question Plural or Singular..which sells better?

[Tarabasa Domains Ltd]

Something I've been wondering about recently
Do .com domains sell better with or without an 's' at the end?
It would be ideal to get both versions when investing, but if only 1 was available which would be the better one?

Fuel .. or .. Fuels
Garden .. or .. Gardens
SmartCar .. or .. SmartCars
Aircraft .. or .. Aircrafts
Vehicle .. or .. Vehicles
Fruit .. or .. Fruits
Etc

 

[Haykay2005]

Singular seems to sell better

 

[baseballworld]

Depends on the domain really.

 

[urlurl]

depends on the name. I would rather buy the singular over the plural in most cases

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

The singular sounds 'stronger', the plural sounds more like 'there is something to buy'.

I think, in most cases I personally would prefer the singular and if possible I would try to get both if I like to use it / them for my own project instead of offereing them for sale, I would use one as forwarding domain to the other.
Of course it's also good if you have both to offer it (at one package) for sale (1 + 1 for free, this should work).

And, the 'best' ones are those which are singular and plural at the same time.
I have a german example 'FENSTER' (german for 'window/s') is the singular and plural at the same time.
In this case you just need 'one for both'.

At the end, as others already wrote, it depends on the domain.

 

[Tarabasa Domains Ltd]

Answers have been a big help, thank you everybody

 

[Name Trader]

It entirely depends on the domain and it's use. Singular or Plural can have more value. But as a general rule, singular is more expensive. Try some singular/plurals for yourself at estibot.com

 

[aramyus]

In general, singular is a better choice. You can also use Google suggest and see which comes first or has the largest/most attractive number of suggestions

 

[Kuffy]

I don't think you can generalise. Bitcoin is better than Bitcoins imho, but UsedCars is better than UsedCar. However, TheUsedCar could be OK for a site about buying used cars.

 

[ross03]

Depends on the domain

 

[Ategy]

As a general rule of thumb for domainers looking to resell the domain, if both are the same price, the singular is usually the preferred .. obviously there are many exceptions and it really depends on the specific word(s) in question.

Singular is generally looked for by companies looking for a brand. As such these will generally be wanted by buyers with more money to spend.

Plural is usually used for listing/directory type sites. As such these will generally be wanted by buyers with less money to invest because their businesses are usually smaller than a company geared more towards creating products or selling services.


But note that usually both domains will not be available for the same price. If you can grab the plural for a fraction of the price of the singular then that could be the better "value". Depending on the key word you might also be able to sell the plural to someone who wants to use it as a directory quicker (although at a lower price).

Also note that singular brandables are heavily looked for by domainers with big budgets, so while the dollar amount they can make in profit for the singular can be significantly higher than the plural, it could very easily be the reverse that the plural is more profitable in terms of percentage because the original price you bought it for should have been significantly lower.


At the end of the day you really need to look at the specific word in question combined with your cost to purchase the domain. Because even if the singular is "better", it might not be the better value.


Beyond that however, there are more words that are completely worthless in plural than in singular .. again .. it really depends on the names .. there are cases where I'd take a singular in a non-.com before the plural in .com.

Another tip is to type the word into google .. as you get close to finishing typing the word how does google auto-complete the word ... generally if it comes out singular then you'd want to get the singular first .. but if it comes out plural, then there's a higher chance than usual the plural might be better (or maybe simply not as bad compared to the singular as the average word)


In the examples you gave above, all the singular would be better. With fuel/fuels having a very large difference between them.

Fuel could be a great brand for a sports drink, granola bar, anything related to energy, or even an advertising/marketing company wanting to give the impression they can add fuel to the fire of a client's campaign. PLUS .. it can also be about fuel.
Fuels is pretty much limited to an information or listing site on the topics of fuels (and even then people would only go to a site called fuels if they were looking for information on multiple types or to compare .. it wouldn't even make sense if it was for a company with only one type of fuel).

Take a look at the singular/plural of the specific word/term you're looking at and try to imagine what each could be used for. The more broad the possible usage, the better.

 

[deez007]

There is no hard and fast rule IMO...

It depends entirely on the domain and the word itself...

Like for example Plane vs Planes - now in a case like this I would go for Planes. I like to use search behavior as a good indicator ...I mean people are more likely to search for Planes instead of Plane. (Referring particular to single word searches)

 

[Kuffy]

Also, if the word is part of a keyphrase, then the positiion in the phrase can influence surfer's perception.
For example my recently registered MumsLog was misunderstood by one of the estimators as " Mum Slog" which is pretty useless. I thought of it as the possesive "mum's log", and that why I picked it up. The plural wouldn't really make sense as it should be "mums logs".

Take care of alternative meanings as well. One of my historic names was "girl's cat", the alternative to the possesive is a totally different niche. There have been quite a few examples of these alternative interpretations that registrants have missed.

 

[Kuffy]

There is no hard and fast rule IMO...

It depends entirely on the domain and the word itself...

Like for example Plane vs Planes - now in a case like this I would go for Planes. I like to use search behavior as a good indicator ...I mean people are more likely to search for Planes instead of Plane. (Referring particular to single word searches)

I agree, and it also depends on the target niche. For example "english gold" is good for investment buying advice, but "english golds" would be better for olympic results imho.

 

[Tarabasa Domains Ltd]

All super helpful answers, thanks people

 

[Cdomains]

It is simple.

As others have said above, it absolutely depends on the name.

Some names only make sense as a singular.

Some names only make sense as a plural.

Some names are OK either way.

It all depends on the name and what it is used for.

It is true singular names are good as brands.



One other thing, and this is important, everyone looks at singular and plural names differently.

To you a plural name might seem wrong and the singular version to be better, but

another person could see it as the reverse.

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is the context or meaning of a singular or plural domain name.

The most important thing is how the end user will perceive it.

After all, they are the ones who will be buying and using the name.

 

[Kuffy]

Good point, the classic example is maths - the abbreviation for mathematics. It seems common now to use math, the singular, although maths is multi-disciplinary.