Domain Names That Suck

The following post is from a web page that sucks because it is no longer active, but it has been salvaged from Google's cache and is presented here for posterity.

Posted by kingsley at September 23, 2003 02:30 PM

In the spirit of Vin Flanders' Web Pages That Suck, here's my list of bad domain name ideas so you can avoid these bloopers when picking a domain name.

1. Don't pick names with hyphens, dots or any other funny characters. "Blog-city" is a stupid domain. "Blog~City" is even stupider. People remember words as sounds, not as shapes. So when I tell someone to go check out a site, I say, "Go to blog city dot com". This registers in the listener's brain as "blogcity". "Dot com" is lost in assumption. One site I worked with had this huge problem - they would do a lot of advertising, and their competitor would get all the hits. Stupido! We partially fixed the problem by advicing the client to make sure that the dash was pronounced during the advertisement.

2. Don't use adjectives that might ever be used by the porn industry. "Hot" is so not hot. "Sexy", "big", "wild" are all adjectives you need to stay far away from. Also avoid references to race names like "Asian", "white", "black" or any kind of sexual preference like "gay", "straight" or "bi". Once your users mis-type your URL and land up at a porn site, they're going to take a long while to come back to you.

3. Don't use words that sound like other commonly used words. No "AcmeTooys" or "CrazyMuzic". People will hear it as "AcmeToys" and as "CrazyMusic" and remember it that way.

4. Avoid wacko domains. A dotcom is the best domain. If you are a business, its the only domain.

5. Stay off sub-domains. People who are not technically savvy don't get the concept. To them, any web address starts with "www" and ends with ".com". My dad still forgets the dots in URLs. He keeps typing "wwwgooglecom", because that's how he remembers it. I've seen the same problems with other people of his generation.

6. Make sure that the translation from pronunciation to spelling is unambiguous. For example, "Kings" is a better domain name than "Kingsley" because the latter can be misspelt very easily. I should know.

The distilled essence of these rules:

A domain name should not need followup instructions after X tells Y about it. Means that X should not have to say "Go to Blog-city.net. There's a dash between the blog and the city. And it's not .com, it's .net." Sucks rocks.

BJ Services, for example, really sucks rocks.

BJ Services Company derives the majority of its worldwide revenues from Pressure Pumping Services. Our mission is to become the number one Pressure Pumping Services company in the world by providing our customers with the most advanced products, services and technology in the business. BJ Services has highly skilled, dedicated personnel. Coupling our personnel with BJ's focused nature will enable us to fulfill our vision.

sux2bu