Domainer's Gazette-Home

After catching the early Linking Strategies session at SES Friday morning, I decided to attempt and board an early flight back to ATL on Airtran. A very bad idea it turned out to be - as the early flight was 100% booked, and my actual flight got delayed 3 hours. So, being in a foul mood, with a full 8 or so hours to kill, and the only form of reading material being the SES Conference Handbook (I tossed my laptop into my checked luggage), I decided to play a game of sorts.

A grading game, really. There seems to be soo many new businesses popping up catering to the Search world, and each attempts to rise above the noise by creating a unique business & domain name. Some of these names seem pretty odd, in my opinion, and some seem right on the money. So, to kill time in the airport, I decided to don a ‘High School Bully’ attitude, and personally review and grade Business & Domain Names that caught my eye - and provide somewhat candid reviews on the ones I don’t quite “get”. So, in order by Sponsors then Exhibitors:

Sponsors:

GoECart & www.goecart.com
I can see them training new employees to remember how to spell & capitalize their name when emailing potential customer or clients: “remember, it’s big G, little o, big E, big C, then a-r-t”. And if you were an employee, the name sounds like you work for a go-cart company based in SC somewhere.
Business & Domain Name: D-
doesn’t effectively describe the fact that you sell shopping cart software.

Revenue Magazine & www.revenuetoday.com
Um, if your domain is ‘RevenueToday.com’, why don’t you just name the magazine ‘Revenue Today’. Looks like they were sold on the ‘Magazine’ name, and weren’t willing to shell out the revenue (ha) to buy the domain ‘revenuemagazine.com‘ from Zhivago Marketing Partners in Jamestown, RI (who are simply sitting on the domain seemingly waiting for a buyer.)
Business Name: B
personally, I would have just named it ‘Revenue’.
Domain Name: D+
I understand revenuemagazine.com was prob too expensive, but you couldn’t simply buy some form of it like revenuemag.com or revmag.com? I’da given you a B for any of those names..At least it has the word ‘revenue’ in it.

Entrepreneur & www.entrepreneur.com
I’m actually a fan of this magazine and site. And they get high marks from this high school bully for their forward thinking - domain wise - by registering several domain mis-spells of their name. For example:
entrapreneur.com
&
entrepraneur.com
they did miss entreprenewer.com, though.
Business & Domain Name: A+

AdGooroo & www.adgooroo.com
“We like how our name makes up appear associated with Google, but at the same time it’s quite different enough so we can avoid potential lawsuits.” C’mon, was ‘AdGuru’ too difficult of a name to choose?
Business & Domain Name: C-
they’re in the CPA ad game, so the name is somewhat relevant..

Axioma Search & www.axioma.com
I know I’m not reveiwing actual products here, but this search engine took over 10 seconds to return a results page for the search term ‘flowers’. oye. Also, it seems no one at this company understands SEO, cause they’re getting their lunch eaten by ‘axiomainc.com’ in Google serps for the term ‘axioma’. Ouch.
Business Name: D
the Isuzu Axiom was a bad car (my cousin owned one), and axioma is a worse business name.
Domain Name: A
well done grabbing your .com extension.

Blogsvertise & www.blogsvertise.com
When I was in the airport, I worried that they have have accidentally forgotten to register blogvertise.com (without the ’s’) - but they were smart, and did. Well done.
Business Name: A+
name clearly communicates that they help people advertise in blogs
Domain Name(s): A+
were very smart to register their name without the ’s’

ClickTracks & www.clicktracks.com
A well-seasoned leader in the online analysis field. I love the business name & domain.
Business & Domain Name: A+

Did-It & www.did-it.com
Ok, at what point could someone look at this business name and conclude, “Yes, I’d like to build my empire off this moniker”. And to push matters worse, they promote their domain ‘did-it.com’,with the dash, despite the fact that they own ‘didit.com’, and could promote that instead. Very confusing.
Business Name: F
sorry guys
Domain Name: B
I’m only giving them a B cause they also own the un-hypenated version of their domain name.

Genieknows.com and www.genieknows.com
Genie knows he could have done better choosing a business name.
Business & Domain Name: F

Hot Banana & www.hotbanana.com
Wouldn’t the business name ‘Hot Banana’ be better used for these business models:

• Gay Male Strip Club
• A Roller Skating Rink

…and not for a Web Content Management system? (which is what they provide)
Business & Domain Name: F
they asked for it, really

LeadQual & www.leadqual.com
It seems like they ran out of business name ideas, grasped at staws and came up with LeadQual (dont forget to capitalize the Q!), and said it over-and-over in the heads until it sounded good enough to use. It’s difficult to even pronounce…
Business & Domain Name: D+
They help people acquire leads, so the name at least has that mention. It would have been funny if their domain was something like www.lead-qual.biz

Orange Soda & www.orangesoda.com
I wonder if these guys are a sister company of Hot Banana. Imagine if they went in on a pitch to some big company together, and someone had to introduce them. It’d sound like some new Hip-Hop group, “Orange Soda & Hot Banana”.
Business & Domain Name: F
sell your name to Fanta and move on.

WeRLive.com and www.werlive.com
I’m tempted to say ‘We R Good At Choosing Bad Business Names’, but I digress.
Business & Domain Name: D+
they provide live experts, so they get a few points for the ‘live’ part.

Have ya’ll heard any other business names that make you scratch your head? Online or offline..

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.