The Google Effect And Domain Name Speculation

A reader writes "Google brought us the age of high quality searches, and with that may come the end of domain-name speculation. Good thing we paid for all those laws to punish cyber-squatters. Read the article and learn more."

Comments

It's not all web, you know

[RC514]

Never underestimate the appeal of a nice email-address. You don't want to print a google search url onto your business card, do you?

Re:It's not all web, you know

[arkanes]

They already have em. You know why people still have normal cards? Because until everyone you could ever care to give your card to has one of these special readers, you're gonna want paper cards and a human-readable, easily remembered email address and domain name.

Re:It's not all web, you know

[psych031337]

Steer clear of asymmetrical shaped "CD-Cards". They will kill your cdrom (namely the motor/rotor) because they are unbalanced and vibrate the hell out of the mechanics. Rectangular shaped ones are OK, as long as they are symmetrical.

I think Google is getting a little too much credit

[HEbGb]

I mean, "the Google effect"?

I think the most likely cause of the shrinking market for domain names is simply the internet bubble bursting - it's been clearly shown that such trivialities as domain names (among other things internet-related) are of dubious real value.
And as for Google searching, while I'm happily using it as my primary search engine, it's by no means perfect, and the author claiming that Google is an example of "search tools that unerringly bring you to the page you want" is total nonsense. I suppose your odds might be better than typing in a domain name blindly, but I'm not so sure.

If I'm looking for a company, I always try the domain name directly *first*, and only after (and if) that fails do I use Google. Seems to work most of the time.

The only sites unaffected by this...

[Proaxiom]

... would be the search engines themselves.

I have a feeling awesomesearchenginefortheinternet.com wouldn't do very well, know matter how good the underlying technology.

At some point maybe you could just do away with domain names themselves... As long as you can get to the search engine, you just pull up raw IP links. It would sure make the Internet safer without all those DNS vulnerabilities.

Re:The only sites unaffected by this...

[RazzleFrog]

As long as you can get to the search engine, you just pull up raw IP links.

I would like to introduce you to the idea of virtual domains. It's this nifty idea where one IP address can host thousands of different websites - all with their own domain name.

Now unless you are suggesting that they come up with a different way of putting distinguishing information in the header then I think your idea is fairly moot.

One Quick Point

[iGawyn]

On several recent occasions, Web sites critical of big companies -- using domains called, generically, companynamesucks.com -- have had their names revoked and given to the companies that claimed trademark violations. It's still outrageous that the companies can win these cases, but maybe the victories are transitory if the critics' sites, by other names, can still be found easily.

The point that he either neglected to mention or totally missed was the freedom of speech. Some people just prefer to use it as free speech, which is perfectly acceptable.

Either way, it's a good article, and judging by the increasing prominence of "Register yourname.com!" advertisements everywhere I go, he's right. People are registering less, and the companies are getting worried that they won't get as much money.

Gawyn

..The good and the bad

[tolan's my name]

Google is a wonderful tool, but there are times and situations were it fails. Its at its very best at [say] finding every article ever written on a line like 'ORA12345 Oracle', as there is only one possible meaning. It is weaker however when one wants to buy something, because often people have only partialy defined needs for what they want to buy before they engage in the buying process.

A search of 'Bicycle shop UK' will produce many hits, almost all of them not online bicycle retailers. which is why bikes.co.uk will always have worth.

Now my own view is that all retail should be stuck on a separtate domain [.shop par example], and the rest returned to the 'good ol' days', but it aint going to happen

Re:..The good and the bad

[Masem]

Remember "PQ"?

That is, some company, the name I forget, had grabbed a large batch of domain names that looked like "pq.com", such as "pbooksq.com", "pflowersq.com". The idea was that if you wanted something in those areas, you'd mind your Ps & Qs, and just typed in those names as URL and be whisked away to a portal run by that company for those products. (and yes, there was advertizing for this as well on the TV, as well as net ads).

So yes, this was nice, but it failed because the portal was for only products or sales by that company, and wasn't a price-comparative thing. Since the prices that this company offered were somewhat high compared to Amazon or other sellers, they weren't really turning a profit. They appear to be out of business, or have at least let those domains rot, as spot-checking that pattern shows none of them existing.

