Sure, some people will type taco.com instead of ta.co. But that confusion isn’t new.
Yesterday I wrote about how I think Ta.co is a great shortcut web address for Taco Bell, and perhaps better than Taco.com.
Many people disagree, and one commenter (on the first post about ta.co) asked how much traffic will end up at Taco.com by mistake.
First things first, I don’t think people landing at Taco.com instead of ta.co will hurt Taco Bell. The domain name is owned by an IT company, so it’s not like people will land at a competitor’s website and decide to eat there instead. If someone wants to eat at Taco Bell, they’ll eat there.
But will people be confused by the web address? I can guarantee that some will, because even before ta.co, people have thought Taco.com was Taco Bell’s website.
A page on Taco.com explains:
Taco.com is so named because our company is Technical Advisors COmpany. We do not sell tacos. We do not make tacos. in fact some of us do not even like them very much.
For those of you who insist on confusing us with Taco Bell, we provide the following links:
The site then links to TacoBell.com and TheBorder.com.
Amusingly, an “award” company even sent a Taco Bell award announcement to Taco.com!
I think most of us who own a number of domain names have experienced this before. How someone can land on your parked page and think you’re a different company is mind boggling. What idiot lands on Taco.com, sees the content and thinks “This is that fast food tex-mex restaurant!”
I’m trying to track down Technical Advisors to ask about this confusion, but it’s not easy. There’s no phone number on the company’s website, and its “contact us” email address of [email protected] bounces.
The whois for Taco.com is protected by whois privacy, probably to stop people from contacting it about Tacos. Using DomainTools historical whois, I found an October 19, 2013 whois record showing that it’s associated with xyzzy.com. That site is also owned by Technical Advisors, but the phone number in whois is invalid and the sit hasn’t been updated in years.
I finally located a phone number for the company from a historical whois record, and left a voicemail earlier this morning. I’ve also emailed a couple contacts I could track down. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
David says
“What idiot lands on Taco.com, sees the content and thinks “This is that fast food tex-mex restaurant!”
I’ve experienced exactly those kinds of problems. For example, I have a staffing domain pointed to landing page that says the domain is for sale in big bold letters. The price of the domain is also prominently displayed, but then I also have a form where people can submit offers. So what kind of inquiries do I get? “Hi my name is so and so and I’m looking for a job paying $10/hr. Where do I submit my resume? ” It’s not just one person, I get these all the time!
Andrew Allemann says
I get a lot of these on my DomainNameSales.com inquiries, which is part of the reason the company has a “confused” option for leads including a suggested response email.
DomainTools used to publish some of the support inquiries it received from people that found a whois record for a domain and thought it was the site.
Krishna says
I have one .com whose .net version is a job site. People frequently send job inquiries using Domainnamesales.com page.
That is the imprint .com has on the minds of ordinary people. It is good if companies (which don’t own .com) soon realise this.
Bertrum says
Andrew, I think you are missing something important here. Obviously, visitors to a tech support landing page will realize they are not at the fast food chain. What this lesson teaches us is that .COM is king and that cctlds and all of the new gtlds are complete wastes of time.
TJ says
If that’s true, then why are Taco Bell, McDonalds, General Motors, Apple, Barclays, Marriott and many other major companies all putting ccTLDs and new gTLDs to use? Awareness and adoption of these extensions will go nowhere but up. Meanwhile, .com looks to be nearing it’s ceiling.
Me says
As the owner of taco.com I found this article very amusing. Sorry I missed your call, Andrew – but you should now have my email address.