the point, Facebook.com and Twitter.com chose names and created them into brands, they didn't obsess over socialnetwork.com and microblog.com.

They took names and expanded them into brands.

What you're all advocating is taking brands and shrinking them into domain names.

Yes agreed, but we don't know the reason for them choosing those exact names (same with any other brand) and it could be for any other reason than 'not obsessing over generics'

What you're all advocating is taking brands and shrinking them into domain names.

Other might be, but I most certainly am not as I am kind of inclined to agree with your comments to a degree.

I do think that brands can be created from good solid domain names, but it is very unlikely on the whole. I personally see generic domain names as a way of getting virtually guaranteed traffic (if you know what you are doing) via a keyword which is already known to convert and create extra / additional revenue regardless if you are a brand or not.

Firstchoice own holidays.co.uk. They haven't rebranded to it, but you can guarantee they will pick up extra traffic from unsavvy internet users who will either a). type it in direct to the nav bar OR b). type in holidays.co.uk into google and the top result is First Choice, so they will naturally click that.

To give some credit to the above statement, my wife runs her own business and she received a phone call enquiry only yesterday afternoon. The customer placed the order with her and actually commented "I found you at 1 in google for x keyword which is good as that is exactly what I was looking for so it was nice and easy for me" - This was a woman aged in her 40's

If a domain name does what it says on the tin and directs the customer to the brands website, it can only be a benefit to any company regardless of their brand name. Whether or not it is seen or understood by 'brands' is irrelevant, but no one can argue with that fact.

 

[BREWSTERS]

WHAT! - talk about circular logic.

You're a guy, and enough respect to you for being the leader in your field, who advocates the power of generics.

And here you have a generic that represents an industry worth £Billions. A prime mover.

And you're answer as to why it hasn't sold is because I was using it as an example?

I picked a company off the top of my head, genuinely, and Bosch was the first one I thought of.

What about vacuumcleaners.co.uk, or cars.co.uk, or any of the other thousands you could mention?

Thousands of generics are owned by brands - thousands - I notice you haven't acknowledged the toys.com sale...

 

[retired_member34]

Yes of course, and to go the other way with newer companies to make the point, Facebook.com and Twitter.com chose names and created them into brands, they didn't obsess over socialnetwork.com and microblog.com.

They took names and expanded them into brands.

What you're all advocating is taking brands and shrinking them into domain names.

I thought this was a hyphen vs non-hyphen argument. Brand vs. generic is a far more complicated argument, particularly when you leave out the size of investment available. If you want to build a business on a website and have £50, or £5K, or £500K, or £5m to spend then the correct route to naming is going to vary. Why would any major established company think of reversing into a generic domain? Look up the exact search figures for Bosch.

Interestingly Facebook.com was on the domain thefacebook.com until they could afford to buy the domain they wanted, and Twitter was called Twttr until it forked out to buy twitter.com on release, there are loads of new company examples of this, Foursquare, Instagram, DropBox etc.

 

[Vialli]

Can this be regarded as a suitable use of an hyphen in a domain name?

http://www.experts-exchange.com/

 

[dashu1]

I thought this was a hyphen vs non-hyphen argument. Brand vs. generic is a far more complicated argument, particularly when you leave out the size of investment available. If you want to build a business on a website and have £50, or £5K, or £500K, or £5m to spend then the correct route to naming is going to vary. Why would any major established company think of reversing into a generic domain? Look up the exact search figures for Bosch.

Interestingly Facebook.com was on the domain thefacebook.com until they could afford to buy the domain they wanted, and Twitter was called Twttr until it forked out to buy twitter.com on release, there are loads of new company examples of this, Foursquare, Instagram, DropBox etc.

Yes Facebook.com being the well known generic of a product called facebook, and twitter.com being the well known generic of a product called twitter?

Honestly talk about clutching at straws.

The point I made is: If some domainer somewhere has the EMD then the hyphenated free domain is infinitely better for the company than forking out through the nose to a domainer for the non hyphen EMD that just has a sales page on it.

No competition at all.

Then, extrapolating from that, if EMDs of products and services are such big shit, then why didn't Dyson fall all over themselves to register vacuumcleaners.co.uk for example when they were new to the market and attacking Hoovers massive foothold.

Answer - their brand is their name, not their product.

And therein lies the downfall of all domainers.

Radley have no interst in owning handbags.co.uk, because they're more than just a.n.other handbag - they're Radley FFS.

And that's what the consumer wants, not the product, but the name behind it, and when it comes to women and fashion, as in this example, that is absolutely nailed on.

 

[julian]

Now.. while I mostly agree with Edwin that hyphen is not a glorious thing I do think that times have changed.

Back in Dial-Up Freeserve era when the web was a gormless miasma of flat file fodder and people still had email addresses like: [email protected] average granny could'nt remember a hyphen (or a .org.uk) <- this breed is now dying..

Times have changed and we have a new breed of net kiddies who if they see a url/site they like they are capable of remembering it, whether it on TV, Radio, Newspaper - they don't give feth what it is - IF they want to use it

Now, as were on the subject of hyphen domains I want to bring up what in my meagre 10 years of domaining experience I believe is bargain of year: T-V.co.uk <- it is what it means

I see. Because you don't visit sites in TV ads, the multi £billion pound a year TV ad industry must be a complete waste of money. Oh, and the £900 million outdoor advertising market too...