If .uk.co or .com *always* went to a page run by a non-profit group that simply listed vendors and possibly had competitive price checking scripts, those types of domains certainly would be of use. But I suspect that it's too easy to find numerous examples where one for-profit company owns the generic name to push their own brand, instead of a comparitive site. If anything, the organization of Yahoo is better than nothing for finding competitive prices for a generic type of product.

Where this comes up short...

[adlam.bor]

It'll be hard to have TV ad campaigns for a website that say: "Okay, first, go to google, and then type in the following keywords, and then click the fifth entry that comes up!"

If nothing else, you'd have to update the silly ad every month depending on how google indexed you this time around...

Re:Where this comes up short...

[sde1000]

On the other hand, Google listings appear to be quite stable for some subjects. Consider PuTTY, a Win32 ssh client and terminal emulator: the Google URL for it is actually shorter than its official URL (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty /).

Um, gee?

[Masem]

IIRC, the idea behind TBL's vision for the World Wide Web would that all sites would be intralinked and indexed by search engines, such that the normal end user would never have to enter URL directly into the browser, instead clicking through a series of links or through bookmarks to get to the end site; thus, there would have been no need for the DNS system explosion that we saw and the need to continue to push it further (And most likely it would have remained uncorrupted by the WIPO policies and similar). URLs could have been entered by the power user, of course.

I wouldn't say Google is part of fixing the problem; search engines before Google could have just done the same. But now that Google is pretty much the only search engine in town, and that people tend to stick to whatever their default portal advertizes to them, the trend in the article is only natural, and really shouldn't be associated with Google directly.

Nice article on google...

[Bazman]

In today's Grauniad:

Seeking Search Engine Perfection

Well worth a read.

Pack your carpet bags, squatters

[imrdkl]

As reported earlier domain registrations have declined steadily. Many hoarders and sheisters have packed up for a new scam, I suppose. Even the ordinary registration fee can add up eventually, especially if the squatter is not receiving any interest in the domain which they hoped to sell for big bucks just a year or two ago.

I say good riddance. I'll keep an eye out now for the few domains that I was interested in back then. But I still wont pay a squatter. Not one cent. If I dont use google to search for my desired name once in awhile, maybe I'll try the Verisign Waiting List Service also discussed quite recently, so long as I can get my money back if I get tired of waiting.

In general, I think this is a good thing. It seems that demand for and profitability of the service that lives on the domain name is just as important as the domain itself. What a surprise.

Re:I think Google is getting a little too much cre

[SirSlud]

Actually, if I know what page I'm looking for (ie, I've been there), Google is 98% successful with my searches. The Via Technologies example is a very good one. There are lots of other (mostly asian technology ;) companies that don't have the benifit of www.theirname.com domains, and Google will get me the right page on "theirname homepage" almost every time.

Obviously, if you don't know /what/ you're looking for (ie, you know what you want, but not where it is), obviously, Google is not going to be as effective in this case, since you probably don't know a unique set of words appearing on the page on which you'll eventually find what you want (or maybe it doesn't exist!)

Also, I think the "google" effect is more of a Kleenex thing (where a brand name becomes a common slang for the generalized technology) than it is credit, although I also use opera and have configured it such that I only have the google search box on my toolbar. Google's all /I/ need, although I realize there are some other kick ass search engines out there too.

True, but

[NiftyNews]

That's nice and all, but what happens when Google (and the other 1 or 2 decent search engines that will exist) stop being free?

It seems to me that the current trend in internet marketing is to offer a great product free of charge for a few months, then slowly tighten the screws. Take a look at Hotmail, for example. A few months ago they started pushing their Pay Upgrade more and more. Then they started slicing off quota space (down to 2.5 now) and lowering the window for you to login before they kill your account. In fact just today I got an email from them informing me that I must now login once every 30 days or my account will lose all emails and contact lists.

Unless I opt for the $19.95 Paid Upgrade of course...

Google or bad shape economy?

[GdoL]

Google is one of the greatest tools on the internet. I use it all the time to look for work on my thesis, commercial sites, phone books, order flowers, buy laptops, books, etc.

But to say that Google is the reason whu you don't give so much importance to domain names is a bit too strong. I think the mature age of the www and the bad shape economy are greater factors of the less importante domain name factor. You don't see so many fight around domain names because people have major concerns about other survival things.

A Subject (not Content) Directory?

[dschuetz]

Something I've been talking about for years is the concept of a "subject based directory." Pretty much all the web search engines work based on the content of a page, not the more abstract subject matter of the page. Some of the directories Google, Yahoo) get close to a good subject-based lookup, but they're not quite what I (think) I've been looking for.

