news Why Generic Domain Names can Give a Competitive Edge to Existing Brands...

[News]

Why are generic terms so valuable? Whether it is in search or domain names, a generic word carries immense opportunity since it often defines categories of information, products and experiences. Consumers using generic terms to seek content often haven’t decided which brand to choose, which presents a huge upside.

Though some are expensive, generic .com domains can produce a substantial return on investment. They can justify high price tags in the form of customer acquisition, new sales and the ability to reach customers in segments where you are not allowed to go direct.

Also, generic .coms can psychologically signal marketplace dominance, transmitting a ubiquitous message that the company is a power player in that category. When a company owns a generic domain like flowers.com, the message they send is, “We not only play in this category—we own this category.”..

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[Future Sensors]

Says Phil Lodico, working for GoDaddy Corporate Domains, using GCD.com for their website.

Interestingly, their competitor CSC owns the generic domain CorporateDomains.com, which redirects to https://www.cscdbs.com/en/domain-management/.

The title "can give a competitive edge to existing brands" is therefore particularly funny.

 

[MKA]

When a company owns a generic domain like flowers.com, the message they send is, “We not only play in this category—we own this category.”..

The irony here is that flowers redirects to 1800flowers.com, but there are also the question of how does it rank compared to flower.com. I'd argue that flower.com is more valuable because it's more versatile. It's the difference between apples.com and apple.com.

Another notable example is shoes.com which redirects to dsw.com.

My main issue with generic domains is that they seem a bit white-label, and are difficult to market and establish a brand for. In fact, it's not uncommon with strategies to get around this, e.g. "we're acquisition.com" instead of "we're Acquisition." Because calling a company that's dealing with acquisitions Acquisition can be a bit confusing.

This is why I prefer non-generic single-word domains like infinity.com. Because there's no risk that the brand Infinity would be confused for a service or product.

I'm not saying that generic one-words are worthless or anything like that. The market proves that they're incredibly valuable. But I think the utility of them are overstated.