 

[dashu1]

Now.. while I mostly agree with Edwin that hyphen is not a glorious thing I do think that times have changed.

Back in Dial-Up Freeserve era when the web was a gormless miasma of flat file fodder and people still had email addresses like: [email protected] average granny could'nt remember a hyphen (or a .org.uk) <- this breed is now dying..

Times have changed and we have a new breed of net kiddies who if they see a url/site they like they are capable of remembering it, whether it on TV, Radio, Newspaper - they don't give feth what it is - IF they want to use it

Now, as were on the subject of hyphen domains I want to bring up what in my meagre 10 years of domaining experience I believe is bargain of year: T-V.co.uk <- it is what it means

hmm nice thought but in my experience many kids today seem to have trouble spelling their own names, never mind knowing what a hyphen is.

On that note, have any of you seen Hopsin ill mind no.5 on you tube - cool!

 

[cc976a]

...but you are all looking at word of mouth or radio ads where someone has to say blue-hyphen-widgets.co.uk - it's easier when you are advertising online, or focus on PPC where 'remembering a name' is less of an issue

I can't remember the last time I listened to the radio or even read a magazine and tried to 'remember' a website name. If it's not going to be ready for me to click online then I'll write it down, or type it in to my phone / send myself an email etc...

I've never been a lover of the way hyphen looks in a URL but restating my earlier post.....

.....hyphen domains are EMD's!

 

[Brassneck]

...but you are all looking at word of mouth or radio ads where someone has to say blue-hyphen-widgets.co.uk - it's easier when you are advertising online, or focus on PPC where 'remembering a name' is less of an issue

I can't remember the last time I listened to the radio or even read a magazine and tried to 'remember' a website name. If it's not going to be ready for me to click online then I'll write it down, or type it in to my phone / send myself an email etc...

!

I agree. I suspect that as domainers we are more switched on to ads etc and therefore notice them, and therefore making assumptions that how we view things is the 'norm' Most 'normal' users seem to use google to search for websites rather than typing in urls directly.

Stephen.

 

[retired_member34]

Then, extrapolating from that

Extrapolating rarely works well, even within a small range.

Times have changed and we have a new breed of net kiddies who if they see a url/site they like they are capable of remembering it, whether it on TV, Radio, Newspaper - they don't give feth what it is - IF they want to use it

I have 2 intelligent late teenage children who rarely ever type a domain name into a URL bar. It's easier and quicker for them to type fb into their G search bar and click the first result than it is for them to type facebook.com.

Again I'm not sure what the argument is, I basically agree. Evan Williams wrote a good blog post on the subject. Of course, all this theoretical talk of new business being able to brand a new name requires you to come up with something new and original, not just bottom feed as dashu1 so nicely put it.

 

[Brassneck]

I just checked. We have 6,994 .co.uk domains in inventory, and 71 of them are hyphenated i.e. 1% of our portfolio. 6 of the 865 names we've sold in the last 6 years have been hyphenated and they accounted for 0.61% of total sales revenue. So yes, I see hyphenated domains as pretty much irrelevant - and so do our customers.

Looks like it will be 7 soon - just seen your post about putting this on domainlore http://domainlore.co.uk/auctions/gems_id/5555.

 

[Edwin]

Looks like it will be 7 soon - just seen your post about putting this on domainlore http://domainlore.co.uk/auctions/gems_id/5555.

Thought it would be a nice little experiment!

 

[Brassneck]

Thought it would be a nice little experiment!

Not sure a Saturday night end is ideal. Good luck with it.

 

[Sussexite]

Back to the very first post and the initial point of this thread.

I can't see any major problem with sellers advertising hyphenated domains here and quoting the adwords exacts (ignoring the hyphen) because:

a. people here understand the impact of the hyphen on value
b. some people clearly want to buy and develop hyphenated domains
c. you can rank a hyphenated domain for the non hyphenated search term to some degree or another which has value
d. buyers will do their own keyword research anyway

As long as it's clear that the domain is hyphenated so buyers can see what is being offered I don't see a huge problem.

 

[Brassneck]

(Wasn't sure which forum this fitted into, so I've popped it in "General")

I'm seeing more and more posts in the sales forums where an exact-match number is quoted for a domain name with 1+ hyphens in it.

At the point that you add a hyphen, the domain's not an exact match any more! Google doesn't treat hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains in the same way... and while it's possible to find examples of hyphenated domains that rank well, they do so despite of, not because of, the hyphen.

Google might be treating them the same now after - http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/108536-google-update-going-after-emds.html

 

[Marcoose]

The latest Google update aside, I firmly believe that hyphenated EMDs get the same weighting as unhyphenated.

I put a hyphenated .com up last month. 14k+ exacts, £15.73 CPC. It's no7 in the UK and page and 26 on Google.com already with less than 50 links. It probably helps though that the domain is 13/14 years old!

 

[Squilookal]

So just to revive this thread after being dormant for a month...

Does anyone have any insights into what Google thinks about hyphenated and non hyphenated EMDs with regard to their EMD update? Any visible differences in penalties (ahem “negative corrective action”) for similar hyphenated/non hyphenated domains?

Tough issue to objectively assess obviously, particularly as G rolled out a new Panda update at the same time as the EMD one (not to mention the other 500 algo tweeks they make every year of course!).