What I'd like would be to go to a search engine, type in "ford," and get a list of websites, with a brief description of each. Not pages on a website, but a list of things like "Ford Automotive," "Ford Aerospace" (are they even still around?), "John Ford", "Ford's Theatre," etc. Maybe in decreasing order by some kind of popularity rating.

Or are the directories now pretty good at this kind of lookup? Google Directory did a passable job with "ford," but it's not well organized and still (apparently) takes its description information straight from the web page, rather than from a carefully crafted, entered-directly-into-the-directory abstract of the site. The "Realnames" service looks like it might have been a solution, but I think it's just moved the problem from a for-pay DNS issue to a for-pay keyword issue. (use "ford" there, and you get FordVehicles.com, no other choices).

This'd be easy enough to implement with some kind of meta tag, in which someone could place the legal and common name for their organization, or for the specific information on their site, along with a one-paragraph description. Search engines could then let people search against that "abstract" database.

Does this make sense? Is anyone doing anything like this (and I've just missed out, being under a rock)? Or are there big feasibility problems (like people stacking meta data) that I haven't addressed?

Domain name insanity

[Tassach]

I've often wondered, what percentage of domain names that have been registered are actually being used, as opposed to ones that have been scarfed up by speculators and squatters. I was looking for a domain name for a client a few months ago, and found literally hundreds of names which would have fit his requirements, but which were registered but unused.

It appears that a whole lot of domain names were gobbled up in 1999 and 2000, with the result that many of these registrations will be expiring this year. One can hope that many of these domain names will become available to people who actually plan on using them. As good as Google may be, there are still a lot of reasons for wanting an easy-to-remember domain name for your company or product.

New market for unique, short names

[texchanchan]

No matter which way this comes out, the professional namers will get new business. (These are the people who come up with names for vehicles such as Isuzu Axiom and new corporate identities like Verizon.)

Memorable domain names and searchable business names both need these characteristics:
- Short, or few elements
- Unique
- Memorable in itself, and,
-- easy to associate with your product
-- and just your product, not everybody's
- Pronounceable on sight and spellable from memory
- Without ribald connotations in major languages

An excellent example: Slashdot.

Ordinary business people are no better at making up names than they are at drawing their own logos. If you can do it for them, you've got a niche.

It's the economy, stupid.

[diablochicken]

I think it's a bit difficult to discount the current economy's role in the decrease in spending on random domain names. Google may play a role in this trend, but I'd guess that a lot of squatters have run out of cash to spend on wild speculation.

real names?

[dlc]

Wasn't this the point of the Real Names system? From their about page:

Keywords replace complicated URLs with simple names and brands, and work in the consumer's native language, making the Internet easier to use.

Re:I think Google is getting a little too much cre

[sql*kitten]

it's been clearly shown that such trivialities as domain names (among other things internet-related) are of dubious real value.


Even on the internet, domain names were never important. Think about it, who is the best-known web-based book retailer, bookstore.com or Amazon? The biggest ISP isn't isp.com, it's AOL or MSN. Even Google or Yahoo, not search.com.

I blame NSI et al - they should have been a lot more rigorous with registrations, as the NICs in some other countries are - no registering of .com unless you are a legitimate business, no generic words, and so on.

Wrong for so many reasons

[fleener]

Dan doesn't get it. Domain names are critical for so many reasons:

1. People don't guess domain names, except in really obvious situations. Example: IBM.com, sony.com, etc. Having domains like "widgetworld.com" were never about guessability. They're just easy to remember and spell and rank better in search results when the keyword searched for is actually in the domain name.
   
2. If your company or web site is not high profile, you don't get found in Google. If I'm a small-time widget seller, Google gives me no traffic because it places the big-time popular widget sellers at the top of the search results. I have to somehow gain popularity without search engines before being assisted by them. It creates a snowball effect where the big sites stay big by the little guys being pushed down.
   
3. Web addresses are publicized many ways and need to be memorable when seen on billboards, spoken over the phone, etc. Many businesses have similar names - it's much easier to go directly to a web site than to rely on a search engine to determine which company you want.
   
4. Dan Gillmor is obviously savvy at forming search queries. The average person is clueless. Google helps, but not nearly enough. It's always easier and faster if the user knows how to load a URL directly instead of relying on a search engine.
   
