Some observations about Google’s search results for “domain name”.
I was doing some research this morning and searched Google for domain name, both with and without quotes. I was a bit surprised by the search results. Since I was logged into Google I also ran the searches through a proxy browser.
In both cases, the same five results are in the top five, although in a somewhat different order.
The most surprising thing was that Name.com was number one for both searches. This must be driving an insane amount of business to the company.
The page that Name.com is ranked for is a domain search page (https://www.name.com/domain/search) instead of its homepage. Google is pulling the answer to one of its FAQ questions for the search description:
A domain is a user-friendly naming system that allows people to easily navigate web servers and web pages. Rather than making people type in an IP address whenever they want to access a certain web page (like 38.97.225.253), websites are instead assigned easy-to-remember character strings, called domains.
The other results, in varying order, are Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Google Domains and Wikipedia.
That changes a bit if you search for the plural domain names, although Name.com still came up in the top spot for me on both my local browser and the proxy. Instead of pulling the FAQ response, Google shows Name.com’s meta description:
Find your perfect domain name. From premium domains to cheap domains, search for and register your domain with Name.com and save. SEARCH NOW >>>
There are also a lot of advertisers for the term and the top spot is usually taken by Google Domains. It makes me wonder how much of Google’s domain business growth is from paid search, organic search and cross promotion.
The paid search is quite nifty; Google just takes money from one pocket and puts it in another.
David says
Now try clicking the “shopping” link on Google after searching domain name(s). Interesting also.
Andrew Allemann says
Shopping is all paid ads