Should we drop the “dot com”?
Seth Godin has an interesting post over at his blog today in which he debates the question, “Drop the dot?” as in, can we get rid of the dot com when talking about websites.
Godin says no, because saying dot com is easy to say - just four letters, two syllables - and pretty much leaves it at that. But let’s weigh the possibilities:
Yes, drop it
On the “Yes, forget the dot com” side, there’s the Google angle. Type the brand into Google, and it will find it for you. There have been a couple of stories floating around the Internet of late that talk about companies in Japan doing just that, and displaying their brand in a search box instead of showing a URL.
No, it’s not that simple
On the “No way, you need the dot com” side, there’s the Google angle as well. Relying on Google keywords puts a lot of power into the hands of Google (or Microsoft or Yahoo, depending on which search engine you choose). What if your brand isn’t number one?
It turns out that Google is pretty much perfect when it comes to brand searches. I tried dozens and the first result was always what I expected it to be.
Next argument: what about all the other domain suffixes? The American Cancer Society uses cancer.org for its website and doesn’t own cancer.com. Whitehouse.gov is another classic example — whitehouse.com is a political news website (and famously, it used to be a porn site).
The American Cancer Society is the number one Google result when you search for cancer. And a search for whitehouse returns whitehouse.gov first.
To some, Google is the Internet
I think the question really comes down to how people are using the Internet. Do people pay attention to domain names at all, or is it assumed that a company can be found at [brandname] plus dot com? Or are users now skipping the address bar and directly typing names into Google?
Recently pizza.com sold at auction for $2.6 million. It was suggested that Pizza Hut, Papa John’s or Dominos should buy the name. But when users want pizza, and they go to the Internet and type pizza into the search bar, what do they see? PizzaHut.com, followed by PapaJohns.com, followed by Dominos.com. Just what is that $2.6 million buying you and do you need it?
Maybe the dot com is superfluous after all. Thoughts?
