discuss About.com Rebrands to DotDash.com ...A Good Move?

[Silentptnr]

Why would they do that? If you go to About.com you are redirected to the new name DotDash.com...

"About.com -- the 20-year-old general interest site with hundreds of thousands of articles about everything from "The right way to handwash clothes" to "What to do if you hate your in-laws" -- has a new mandate, and a new name to to go with it.

The New York-based, IAC-owned company, which actually began as MiningCo.com, is now "Dotdash," a nod to the company's history of having a "dot" in its previous names and logos, and a "dash" meant to represent what comes next, said CEO Neil Vogel. The dot and dash also represent the letter "A" in Morse code."

Source: http://adage.com/article/tech/a-dotdash/308884/

I have no idea why they would go from About.com to DotDash.com. What does everyone else think?

 

[offthehandle]

^Don't have to throw too much money at it if you all ready own the content.
The About medical content did 12 million uniques a month, Verywell got 17 million uniques last month.

I hope dotdash makes it and they maintain it and in 3 years we don't see ---> medical .gxxgle. com instead after they scrape the data and figure out how to republish it.

 

[gtldomainer]

It appears they're expanding About.com from just an "information" site to a larger domain like buy/sell marketplaces, travel portal and more. "About" is such small territory. "dotdash" sounds a bit weird compared to a one-word domain "About" but may be, this "ambiguous" name is what exactly defines their vision for this "multi-purpose" site.

 

[dande]

About.com is one of the best domain name in existent and probably the most fitting name to what About.com is all about. No doubt about that. But, they wanted something off the norm. Something sleeky and totally different. Something puzzling. Something that will tickle the curious minds. So, they found the answers in DotDash.com.

About.com lost out of the search engine wars years ago. DotDash.com could be their next move to try and recapture the lost glory.

 

[NetworkPearl]

Lol Going from a super premium 1word.com to a stupid name. You don't get to see this everyday HAHA.

 

[Silentptnr]

Lol Going from a super premium 1word.com to a stupid name. You don't get to see this everyday HAHA.

I can't see any argument that would make that particular domain name a good choice for a company that size. They must have a master, secret plan. I do hope it goes well. I wasn't a big user of the site, but for years I have known of it.

 

[dordomai]

Like any business, they want to dominate. They want to shred competition, make money and all of that. It's now email, cloud storage, even domain names. Crazy!

Personally, the real threat is their environment that is all inclusive. They are busy developing technology that provides answers and information without ever leaving google.

I make a phone call with my Google Number, then suddenly I'm seeing adsense ads relevant to the conversation I had. That's creepy.

wow. I knew it was bad but didn't realise it was that bad.

 

[Silentptnr]

wow. I knew it was bad but didn't realise it was that bad.

They are. If you use Android.

 

[Smiles76]

Too many are looking at this purely from a domainer's point of view. Ultimately, no matter how great the name might be, it there isn't a great business behind it, people don't care. Beer.com is the perfect example. As great as the domain might be, the previous company that owned it still went out of business. Ultimately, the business makes the name, not vice versa.

 

[Silentptnr]

Too many are looking at this purely from a domainer's point of view. Ultimately, no matter how great the name might be, it there isn't a great business behind it, people don't care. Beer.com is the perfect example. As great as the domain might be, the previous company that owned it still went out of business. Ultimately, the business makes the name, not vice versa.

Very true.

 

[namezest]

Well I can understand why a rebrand gets them publicity and new curio traffic I guess, I know personally I have not gone to that site in over a decade. Wikipedia kind of stole their lime light in a major way.. Just my 2 cents..

 

[youaintme]

The only good thing is ... It's the perfect time to acquire the perfect domain name - About.com

 

[Silentptnr]

Here is a good insight into why About.com changed to DotDash.com. Doesn't look good.

Why, After 20 Years, About.com is Changing its Name to Dotdash
http://adage.com/article/tech/a-dotdash/308884/

 

[1Darko]

Here is a good insight into why About.com changed to DotDash.com. Doesn't look good.

