information LOCA.TION, LOCA.TION, LOCA.TION: URBAN LAND MARKETS AND DOMAIN NAME SPACE

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City land values have traditionally correlated to proximity to city centers. According to one economist, Internet real estate values similarly go up and down—based on how much you have to type.

To show that demand was lower for longer names, Lindenthal studied the use of popular U.S. surnames and city names as keywords within longer domain names, using examples such as smithfamily.com or newyorkpizza.com. Controlling for how common the surnames are, Lindenthal found that six-letter surnames were 24 percent more likely to appear in a domain name than seven-letter ones...

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