Domain Name Tasting
Saturday, September 4th, 2010A good domain not only makes internet users more likely to visit a website, it can also increase search engine rankings. This is because search engine bots rank websites based on keywords found both in its content and domain name. However, how does a webmaster know if their domain is going to benefit the web site? Usually most don’t until they have purchased the domain name. Hence, there is the practice of domain name tasting.
What is domain name tasting? Domain tasting is the process of purchasing a domain name and seeing how much traffic it brings to a website during the grace period (which is normally five days). If the domain name brings in a lot of visitors, the webmaster will keep it. If the domain brings in little traffic, they will cancel their registration and get a refund.
Does this sound interesting to you? Well, before you decide to do domain name tasting for your web site, first consider the ethics of the practice. Domain name companies lose a lot of money every year as a result of domain tasting. While some may not be concerned about this, if domain name tasting continues without any legal restrictions, domain registrars may strike back by increasing their prices. Such a consequence would also hurt webmasters who intended on buying the domain outright.
Another ethical issue involved with domain tasting is the issue of good domain names not being available to serious customers. Some webmasters may feel that in a system of free capitalistic enterprise, domain name testers have every right to access however many domains they can. Yet, if they aren’t really going to buy them, why shouldn’t these domain names be available to individuals who want them more? Many would argue it is better to sell a domain to a company that is serious about using it as their brand than selling it to a person wanting to use it to get quick traffic.
It is also important to keep in mind that a good domain is not the sole indicator of whether or not a site is going to be successful. Domain tasters are fooling themselves if they think their practice of domain name tasting is what has brought about their success with website traffic. Granted, an expired domain might have a small amount of traffic associated with it, but to get one that is of value, a company would have to pay significant amount of money. Many domain tasters wouldn’t have the funds for such a domain name, so they may instead deal with cheaper ones. And most of these cheaper ones probably do not have their own traffic stream.
Indeed, the type of website that gets a lot of traffic is one that has an appropriate domain, keyword-enriched content and a significant number of inbound links. Even if one doesn’t see anything ethically wrong with domain tasting, doing it may not accurately reflect whether or not a domain name is valid. In fact, if a person does domain name tasting and their website did not have the other elements that make for proper traffic-building, they could potentially be throwing away a domain name that could be a gold mine in the future.
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