5. Google could go out of business. Where's the Google-effect then? We're supposed to hope the next search engine to come along is as good and won't go out of business despite reliance on yet-to-be-proven economic models such as web advertising?
   
6. His example of searching for "Dan Gillmor" is laughable. What if your name is John Smith, Bill Jones, David Chow or any number of highly generic names? Google is great, but many searches are still very frustrating for many users.
   

I would like to see domain names publicized as they are, and by IP and by bar code, but for them to also carry other information, such as the company name and description. Then people carry a pen-like or card-like device to grab URLs off of everything (a can of baked beans, back of a cereal box, off a business card, in a newspaper, etc.) to take back to your computer later to load the appropriate page. Nothing proprietary like that CueCat crap. A real standard and simple technology to make addresses easily accessible.
They need to be ubiquitous.

av.com

[mirko]

IMHO, Google has lost its accuracy and its results lack relevance compared to the all-time-favourite Altavista (which I usually access the light way).
I just can't find the equivalent of Altavista's syntax on Google.

Need an example ?
Remember the hint that appeared in italics :
Need a bedtime story ?
Type : +Fairy +princ* -dragon

(note the wildcard use)

There are also lots of short ways to find which pages refer to one another (+link:...) or if you want to filter whichever result after a given url part (+url:...)

But, on the bottom, the guy is right, most people now ask Google first instead of looking for a funky domain name which sounds like what they'd enter in the Google form.

Re:I think Google is getting a little too much cre

[Fweeky]

> although I also use opera and have configured it
> such that I only have the google search box on my
> toolbar.

I have it set up too, but I never use it; it's easier just to type "g foo bar wibble" in a nearby address bar.

You can make IE do this too, btw; HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g, set the default value to http://www.google.com/search?q=%s. Repeat for other search engines.

(Yeah, editing the registry for something like this.. I know.. bleugh :)

Finding stuff: Directories and indices

[Vingborg]

When finding stuff, we basically use one or both of two basic methods: Directories and indices.

DNS is, basically, a directory. So was the original Yahoo. Google is an index.

The difference is, that with a directory, an external categorization is applied to predefined entities (such as websites). With an index, the "categorization" is derived from the content itself.

Of course, deep down below, at the core of "finding stuff"-logic, directories and indices are the same. Google, too, operates with externally defined entities: words and pages.

The ultimate searchengine, one that would REALLY kill the need for DNS in day-to-day surfing, would somehow combine these two notions, and possibly include many more.

Wait just a dad-burn minute

[Uttles]

The most interesting from a domain-name point of view is this: With the rise of search tools that unerringly bring you to the page you want, the need for a highly specific domain name -- one that a casual Web user would be able to guess -- has practically disappeared.

I agree with this article for the most part; Google is a great search engine and it eliminates the need to memorize a bunch of URL's. There's a few assumptions the author is making that aren't exactly correct.

1 - Google doesn't "unerringly bring you the page you want" because no matter what you type into the search field, it can't tell exactly what you're looking for. It gives great results most of the time, but it still stumbles once you move into more vague searches. This isn't Google's fault, it's just the fact of life that neither people or computers are psychic, we can't read each other's minds.

2 - Having a domain name that someone could guess, or that someone might not even know relates to your company, is still pretty desirable. People are familiar with having a .com after most websites, so if you put up toys.com, you'll probably get a lot of hits, no matter what your actual company is. I agree, typing in www.lucenttechnologies.com is a much worse method than going to Google and looking up "Lucent Technologies," but I think people have always preferred search engines for looking up specific companies.

3 - This is probably the most important point: domain names are about advertising in today's internet economy. The companies would like for people to be able to guess their website address, but what's more important to them is that customers can easily remember the address when they see it in advertisements. So, when you see a commercial for Nike Shoes, and they show you www.nikeshoes.com, you will easily remember that for the next time you're browsing the web. Now, it really wouldn't make a difference if it was www.nike.com, www.shoesbynike.com, www.gonike.com, or www.swoosh.com, because the point is they're giving you an easy to remember location. Now, if they gave you www.commercialwebsites.com/shoecompanies/nike/shoe s.html, it probably wouldn't stick in your mind very long, and you wouldn't just causally browse the site. Now, don't get me wrong, if that was the URL and you REALLY wanted to check out Nike, then you'd go look it up on Google, and you'd get there anyway. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not about the companies trying to guess what domain you'll type in, they're trying to make it easy for you to associate a website to their company, and that's why I think there's still a big demand for specific domain names.

