Ask HN: What do you consider too long for a domain address?

1 points by mohsen 14 years ago | 1 comment

HNers,

I've been looking for a good domain name for my recent project. After going through all my top ideas (noticing that they are taken and put to no use), I'm starting to play around with words to find something good (after all a good name is important, right?!).

However, it appears that all of the names that i am finding are long, or at least I think that they are long. So I have a few questions as I am sure a lot of you have had to deal with something similar.

1)What's considered too long of a domain name?

2)When it comes to domain name length and quality(witty, catchy, meaningful), which do you sacrifice for the other?

3)What do you look for in a name, anyways? Wit? Catchiness? Meaning?

Thanks!

olefoo 14 years ago |

It really depends on what you're doing, and what your strategy is.

If you're playing for a mobile audience and expecting much of your first time traffic to come from direct navigation (someone typing the URL into a browser), then a short, memorable, easily spelled domain name is a priority.

If you're doing some sort of long-tail content play, then it's more important that your domain have good SEO characteristics and help your site rank for the appropriate keywords.

There's no right answer; only answers that are right for a given context and budget. But from what we've seen so far functionality and effectiveness trump the domain name. You can be a raging success with a goofy domain name (e.g. google.com, del.icio.us, 37signals.com) and a huge flop with an awesome domain (colors.com).