Domain Name?

[TXprogrammer]

How important is the domain name?
Which is better?
www.mydomain.com
www.my-domain.net
www.mydomainsomthing.biz

.com v .net v .biz v ect...
mydomain v my-domain v mydomainsomthing v ect...

Thank you in advance for your advice.

[greeneagle]

TXProgrammer,

IMO - You already have it in the right order.. You could add these 2, somewhat questionable just where the "space" falls in though (more characters than the prior 3. The primary SEs seem to have no problem parsing words run together in an URL for the most part.

www. mydomain.com
www. my-domain.net
www. my_domain.com
www. my domain.com
www. mydomainsomthing.biz

I used an extra space as not to link in all examples. www. mydomain.com is a valid and active domain with over 23,000 GOOGLE links and 489,000 Yahoo links, primarily because of exemplary usage.

Ken

[rlrouse]

From a search-engine-friendliness point-of-view I have seen no evidence that it makes any difference at all.

From a practical point of view, .com with no dashes is better when you can get it. The problem these days is getting it. The .com version was around by itself for so long that many web surfers still place more trust in sites that use it.

[sfowler]

The .com does, however, conjure up memories of the technology crash a few years ago. All the new internet companies that went broke taking daft people's savings with them.

I would not use .biz myself. It always sounds as if it is just trying to take your money!

A national ending is useful if you have search engines that find just sites from your country.

[TXprogrammer]

THNX for the feedback!

[paulhiles]

From the visitor's perspective, a domain name that is continuous rather than hyphenated is far easier to type into an address bar.

By the same token, if the visitor is unsure of the domain suffix, they're most liable to start with the .com, then try the country suffix, if they still have no luck they may experiment with .net if they're really determined!

You should also try to avoid overly long domain names. The longer the domain name, the more chance of an error occurring when visitors are typing in the name.

Hope that helps!

Paul