More Bad Domain Names
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
More examples of poorly chosen company domain names.
My wife took over the home office this past weekend to sort through a few hundred business cards that were scattered across her desk. One of the business cards caught my eye. It was for a company called Mingle. Or at least I think that’s how you pronounce it. The company’s domain name is — get ready for this — Minggl.com. Ouch.
I decided to look through her cards to find other examples of bad domain names. Many times the companies have good names, it’s just that they have poor domain names. Here are some that caught my eye:
Awind: The company name is fine, but you have to go to awindinc.com to find its web presence. There’s another company (non-competing, thank goodness) that operates at awind.com.
Future Works: I like the company name, even though it seems I’ve heard of several companies with names like this. To find the company you’ll have to type in Future-Works.com with a hyphen. Much like Awind, FutureWorks.com is owned by an existing company.
Giftag: Giftag is a Best Buy venture. But if you try to find it by spelling it correctly as GiftTag.com, you’ll end up at a one of Frank Schilling’s parked pages. You’ll have to go to Giftag.com with one ‘t’ to find the company.
FortressWare: This one is really painful. To find this company you have to go to Fortessw.com. I would think that when you brainstormed this company name and you found FortressWare.com unavailable, you’d try to buy it before settling on the company name.
Web 2.0 .tv: This isn’t a company, just a web site. The company behind it is really good. But this name is tough and brings up an issue lots of people face: “how do I deal with web 2.0 in domain names?” I’ve seen people display it as “20″ in domains. In this case the domain is web2point0.tv. I usually refer to it as “web 2 dot 0″, so this choice confuses me. The simple answer for people struggling with the 2.0 thing is: don’t use it in your domains.
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Everyday I see hundreds of poor company domains – That they actually use for branding!
Its a shame more people inside large or small organisations still dont realise the power of owning a brandable, easy to remember domain that does what it says.
Hopefully the new age of graduating marketers shall help our domain market grow but for the old school guys they just dont and wont get it.
Regards,
Robbie
I suppose it is kind of like refusing to pay $25 for parking at a concert or ball game to be close to the action. So you park over a mile away and save $15. When the event is over late at night, was saving $15 really worth it? OK I’m guilty
Sometimes, a company is an outgrowth of a parent company.
Maybe, one day someone will think DomainNameWireConsultants.com is a stupid domain for a company. But, the parent company never thought that part of the business would evolve into a stand alone entity.
Sometimes, a company initially can’t afford to buy a premium domain (or the domain is not available for purchase) until the business develops. http://www.DNW.com
As for strange company names -
Google, Yahoo, Exxon, Flickr, Enom, GoDaddy, Costco, LinkedIn, just to name a few.
Maybe, being unique sounding (or appearing) is an advantage.
I think Retired Marketer has made a good point in noting ‘Flickr’ as a strange/poor company name! I mean it’s a complete ‘misspell’, not a made up brandable etc., yet not one domainer criticizes them or their name choice! Interesting what some consider a good domain name and/or a poor domain name, and who they choose to critique!
Not one domainer criticizes flickr ? Are you kidding ? Add this one domainer to the list. Stupid move … or maybe I should say stoopd. This is a problem that’s gone on for awhile. Kudos to all the companies who figure it out and get a good name to start. Unfortunately, as Andrew points out, more often than not companies pick stupid domains. Minggl.com ? Come on that sure is Mangld .
lol . . . they grabbed the typo of their name
http://whois.domaintools.com/minggle.com
It seems to me that when you name your new company (provided you don’t have much capital) you should do so only after you have found and registered a domain name to match (And it doesn’t have to be .com, although that would be preferred of course – .net or ccTLD might suffice)! I would imagine more and more new companies are taking this approach as they become more educated on the power of domain names.
Some of those names aren’t so bad. For instance future-works.com is not as good as future works and may lose some of its visitors but… I’m starting to notice a lot of “dash” names being broadcasted. If a company has to say “slash” if their call to action is cnn.com/headlines then saying “dash” is not so bad.
I do have to admit that minggl.com is horrible choice for a name.
One more thing. If you have the money to advertise and create a brand like Google, Google.com is a much stronger name that search.com if all other things equal.
Yeah can we “search: the web, but now people “google” it
@ Kevin M – I’ve complained about Flickr many, many times. Here are some examples. 150k confused people went to flicker.com each month.
@ Retired Marketer – Strange names are OK as long as you can intuitively spell them. And I never considered DNW.com as the starting point for this site. It just kind of fell into my lap. Frankly, starting as dnw.com would have been a bad move. You wouldn’t know what it stood for, and you would have a harder time remembering it than DomainNameWire.com.
@ Lisa – the problem with the dash isn’t necessarily the lost traffic or having to say one more word in your URL. There’s also a major security problem when emails mean for you are directed to firstwordsecondword.com instead of firstword-secondword.com. Having to advertise a slash afterword isn’t as big of a deal because if someone forgets the slash they won’t end up at a competitor’s site.
There is an incredibly simple “test marketing” solution that could save these companies a ton of money.
All they have to do is get 20 employees or friends in a room. Then, they read from a list of 15-20 domain names and ask them to write down their favorite name.
Believe it or not it works wonders.
ezeego1.co.in – another example of bad domain name in business
I was leaving Malta on Saturday and sat in the hotel lobby looking at the Malta Airport web site, checking to see if there were any delays.
maltaairport.com was a parked page. I had to search Google – it was at maltairport.com – stupid, stupid, stupid.
[...] choice. The most common gripe being “All the good domains are taken”. Andrew at Domain Name Wire has points out some of the more ridiculous names that start-ups have chosen. Obviously a lot of start-up companies, like Simulscribe, get stuck in this same boat when they [...]
[...] choice. The most common gripe being “All the good domains are taken”. Andrew at Domain Name Wire has points out some of the more ridiculous names that start-ups have chosen. Obviously a lot of start-up companies, like Simulscribe, get stuck in this same boat when they [...]
[...] choice. The most common gripe being “All the good domains are taken”. Andrew at Domain Name Wire has points out some of the more ridiculous names that start-ups have chosen. Obviously a lot of start-up companies, like Simulscribe, get stuck in this same boat when they [...]
[...] choice. The most common gripe being “All the good domains are taken”. Andrew at Domain Name Wire has points out some of the more ridiculous names that start-ups have chosen. Obviously a lot of start-up companies, like Simulscribe, get stuck in this same boat when they [...]