An article appearing in imediaconnection.com yesterday pointed out what most of us know, but many large corporations do not, the importance of having a Category Defining or category killer domain name.
The article recounts Amazon’s purchase of Quidsi Inc. for $500 million which owned the category killers of and Soap.com, and Diapers.com and goes on to state:
“The ability to rank well in search engine results is a key factor that makes category-defining domain names valuable digital assets.”
“Category-defining domain names are instantly recognizable and easy to communicate, making them a solid foundation on which to build a new brand. ”
“There are 20 retailers on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list whose primary domain names are category-defining.”
“Many companies have also realized that owning category-defining domain names can boost their existing brands by allowing them to capture online traffic that they might not otherwise receive. For example, whenever internet users type the domain Mortgage.com into their browsers, they are directed to CitiMortgage.com, Citi’s mortgage page.”
“PetSmart is another example of a company that uses generic domain names: It owns Pet.com, Pets.com, PetFood.com, Dogs.com, and DogFood.com, all of which point to PetSmart’s website.”
“CBS Interactive owns TV.com, Radio.com, VideoGames.com”
“SalesForce owns Database.com; Barnes & Noble owns Book.com and Books.com; and Sleepy’s owns Sleep.com and Mattress.com. ”
You should check out the original source for the entire article
….blblabla…
…and imediaconnections – who are doing all the preaching – own a dog shit name themselves
oh the irony
anyway this is old news that I’m sure many domainers like to listen to over & over again while they try to offload their 50,000 domains…before they drop dead..
It don’t matter shit that Barnes & Noble owns books.com, book.com or 1000 other generics
Amazon.com is laughing…hahaha..
In this lifetime, B&N will NEVER catch up to Amazon.com (which is now selling EVERYTHING) in books or anything else
“There are 20 retailers on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list whose primary domain names are category-defining.”
And from the original article:
“For 18 of these 20, the category-defining domain name is also the name of the brand (e.g., Ancestry.com, Wine.com, etc.)”
________
… just 20 out of 500 (only 4%)??
I would have guessed much higher (especially as this is a top-500 list of “Internet” Retailers).
I wonder how many of the top-500 own their specific category-defining product/service domain, but use it as a redirect instead of utilizing it as their ‘primary domain name’?
@aggro… you misspelled blablabla.
they didn’t buy these names because they’re “category-defining”. they bought them because they were losing traffic to generic domain names. they cut out the middle men:- google and the domainer.
traffic going to a name like books.com is just going to be greeted with sponsored links to some book retailer and ideally directed to that book retailer. why pay google to be the one? and why should a domainer take a cut? buy the domain name, and cut out the middlemen.