> At the end of the day, it's marketing that bestows value on a name.  The
> name itself is a starting point for that marketing process.  If I want to
> buy an exotic car, I don't go to Yahoo to look for "cars" - I go to the
> yellow pages to find the nearest Ferrari dealer. (Which says that I don't
> know one off hand :))

Which is why a generic domain name has value, only registration and webiste
is the outlay (relativly inexpencive compared to making a brand name,
trademark etc.)

It's much eaiser to get traffic that can potentialy be a sale with a generic
domain name than a non generic.

cars.com.au will get more unique hits that crawlyes-exotics-cars.com.au and
can spend a lot less money on marketing, no doupt, no question. This relates
to direct traffic, for a shopping centre it's like the amount of people that
walk through the door. The more in there the higher the percentage of people
with money in there pockets the more sales.

Regardless of search engines results, people simply or say, think, I'm in
Australian, I want to look at cars so www.cars.com.au, simple easy....The
KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. (Note that everyone does, it's only a
percentage of internet users and they might not do it every time, but even
1% of all internet users is a high number for between $30 and $1000 domain
registration/purchase cost.)

This is also very prevelant in the gTLD sapce, where generic domain names
are constantly sold and purchased for the direct traffic that they generate.
Take the example of men.com which was one of the first purchased domain
names in the days of old. The domain name as purchased for round about
$14,000US. (which most thought was a stupid and ridicolus amount) Because of
the generate traffic that is targeted to 'men' the value of the domain name
is complememtary.

Say the site get's 1,000 hits a day from direct typeins. (away from search
engine hits) That's potentally 1,000 sales for someone (or 1,000 people you
can try to sell to), not to mention the value of your brand name being on
the page. The links or ads that are there, at a rate of say $0.50c per
unique hit, § 1000 uniqe hits. That's advertising space that relates to $500
a day. Just like billboards, TV etc etc...

(Note that the pricing example is not accurate. it's more like millions of
hits and $0.005c)

Today the owner has millions of $ and all of buying generic domain names,
domains with targeted traffic. These domain names don't even have to be
strict generics in our sence. mensshirts.com could be considered in the same
regard and gain some very valuable 'walk in targeted traffic.'

To say that these names have 'NO' value is just 'CRAP' Unique traffic that
is targeted has value. On the net, in a shop.

Question for all to think about,

Would you sell (Branded, any you like.) jumpers in the middle of summer on
the beach.? or Would you sell jumpers in the middle of summer on
www.jumpers.com.au ? Which would you expect to have more sales? Store on
Beach front or www.jumpers.com.au?

Regards,

Michael-Pappas.



>
> Ron Stark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Saliya Wimalaratne [mailto:saliya§hinet.net.au]
> Sent: Thursday, 17 January 2002 10:37 AM
> To: 'dns§lists.auda.org.au'
> Subject: RE: [DNS] thread.119
>
>
> On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Cooke, Tony wrote:
>
> > Saliya
> >
> > Try going to http://www.alltheweb.com/ and typing in "cars" or "real
> estate"
> > and see what comes up as the first hit.
>
> Tony,
>
> This isn't evidence of 'the domain name being used as a search ranking
> criterion'. Just evidence of a URL coming up first.
>
> Do the same search on the same site with 'foo'. Does 'www.foo.com' come up
> first ?
>
> My theorem is that the domain name is not used as a ranking criterion by
> any (major) search engine.
>
> To disprove this theorem, you simply need a statement from a search engine
> author or owner, saying that the domain name itself is used as a ranking
> criterion by 'x' search engine.
>
> I haven't found one yet.
>
> Quoting results from particular searches of course does not constitute
> supporting evidence (a statistically representative sample might; but I
> think that such a sample might require millions of separate searches and
> be fairly labour- and network-intensive :). It would be far simpler to ask
> the search engine owner/author.
>
> Regards,
>
> Saliya
>
>
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