Re:Feeling Lucky

[fleener]

The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes you to the first search result link. Why would I want to go there automatically instead of scanning the first few results to confirm I'm loading the correct one? Most of the time my target link falls somewhere between the between the 3rd and 10th links.

Every time, and I do mean every time, I refer a friend to Google two things happen.

1. I have to explain that Google is not a children's site, despite the color scheme and the lack of a tagline indicating that Google is a search engine.
   
2. The friend asks, "What does the 'I'm Feeling Lucky?' button do?" Their follow-up question is, "Why would I want to do that?"
   

Google needs to improve their usability testing because they have a long way to go. They're coasting right now because the interface is simple, so the annoyances are less noticeable.

Googles' ranking criteria can be duplicated. It's the finer details of site design that no one has gotten quite right yet.

I've been saying this all along!

[jafac]

A Domain Name is the name of a BOX, a piece of hardware, an address. Just because it's more friendly to humans than an IP address, doesn't mean that it's the best way to get a WEB user to the right place. Having companies jump through hoops to 0wn "ibm.com" "ibm.edu" "ibm.org" "ibm.net" "ibmsucks.com" "international_business_machines.com" "international_business_machines.org" etc. ad infinitum makes NO fucking sense at all. Just as it makes no sense for some guy named John to get his "john.com" domain legally removed from his posession, because the international brotherhood of guys looking for prostitutes comes along a year later and decides they want a website.

If I want to find Apple Computer's website, I should have a place on my browser where I can enter text: "Apple Computer" and get www.apple.com. And if I want Apple Records, I type in "Apple Records". If I type in "Apple" it gives me a choice, plus all the Apple advocacy and rumors sites, and both Apple Computer and Apple Records should be satisfied with that.

I, as the Joe Sixpack user of the net shouldn't have to know if the correct address is "www.apple.com" "www.applecomputer.com" or "www.apple_computer.com". Relying on these weird domain name permutations will often get you the WRONG site!

For you and I, the average clueful slashdot user, domain names are a fine way to find where you want to go - but even WE rely on bookmarks, favorites and shortcuts for many of our favorite sites. The typing of actual DNS names should be the resort of the technical though - and my mother should not have to know what an underscore is, or why a site should be a .org, .com, or .edu. (not that anybody follows those rules anymore).

Dick's Sporting Goods is not Dicks.com

[jason99si]

The article's author has a good point. I don't try to guess a companies domain anymore either... ever since that embarrassing moment in the lab at school when I found out that Dick's Sporting Goods web site is not Dicks.com.

..duh.

If you search for my name...

[cperciva]

You'll find that the first page of results gives you a pretty good overview of who I am. One page is a project I ran while an undergraduate student; one page is a press release from my undergraduate university talking about me; one page is from an orchestra of which I was a member; one page is from Oxford's computing lab. I don't need to tell people my email address; they can find it very easily through the pages google provides.

All that is good and useful for me, but what of the other people (I know of three so far) who share my name? What if someone wants to contact them?

If we're going to rely upon Google to translate names into URLs, we're inevitably going to run into such problems, where only the most famous person/company using a name is brought up, even though some people will be searching for their lesser known isonyms.

Junk addresses being dropped

[SilentReproach]

It may be true that names are currently being dropped at a greater rate than they are being registered. However, has anyone here looked at the names being dropped? I have looked at them in both a) painstaking detail and b) written programs to narrow down tens of thousands of really useless names to a few dozen possibly useful names. For example of the junk being dropped, here is a tiny number of recently deleted names:

0-0-TEEN-SEX.COM
0-CALLSANTA.COM
0-DOMAIN-REGISTRATION.COM
0-POINT.COM
0-SHIPPINGPERFUMEBASKETS.COM
00-FREE-WEB-PAGES.COM
000000000.COM

Lot's of long names, names with hyphens and numbers in them, and typos. Also, people who previously saved .net and .org names are now ditching them, keeping only the .com version of the name. This tells me that dot-com names are holding value better than the others.

I feel that a good name is still quite valuable, even if not as valuable as a year or two ago. There are few, if any names available today that could be called "jewels". So, if you have a good name, keep it, but if you're sitting on some junky names for speculative purposes, ditch them.

Don't expect people to purposely begin throwing valuable names away.