domain naming

This page deals with domain naming as an aspect of marketing.

It covers -

• introduction - changing perceptions of domain naming
• principles - differing views on what makes a great domain name
• naming and branding - literature on branding and some naming services
• perspectives on domain naming
• forbidden names - rules on names that are (or perhaps should be) prohibited

     introduction

During the dot-com boom it was common to see claims that a domain name was a 'killer app' for successful e-commerce: the silver bullet that made the difference between success and failure.

A slew of businesses - many of them transient - appeared to create the magic names or to sell 'pre-registered' names to site operators (and to speculators). That activity was fostered by uncritical media coverage, hype by gurus and the inexperience of many internet users, who for example treated domain names as a subject search.

Some businesses sought to bypass the "name problem", for example by paying for higher rankings on search engine listings or by licensing keynames - preferred placement - from dominant internet service providers such as AOL and browser developers. (The latter came to grief when Microsoft's IE browser gained over 90% of the market in most countries.)

Five years after the boom there's less credence in magic bullet solutions to online resource identification.

Users can now expect to identify domains through URLS in newspapers, on television, business cards and outdoor advertising rather than deconstructing the domain name system (DNS) or assuming that a generic name is the only or primary address on the net for a particular product/activity. Recognition of the www.amazon.com address is thus considerably greater than that of generic domains such as www.book.com, books.com or bookshop.com.

That change reflects normalisation of the online population, which has greater experience simply through greater exposure to the net and in advanced economies increasingly reflects the demographics of the overall population. It reflects the greater prominence of search engines such as Google. And for many marketers - or merely commentators - it reflects the end of what we've characterised as internet exceptionalism, claims that the net is so qualitatively and quantitatively different that traditional marketing insights (and regulatory or other rules) simply don't apply.

A result is growing acceptance that online - as offline - an appropriate name can be a distinct advantage but must form part of a wider and sustained marketing strategy and is not a substitute for marketing. Contrary to the often glib Martha Pepper, although "brand names were born as a substitute for relationships people couldn't have with companies" it is clear that branding is more than a funky URL and that the relationship is more subtle than simply finding a particular address in cyberspace (the address and facade might be great but if the service is lousy you're unlikely to go back).

That acceptance has seen marketing-savvy major corporations relinquish many generic domain names. For example US consumer products giant wrote off investment of several hundred thousand dollars in domains such as flu.com and cleaner.com, announcing that its strategy would now be built around its brand names.

It's also seen the demise of many online domain naming businesses, particularly those with a 'get rich quick' flavour, and a slump in pre-registered domain name sales (with many names not being renewed). And most pundits have found new areas for pontification.

At the same time there's been increasing awareness among business (and among service sectors such as lawyers) and among the courts and regulators about the use of trademark/brand protection mechanisms such as Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure (UDRP), the AntiCybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA) in the US and the auDRP in Australia.

That's weakened claims that businesses or other entities must engage in large-scale defensive registration (ie must pre-emptively acquire as many variants as possible, in as many ccTLDs and gTLDs as possible, of their chosen domain). About.com for example supposedly spent US$500,000 in 2000 buying more than 4,000 domain names as part of a stealth effort to control the About.com domain and all possible combinations. We've highlighted writing about domain name disputes here.

The following paragraphs point to disagreement about name principles, highlight studies and note some players in the domain naming industry.

     principles

In our discussion of domain name valuation we've highlighted conflicting principles - in practice contradictory assertions - about "what makes a good domain name".

Those principles encompass dictates on such matters as the length of the name, its "musicality", whether it has "power letters" such as z and x, whether it has power prefixes such as e- or i-, and its appropriateness for particular markets.

It's clear that many consumers find very long domain names offputting, simply because they're less memorable or more likely to be mistyped. (That's a particular concern in labelling files within a domain, a matter where many users do expect to be able to find a a resource by deconstructing parts of the address.) A short name per se is not a recipe for success and there are indications that a name longer than three or four characters is more effective.

Our axiom is that, apart from existing brand/institutional names going online, a domain name is what you make of it: how you promote it, what corporate values and performance it embodies. The reason that amazon for example = books in the mental marketspace of many consumers (rather than the snappier nile.com, tiber.com, volga.com or cam.com) is because it's been effectively and expensively promoted and serviced.

Another is to be conscious, if you're aiming for markets outside Australia and the US, that not every uses English as their first language: a domain name may have quite a different meaning in Spanish, Portuguese or another language. We've highlighted some cross-cultural concerns here.

     naming and branding

Product and brand naming - dignified by some practitioners as onomastics - has an extensive literature. Unfortunately, much of the empirical research is of limited application and general studies of principle and practice tend to feature significant subjectivity. It's unclear that much branding literature has moved on from the days when US marketing pioneer Edward Bernays adopted the theories of his uncle Dr Sigmund Freud to sell nylons, cigarettes and soap.

