Long Domain Names

[Dave White]

Domain Name can have maximum up to 67 characters, also it is considered to fetch a high ranking as well. On the other hand the top ten results of the search engine rarely show long Domain Names. Practically how effective is having long Domain Names?

[rich]

Hii Dave,, I agree with you on the point that domain names can get your rankings up but for that the domain name which you have selected should match the keywords of the content,,if it is related to the content then the search engine would consider the domain name also for improving the search results for the website.

Mostly website owners are on a hunt for domain names which are small and which can be easily remembered by other people whenever they are exchanged as they can be recalled without much pain,,i guess among these millions of websites i personally would go for a shorter and catchy name and would infact concentrate on my content as well as the off-page and the on-page factors for improving my search results. To a certain extent long domain name may help you in the search results but according to me it is the shorter one's who rule the roost for now.

[Peter]

Just having long domain won't help, if a long domain contains your most important keywords then it's worth going for. I think keywords in domains play an important role in the site's rankings in Yahoo and MSN while in Google it's not such a major factor.

Generally a short domain is much more preferrable from the brandability point of view and for easy rememberance. People tend to forget the longer domains which results in loss of some percentage of type in traffic.

[harry]

yes, long domain names won't help; instead they may affect your traffic.
* When someone is hurry, he may misspell domain name if it is too long.
* Some people get bored to type a long domain name.

[sanderson]

That time has gone now, to register a short, one-word (keyword), domain names. It was in 2000 they have introduced 67 character domain name (do you know the reason?), before that it was limited to 23 characters only.

Everybody here in this thread is after short domain name, for various good reasons. But is it practical to register a new “short� domain name with keywords. If you are really interested then just spend 10-15 min to try to find out available one word domain names. And you will see it is tough enough to find a brand new short domain name. It is just not practical to register a short domain name (single word), unless you are trying to backorder (unsure way) the existing one.

In fact people are happy to register long domain names as there are more chances to include more keywords, thus useful to attract heavy traffic. It also doesn’t mean, use all the 67 characters, use combination of 3-4 good keywords, which are the most important for your business or product.

Issue of remembrance can not be accepted as a valid reason. There are several ways to bookmark a particular important website. Also use of dashes in domain name will be a powerful tact to combine keywords.

[Peter]

I don't think the time has gone to register short one word domains. They are still very much in demand more than the long keyword rich domains. Do a proper search and you will find some good one word domains still available. Short domain names are scarce, but not impossible to find. Even though one can register a domain upto 67 characters, do you think anybody would register a domain so long? Even a 23 character domain would be too long and hard to remember and type.

I consider the issue of remembrance a valid reason. What's important in online business is site's traffic, the more the traffic, the more chances of sales conversions. If you happen to register a 25 character long domain, you stand a chance to lose a certain percentage of type in traffic to your website which means a few less sales.

[Danny Lawson]

I think it's a good idea to have a long domain name up to some extent but I personally prefer short domain names. What I feel is for people who are only interested in search engine rankings they go with long domains but certainly not as big as 67 characters.Genrally people who are business oriented go far a short or medium size domain in order to generate good traffic. Users are their first preference rather than search engines.What do you guys think?

[rich]

Yeaa ofcourse business druthers will be the customer so business related individuals will rather go for the short domain name and webmasters will go for the other one for the required output which they want from the search engines.

Actually i think it depends upon person to person as of what targets and requirements they are looking for,,so we can't say exactly as who is going to go for which kind of domain name due to preference variation, also there are many other ways for people who are just interested in the search engine rankings so they need not really worry about the size of their domain name.

[Ryan]

The theory of having a long keyword rich domain for better search engine rankings has been debated many a times before. I personally feel that it's just one of the many factors which determines site's rankings in the SEs. Crawler based services do not search for generic keywords in the domain name. Keywords in the page content and title tags are more important and valuable.