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Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

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Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#2
Hacker News is a good example of a terrible domain name with a memorable product name. But I still think it's kind of a problem: I probably sat down at a computer and typed "Hackernews.com" a dozen times when I first started visiting this site. (Which then screws up the auto complete when using that computer the next time). It's just how my brain works and how I use the internet (and it's never been much of a problem with other sites in the past) ... In fact, it wasn't until I discovered hackerne.ws that I stopped having a problem, because I'd automatically start typing "hackernews" and catch myself and add the period before the "ws".

Mostly unrelated, but since the article praises Chrome's Omnibar, can anyone answer why Chrome's autocomplete is so much slower and crappier than Safari's? Again, it's partly a problem with how I choose to use the internet, but I've visited the google search for "da" a few dozen times when trying to access Daring Fireball in Chrome since I need to pause for a full second before the auto complete catches up with what I want. I never had that issue in Safari.

Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#3

Hacker News is a good example of a terrible domain name with a memorable product name. But I still think it's kind of a problem: I probably sat down at a computer and typed "Hackernews.com" a dozen times when I first started visiting this site. (Which then screws up the auto complete when using that computer the next time). It's just how my brain works and how I use the internet (and it's never been much of a problem…

I'm not a regular Safari user, so I'm not 100% if this is true. But if I recall Safari doesn't return search results alongside the "most frequented sites" in autocomplete.

Maybe pulling up likely searches from Google adds some time than the locally-stored list of frequented sites.

That said, I'm purely speculating here.

Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#4

Hacker News is a good example of a terrible domain name with a memorable product name. But I still think it's kind of a problem: I probably sat down at a computer and typed "Hackernews.com" a dozen times when I first started visiting this site. (Which then screws up the auto complete when using that computer the next time). It's just how my brain works and how I use the internet (and it's never been much of a problem…

I am unable to try Safari at the moment, but while having tcpdump show my laptop’s network communications when typing into Chromium’s omnibar, I see that there’s a lot of communication with Google domains – so suggestions such as “testosterone” after having typed “test” are probably dependent on external servers.

Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#5

Hacker News is a good example of a terrible domain name with a memorable product name. But I still think it's kind of a problem: I probably sat down at a computer and typed "Hackernews.com" a dozen times when I first started visiting this site. (Which then screws up the auto complete when using that computer the next time). It's just how my brain works and how I use the internet (and it's never been much of a problem…

I'm not a regular Safari user, so I'm not 100% if this is true. But if I recall Safari doesn't return search results alongside the "most frequented sites" in autocomplete. Maybe pulling up likely searches from Google adds some time than the locally-stored list of frequented sites. That said, I'm purely speculating here.

True, in Safari I get "Top Hit", "History", and "Bookmarks" returned (instantly). I'd prefer it Google returned local results immediately and then added the search results as those came in, but I guess that just means my browser preference in this case is Safari.

Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#6
> The last reason getting the perfect .com is less important than it used to be is simply because others have proven you can succeed without it.

This seems to be the core thought behind the idea that domains aren't very important. It's the worst reason of them all too.

You can succeed with all kinds of hindrances. You don't need great design, technology, marketing, or anything else to succeed. There are really no prerequisites to success. There are examples of success in every permutation.

The job of the entrepreneur is to increase their odds by doing everything they reasonably can. For 99% of startups that means getting a high quality .com domain name.

Re: Five Reasons Domains Are Getting Less Important

#10
post #9

Isn't there still a strong SEO advantage to having a good domain? My understanding was that a big part of domain 'authority' comes from having a topic-relevant domain of a reasonable age, but my SEO knowledge is a few years out of date so that may not be true nowadays.

Yes - having an aged keyword rich domain does impact SEO (although it's only one ingredient)
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