Why, After 20 Years, About.com is Changing its Name to Dotdash
http://adage.com/article/tech/a-dotdash/308884/

I have read the article. In my opinion this company should be integrated in something bigger, like Yahoo, etc.
I can't imagine that they will survive with only selling the traffic to advertisers. Maybe someone else has some opinion about this!?

 

[TRY]

"..they know who they're engaging with, and become loyal to those properties as a trusted property'  — as opposed to, 'I read this article once somewhere.'"

I assume most of their traffic is from Google, Maybe they want people to visit their properties directly and build relationships via newsletters etc. So they will be less reliant on Google.

 

[sbweb]

This rebranding is wrong on so many levels. You have these CEO's and executives who have business know-how and big degrees, but clueless about SEO and common sense.

 

[Start]

Thanks for posting this - it's very interesting.

I thought it was a crazy re-branding choice. But reading a couple of articles, I found out that the new name is basically just an umbrella/holding company name, and not really a consumer-facing name... like how "Alphabet" is the umbrella company that operates Google.

From this article, it does make some sense, and seems like it's working:
http://fortune.com/2017/05/02/about-reinvents-dotdash/

snippet 1:
"Advertisers also saw About.com as a damaged brand, because it was so behind the times. "We kept losing out on these deals because advertisers just couldn't bring themselves to put their brands next to ours," Vogel says. "At one point, we had one of the biggest companies in the world tell us never to call them again."

snippet 2:
The response from advertisers seems to show the new approach is working, says Vogel. "We've been talking to people who have not talked to us since I've been here, which is four years," he said. "Advertisers want data, which we've always had, but now we have brands that advertisers can trust."


Their combined traffic for the separate sites already exceeds what About.com got, so it seems like the change has gone well.

snippet 3:
Vogel and his team examined the site and found that the most successful pages fell into five general categories: Health, technology, personal finance, lifestyle, and travel. "We figured we could take those five areas and build brands around them, and turn that into something worthwhile, and the rest of the content we would just throw in the garbage."


I think that last sentence was a terrible choice though. About.com had a huge amount of useful information, and to just throw it in the garbage is such a waste! For the history of the Internet, and simply as helpful info in general. It's like if a newspaper/magazine decided to toss out its earlier issues.


I actually first learned of About.com when it was called "The Mining Company" (like information mining I suppose, but certainly not an intuitive name -- About.com was obviously a huge improvement for branding!), so even if the change works well for them, I am still disappointed to see another key web site from the early days of the Internet get erased. They should have spun-off all the other content into a separate web site.



---

Also, I found it very interesting that some companies didn't want to advertise on About.com... it's amazing really, considering how most online advertisers use Google AdWords/AdSense, and those ads can show up even on some pretty low-quality web sites.

 

[MarketingArchi]

This rebranding is wrong on so many levels. You have these CEO's and executives who have business know-how and big degrees, but clueless about SEO and common sense.

SEO its actually the #1 reason of changing their strategy, google likes more niche specific sites, rather then 1 site about everything, you are talking about a company that was bought for hundreds of millions, and had so much traffic and data and you think they have no idea about seo & branding ?

I've been watching their new site thebalance.com that they develop and promote, and can say they are doing a VERY VERY good job in seo, they will soon be positioned as # 1 in any retail finance keyword... these guy are not going anywhere, they are high quality developers that make projects with HUGE traffic. Literally what their have done is put their eggs in different baskets, rather then 1 which was declining...

dotdash.com is domain that has sense. its a sign that the world is changing, the human brain is more attracted to brand names more then ever, not keywords, keywords are boring, however the super keywords can be viewed as assets, thats why they will keep the name just like all other corporations http://www.domainsherpa.com/large-companies-that-own-generic-domain-names/ , and thats why good keywords are not gonna go anywhere.

 

[karmaco]

here's what I think, they want to build standalone separate brands/urls for their verticals and don't want the about brand hurting their credibility.

From site "The Dotdash website will have a directory of its brands for advertisers, media and trade, but won't be consumer-facing."

I agree with your analysis. They want to move in a different direction. I personally avoid About for info on a subject. DotDash wants DotCash...lol Plus that name is more appealing and catchy especially to a younger market.

