Doma.in Poll: What is the WORST 3-letter .com (LLL.com)?

[Domainate.com]

Those of us that are into LLL.com domains likely keep track of the price trends on 3character.com, and go by what they say for premium, good, and bad letters. They list there the minimum wholesale price, as in the price that the worst LLL.com would expect to sell for. The question is: What IS the worst LLL.com? We all know which is the BEST one (hint: highest sale of all time)...let's find the WORST!

Since it's hard to come up with just one, you can list up to 5 domains, but try to give some kind of explanation for why other than "it has 3 bad letters". Does it have bad Google? Is it impossible to pronounce? Does it have no meaning at all? Let's find out once and for all which domain is the worst LLL.com!

I'll give my opinion later as I don't want to affect the survey at all. I'll keep the results in this post and update the when I can!

Worst LLL.com Names Vote:

1. XZQ.com - 3 votes
2. ZQW.com - 2 votes
3(tied). QXZ.com - 1 vote
3(tied). VQX.com - 1 vote
3(tied). ZQJ.com - 1 vote
3(tied). ZWQ.com - 1 vote

 

[accent]

No question X is one of the three worst letters. W is almost a premium, and for last names (professional associations, for example) it is one of the best letters.

But I am frequently surprised how different people rank the letters. The opinions vary widely.

I have seen objective lists with vastly different results:
Scrabble
Last Names
Letter frequency (overall) in dictionary
Letter frequency (first letter) in dictionary
Letter frequency (nouns only) in dictionary
Business names.

----- and that is just for English. Many many Chinese sites are on LLLL.coms. I wonder if that will continue or if more will prefer IDN and/or .CN names as time goes on.

But the most valuable list would be developed sites, in LLL and LLLL, ranking each position and also letter pairs.

I do something like that in LLLL.coms - when I see more or less of a letter available I adjust my thinking. But domainer fads affect those results. When I first looked at 3 letter .mobi (maybe a week into open registration) nearly everything with "J" as the worst letter was gone, but there were lots of "K" and "W"'s. (W is a one tap letter along with J, so that was not the reason). Someone had bought up the "J"s. Yet in LLLL.com there are lots of worst letter "J"s left, but "K" and "W"s are about gone.

So it is an art, not a science.

 

[RJ]

Here are a couple interesting lists of the most (in)frequently used letters in the alphabet. At the bottom of the both lists -- Q, J, Z, and X.

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/frequency

 

[VURG]

Change my vote. XZQ.com looks worst now that I have put some thought into it.

 

[Domainate.com]

Change my vote. XZQ.com looks worst now that I have put some thought into it.

Changed!

If we take the 4 letters that RJ mentioned, J, Q, X, and Z, and all the different combos, we get:

JQX.com
JQZ.com
JXQ.com
JXZ.com
JZQ.com
JZX.com
QJX.com
QJZ.com
QXJ.com
QXZ.com - 1 vote so far
QZJ.com
QZX.com
XJQ.com
XJZ.com
XQJ.com
XQZ.com
XZJ.com
XZQ.com - 3 votes so far
ZJQ.com
ZJX.com
ZQJ.com - 1 vote so far
ZQX.com
ZXJ.com
ZXQ.com

 

[zestydomains*com]

It is probably fair enough to say that letter quality truly resides in the eye of the beholder, and as such, each opinion is valuable.

This said, in declaring what letters are of better or lesser quality, several important factors should be considered, and even then there is not universal agreement. Some of these factors include:

Letter commonality within acronymns
Language
End User potential
Memorability/Branding
Common Usage

On 3character.com, I think it is fair to state that by general concensus the premium letters are: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T. Not every single person agrees on this, but very few would argue that these letters are not of premium quality given their commonality in many major languages, commonality in business acronym usage and their increased commonality in end-user sales among LLL domains.