High profile Naseem Javed, author of Naming for Power: Creating Successful Names for the Business World (New York: Linkbridge 00), claims that

A corporate name, at best, is an 'outcry' from the deep bottom of the corporation in search of attention and in pursuit of fame and glory. Whether you read a name in a column, see it in the phone book, hear it on the radio, or come across it on the web, it is always a desperate cry for something.

There's a lot of crying online but there are few major studies of domain naming principles and consumer responses: most work features as passing comments or an awkward chapter in larger studies of online branding and e-marketing. Examples include Brand Building On The Internet (South Yarra: Hardie Grant 00) by Martin Lindstrom & Tim Andersen and Advertising on the Internet (New York: Wiley 99) by Robin Zeff & Brad Aronson.

We've highlighted particular sources in our discussion of domain name valuation, for example the legal Domain Names: a Practical Guide (London: Tolley 02) by Simon Halberstam, Joanne Brook & Jonathan Turner and the accounting Valuation of Intellectual Property & Intangible Assets (New York: Wiley 00) by Gordon Smith & Russell Parr.

The corporate name-generation business was nicely captured in a wry 1999 Salon article. Earlier pages of this guide have noted particular branding initiatives; some of the leading practitioners are -

NameLab

Master Mcneil

Landor Associates

Metaphor Name Consultants

Further down the foodchain various specialists offer a range of naming services. Namestormers for example offers software "to Help You Generate Unusual and Appropriate Names Quickly" (with results such as iPen - you guessed it, for an electronic pen - and Itzakadoozie for an "ice cream treat").

     perspectives

A perspective is provided by Tim Denton's 2001 report on The Federal Corporate Name-Granting in the Age of the Internet (PDF), considering the extent to which Canada's national corporate registration regime needs to be changed to meet challenges posed by domain naming.

Another is provided by The Game of the Name: Valuation Effects of Name Changes in a Market Downturn, a 2002 paper (PDF) by P. Raghvendra Rau, Ajay Patel, Igor Osobov, Ajay Khorana & Michael Cooper. Adding a 'dot-com' to a company name initially boosted stock market values; after the collapse of the bubble removal of the 'dot-com' from the name was one way to reverse slumping stock prices.

A third is offered by Stanley Lieberson's A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 00).

     forbidden names

It is common to see claims that domain naming is restricted only by the registrant's imagination. In practice there is less scope to run wild.

Very long domain names (like very long URLs for individual web pages) are generally considered too long to be memorable or accurately transcribed. Registration of names that feature another entity's trademark or corporate name - or the name of prominent individuals - is likely to result in domain name disputes on the basis of trademark or personality rights infringements. And many ccTLDs feature prohibitions on the registration of particular words or classes of words. There are no global standards, both because of disagreement about what might be offensive - a matter highlighted in our Censorship guide - and more pragmatically because forbidding expletives in all languages would be unwieldy.

Australian intellectual property law and other legislation, for example, places restrictions on commercial use of words such as ANZAC, University and Olympic. Those restrictions are reflected in the policy of dot-au domain administrator auDA. Norway's Domain Name Policy for .No (Policy) similarly prohibits particular functional and political terms such as whois, porno, kongen, prinsessa, kronprinsessen and stortingspresident.

Registrars in some countries are broadly precluded by national law from refusing to register a domain name, eg on the grounds of free speech. In the US there has been disagreement about informal restrictions on registration of obscene names, with differing practice among competing registrars and claims (eg PDF) that restrictions deprive a registrant of a right to free speech, breach due process under federal and state law, and result in a financial loss because the names have a commercial value exploited by competitors able to register them elsewhere.

Attention has centred on the so-called Pacifica Seven, seven words that major US broadcasting networks (with the sanction of the Federal Communications Commission) don't allow on air in prime time since the 1978 Pacifica case, and on automated filters operated by registrars that exclude terms such as shitakemushrooms. A range of terms to describe boldily functions or commemorate figures of infamy (eg hitler.org) have been registered in dot-com and other TLDs. Automated registration (and registrar responsibility for names rather than site content) mean that names such as childpornsite.com and underagenymphos.com have been registered.

It is interesting to note that in ruling against claims that individual registrars have violated fundamental rights by refusing to register particular words or word combinations the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York noted that although the Department of Defense was instrumental in development of the net, the net was not "by any stretch of the imagination a traditional and exclusive public function".

In Australia there's some uncertainty about restrictions on registration of words that are generally considered to be offensive because of obscenity, might come under vilification legislation or feature religious figures/concepts. A major registrar commented to us that it

reserves the right to refuse to register any domain name for any reason, but we have not yet, and don't really expect to ever reject a domain due to the words in it. We strongly believe in free speech and will try to not impose any restrictions on what domain names people try to register.

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