 

[AuctionBio]

Why would they do that? If you go to About.com you are redirected to the new name DotDash.com...

"About.com -- the 20-year-old general interest site with hundreds of thousands of articles about everything from "The right way to handwash clothes" to "What to do if you hate your in-laws" -- has a new mandate, and a new name to to go with it.

The New York-based, IAC-owned company, which actually began as MiningCo.com, is now "Dotdash," a nod to the company's history of having a "dot" in its previous names and logos, and a "dash" meant to represent what comes next, said CEO Neil Vogel. The dot and dash also represent the letter "A" in Morse code."

Source: http://adage.com/article/tech/a-dotdash/308884/

I have no idea why they would go from About.com to DotDash.com. What does everyone else think?

This all looks strange to me changing a great domain name to this cheap one, but hang on it might be a marketing tactic and they might as well be on the way to introduce .dash......
who knows...
do you all think same??

 

[sbweb]

SEO its actually the #1 reason of changing their strategy, google likes more niche specific sites, rather then 1 site about everything, you are talking about a company that was bought for hundreds of millions, and had so much traffic and data and you think they have no idea about seo & branding ?

I've been watching their new site thebalance.com that they develop and promote, and can say they are doing a VERY VERY good job in seo, they will soon be positioned as # 1 in any retail finance keyword... these guy are not going anywhere, they are high quality developers that make projects with HUGE traffic. Literally what their have done is put their eggs in different baskets, rather then 1 which was declining...

dotdash.com is domain that has sense. its a sign that the world is changing, the human brain is more attracted to brand names more then ever, not keywords, keywords are boring, however the super keywords can be viewed as assets, thats why they will keep the name just like all other corporations http://www.domainsherpa.com/large-companies-that-own-generic-domain-names/ , and thats why good keywords are not gonna go anywhere.

If the only thing that mattered about SEO was content, then sure, it could make sense... but About.com is one of the oldest sites in the world. There are millions of backlinks that point to About.com. Yes, a 301 redirect can be done, but you will lose link juice. You are completely changing the entire website (the content), not a simple url change.

As for keyword domains, they can be brands. Just because it's not a made up word, doesn't mean it can't be a brand. For example: CreditCards.com, Cars.com, Homes.com, and Shopping.com.

Also, there is more room for errors when typing in DotDash, or even getting it backwards - DashDot. Everyone knows how to spell About.

 

[offthehandle]

anybody into ham radio before?
dot dash = morse code or " . - ", the letter A

They should have this instead:
dotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdot.com (SOS)

 

[karmaco]

Too many are looking at this purely from a domainer's point of view. Ultimately, no matter how great the name might be, it there isn't a great business behind it, people don't care. Beer.com is the perfect example. As great as the domain might be, the previous company that owned it still went out of business. Ultimately, the business makes the name, not vice versa.

Agreed. What the consumer thinks is a great name is different. About.com is boring. It is no coincidence the most recognizable brands use made up words.

 

[tranquillity]

The new domain doesn't matter. You're not meant to remember "dotdash" - you are meant to forget about about.com. The new domain/"brand" is just a way to forward traffic and search engines to their new BRANDED properties.

You're redirected to verywell.com by going to pregnancy.about.com, thespruce.com by going to gardening.about.com, thebalance.com by going to operationstech.about.com

The homepage of dotdash.com is just meant to explain where "about.com" went, make you forget about it (c'mon, their CEO is absolutely right -- who thinks "hey, I have a question, let's see if about.com can answer it" - no one, that's who) and redirect you to their new brands, which you ARE meant to form a relationship with.

I don't think this was a bad move. Not at all, actually.

 

[frostify]

Imagine it was not the famous site it was. Imagine a startup called "DotDash" decided to rebrand as "About.com" we would all be cheering for it. Not so much when you do those things in reverse. I have to give it a thumbs down from a domainer perspective. Looks like a downgrade. If I were bidding for a company name and brand (regardless of the domain name's obvious value) I think About.com is simplistic and speaks to the subconscious consumer's mind in one word far better than "DotDash" does which actually just raises questions and confusion.

 

[Dondomainer]

hell not