It can get a little grayer on the lesser high quality and lower quality letters. For example, within the english language, Q, X, Y, and Z are much less frequently found and used as the first letter of many words or names. RJ pointed out a very helpful site in his post that shows the commonality of letter usage in the english language. This said, commonality of usage and commonality of use as the first letter of a word or name are different concerns to consider. E is by far the most used letter in composing english words, and C and T are used somewhat less in word composition, but yet are very common as the first letter of a name or word. Likewise, X is very rarely used in the composition of english words, but even more rarely is it used as the first letter of an english word or name (and acronym domains are based on words and names).

So far our focus has been on letter quality in the english language, but as we all recognize, acronym domains are valuable in many other languages as well, and this can place a cloud on what otherwise seems a simple science. For example, Z is not a widely used first letter for words or names in the english language, but is very common in the german language. Someone from Germany might have a very different opinion than someone from the US as to how valuable Z might be as a letter in an acronym or LLL domain.

In the consideration of premium, lesser high quality and lower quality letters, the only real way to guage their placement in these categories is to seek general concensus understandings, which should consider end-user sales by letter type and end-user desire and use for each letter. Though opinions vary on this, it is most generally found that the letters fall in these categories:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T are considered premium letters.

Lesser high quality letters include: J, K, U, V, W.

Lower quality letters include: Q, X, Y, Z.

It's fair to differ with this general concensus, but it is also helpful to try to place these letters in fair general categories based on the factors above, as well as to consider one of the most important factors of all...end-user sales data (one of the greatest strengths of LLL domains for wholesale valuation purposes).

If you or I have a difference of opinion with these categorizations, it's really alright that we can all agree to disagree. End user sales and end-user usage really win the day and by far trump our own opinions.

So here we are again...perhaps it is all in the eye of the beholder...and most would agree that so far even the beholder of the worst LLL.com combination can't complain too much.

Thanks for a great thread...I'm very much appreciative of the various thoughts.

zesty

 

[Domainate.com]

Good post zesty. My opinion is that while there are stats on English words and letter usage, and then on the back end, sales stats of LLLs to go off of, there really is no science to it. You could say that stats of most used words within business names and acronyms and taking the most used and unused letters out of those would probably work well to determine good and bad letters, but then of course there's different contexts and business and acronym names evolve. You could say there's practically no words that start with X, so it's a bad letter, but then you have to take into account "Ex" names, as X commonly is short for them as well, and quite often you'll find that X can be a really GOOD letter in some instances. That's why domain valuation can be such a pain in the butt sometimes, because there really will NEVER be a science to it.

I'm actually surprised people are posting just 1 name for their "worst"...I opened it up to the ability to post up to 5 names, and figured people would have a hard time picking just one, but amazingly no one has posted more than one.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

QXZ is pretty bad, despite the "z" at the end trying its best to save the acronym.

That being said, I like XZQ (somewhat) because it makes me think "Execute" X-Z-Q(t) - But that's just one opinion among many - I'm sure others think I'm just simple .

-Allan

I'm actually surprised people are posting just 1 name for their "worst"...I opened it up to the ability to post up to 5 names, and figured people would have a hard time picking just one, but amazingly no one has posted more than one.

"Don't poop where you eat" -Everyone

Those "worst" names we could be posting here could be the ones we're trying to sell someday/now

-Allan :gl:

 

[Domainate.com]

Any more votes for worst LLL.com?

 

[accent]

To back up Zesty --- about a year and a half ago I found a site that would generate available LLLL.com names (it was much inferior to dyyo.com). I spent days and days feeding combinations in and writing pages and pages of results. (welcome to domaining!)

At that point every single name I found had at least one J,K,Q,U,V,W,X,Y or Z except three with an H.

That same situation - every available LLLL.com having at least one J,K,Q,U,V,W,X,Y or Z - prevailed until last month when the last K's were taken. The overall number available fell by something like half in that time.

So in the rock hard world of LLLL.com availability, there certainly is a hard line between J,K,Q,U,V,W,X,Y, Z and the rest of the letters.