> Generic domains are easily remembered.
> They are desirable, and people have good reason to pay high prices, it
> has been demonstrated before and will be again.

Its about time we took head on this common claim that generic names are
somehow more valuable than non-generic names.  There is no evidence to
support this.

During the dot-com boom, silly prices were paid by silly people / silly
organisations for generic domain names.  Those entities presumably expected
that they could somehow (by means never clearly specified) parlay that
possession of a generic name into making big money.  It didn't happen.  And
note that that the same silly people / organisations blew hundreds of
millions of dollars of other people's money on all sorts of other dot-com
hype and fluff that was supposed to make them rich.

In other words, the high prices paid for generic domain names paid during
the dot-com boom were a part and parcel of the dot-com hype - that's not by
itself evidence that generic domain names are actually more useful in
attracting traffic to a website, etc.

What we need to do is look at:

1. Current (i.e. hype-free) prices being paid for generic domain names
2. Actual successful web sites, to see if the use of a generic name is part
of their success


Regarding current prices being paid for domain names, I recommend everyone
take some time to check out various domain name re-sale sites  (e.g.
www.afternic.com) to see the real state of play.  Both the number of bids
and the prices for domain names, are extremely low.


Regarding actual successful web sites, there's no evidence there either that
having a generic name is an advantage.  Do you go to books.com, or to
amazon.com?  Ever been to computers.com?  Interested in genealogy? -
cyndislist.com and rootsweb.com are the places to start, not genealogy.com.
Do you use searchengine.com and portal.com, or do you go to google.com and
yahoo.com?

If having a generic domain name really gave an advantage, then generic
domain names would be over-represented (not just represented) in any
classification of successful sites.  They're not.



Its about time we recognized the 'generic names are better' claim for what
it is - an internet myth.  There is no evidence to support it.



Regards, Mark

Mark Hughes
Effective Business Applications Pty Ltd
effectivebusiness§pplications.com.au
www.pplications.com.au
+61 4 1374 3959