We lost some vowels along the way. Good luck finding us.
I’ve seen a lot of bad domain names in my day.
There was the women’s site sk-rt.com (it’s cute for skirt!). Then there was some made up name like schmoop or shloop or something like that. (It’s in my archives somewhere, but it was so bad I can’t even remember exactly what it was.)
Now we have a new nominee for worst domain name: neighbrhds.com
Neighbrhds is the brand for a series of localized neighborhood apps released by Urban Living Marketing.
Look, I get it. Neighborhoods.com is registered and the owner is asking five figures.
“Ah, domain names don’t matter anymore,” say the startups. “We’re an app, anyway.”
Sure. But does anyone ever need to email the company? Indeed, at [email protected].
“Yes, my email address is ‘say hello at neighborhoods dot com, but with no o’s in neighborhood.”
If you pretend for a moment that domain names don’t matter, this company still has an issue when you search for its apps. I just went to the Google Play store and searched for “Neighborhoods”. I didn’t find its apps. You have to type neighbrhds to find them!
“Just go to the app store and search for neighborhoods without any o’s.”
In five minutes of searching I found a couple good domain names that include “neighborhoods” that would work much better for the company. Even as someone who thinks new TLDs can be confusing for users, this company would have been better off with neighorhoods.somethingelse.
DNPric.es says
Yeah, a real startup would get something like urban.me or urban.club…
Jothan says
>>“Yes, my email address is ‘say hello at neighborhoods dot com, but with no o’s in neighborhood.”
Wouldn’t that make their email address
HELL@ ?
Alan Aurmont says
No, that wouldn’t make it HELL@ because it clearly says no o’s in ‘neighborhood’, not ‘hello’.
Andrew Allemann says
You’re right, it’s even worse than I thought.
Andrew Allemann says
Even worse
Alexander says
Not surprised … some buyers simply make bad decisions when they can’t afford to buy the right domain name (or unwilling to invest the money). If they take a bit of time to research or ask a contact who’s a domain pro, they’d most likely come up with a better domain.
Alan Aurmont says
No o’s in ‘neighborhood’ you say? Well, since I’m British, is it spelt ‘neighburhd’ then?? Two words: EPIC FAIL
Bill Fishkin says
Thank you for your insightful overview of our domain name. It’s greatly appreciated.
We actually saved $39,987.01 by not getting that overpriced squatters domain. Basically, that’s $13,329.00 PER “O”.
In a world where no one really types out a domain name anymore, ask yourself: “Does it really matter?”.
The following is our official company response:
Dr ndrw,
We vlu yr pnion, thnk y fr yr npt. Wll tk yr sggstns nto cnsdrtn.
Chrs,
Th Neighbrhds Tm
Andrew Allemann says
You don’t need Neighborhoods.com. There are plenty of acceptable alternative better than what you have, including some that will cost the same you paid for your domain.
jZ says
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.
Jay says
Bill Fishkin:
By slandering the owner of neighborhoods.com by calling him/her a squatter, because you are either broke and can’t afford 40k or just have an emotional hangup in spending money to improve the success of your business, you make it clear your judgement on what is appropriate behavior in business is very questionable.
Domain investor is the correct term for those who had the foresight and courage to register great quality domains when others were just twidling their thumbs.
Please read up on the story of Mint.com and all other competitors in that space which ended up bankrupt because people could not remember their names and mint.com won the mindshare of users and people could actually remember the name mint and find it and it became the category leader in it’s space.
Here is a tip even though your obnoxious behavior does not really deserve it but since I’m a nice guy I will try to save you from ruining your startups chances:
1.
Change your apps name to neighborhoods (the correct spelling) and also create another version that is the same app but with a british spelling neighbourhoods for the UK, Australia, New zealand etc. markets.
Then people have a chance of finding you at the app stores.
2.
Register getneighborhoods.com and getneighbourhoods.com as the addresses for your website (available when I checked).
If you take these tips you have a chance but if you insist on your current really really bad branding strategy you will go bankrupt sooner or later because people will not bother to find you after trying unsuccessfully for 1-2 times and will instead use one of the competing apps.
Every angel investor who gives you money in your current really bad branding and with your current obnoxious attitude is a fool who will waste their money.
Hopefully you will wake up and make your startup a success.
Good luck.
Bill Fishkin says
Hi Jay –
I’m sorry you took my sarcasm so seriously.
Thanks for the suggestions – they were excellent.
I grabbed those domains as well.
Best,
Bill
Andrew Allemann says
GetNeighborhoods.com is one of the ones I came across. A lot of app makers use “get” domains. I think your bigger problem, regardless of if people type domains in, is app store discovery if people are searching for “neighborhoods”. Once I find your apps, though, I don’t see that branding on the page at all.
Jay says
You made a good choice in following my advice.
If you had gotten that advice as consulting from me that would have been 500 dollars so if you make a small donation to your favorite charity I would be pleased.
Good luck with your startup.
Bob Parry says
Jay, I absolutely agree with what you have said! That’s why I have registered MyUrlApp.com for my new planned app development as MyUrl.com is already registered & probably on offer for a very high price. Again, I also have my own portfolio of exact match two-word .com domains which are indeed much cheaper to register or buy than correctly spelt one-word .com domains which are usually too expensive to purchase or almost impossible to find. For example, I have FishCannon.com for sale at under $500 whilst Fish.com is valued at staggering $1 million or Cannon.com at $415,000 by Estibot!
Jay says
Thanks for the compliment.
However I want to give you also some advice (and also other aspiring domain investors reading this):
Do not look at the prices of one word domains and slap together 2 words that are completely unrelated because the potential for re-sale is really small so if you are creating a portfolio of names by slapping together two unrelated words to create domains you will waste your money because the re-sale market just is not there and since direct navigation traffic will be minimal too that means the renewal costs and registration costs will make it unlikely you will make a profit.
FishCannon could be an OK name for a game where you shoot fish out of a cannon but as a domain investment it is unlikely to earn you profits,
When creating two word domains remember these rules:
Naming Consulting rules for creating 2-word domains:
1.
The names must be logically related to each other
2.
The names must intuitively create some image on the mind of people when you say it or write it.
3.
The term should be used by some people on webpages or discussions naturally or at least a similar term should be in use.
Good luck.
Bob Parry says
Many thanks for your kind advice!
Platform.in says
….and the British would probably have to ask – so no ‘U’ and no ‘O’…. Right on!
Jeff Sass says
Thanks for this Andrew. When considering the usefulness of a domain name people so often forget about email. Great example.
I-Drive Orlando says
So funny – That Domain is Fools gold 🙂
Stevia Wonder says
Get nghbrhds.com – that’s the Welsh version where no vowels at all are needed.
Ken Hansen says
neighborhoods.co.com available and would work very well in a market like the UK where third level names are common and readily accepted in my biased opinion.