Quoting Dave on Wednesday August 31, 2005:
| 
| If you search Google for "Byron Bay" are you more likely to click on 
| byronbay.com.au <http://byronbay.com.au> or
| bobsmithtravel.com.au<http://bobsmithtravel.com.au>?

Actually, my choice depends on where they appear (i.e. in the first few
results), rather than anything to do with the domain name. And the way
that a page gets to be in the first results is its relevance (through
linking from trusted sites), and the domain name is usually not a factor
in that.

My defunct ISP web site appears in the first 10 hits if you type "ISP"
into Google - varying depending on Google's mood its somewhere between
place 5 and 10. From that it gets tens of thousands of hits per week,
and that has nothing to do with ISP being in the domain name - because
its not. The first Australian ISP site with "ISP" in its domain name is
ranked #83.

| Do you think bobsmithtravel.com.au <http://bobsmithtravel.com.au> gets any 
| type-in traffic from anybody looking for information about Byron Bay ?

I would say people guessing domain names relating to generics is a
fraction of a percentage. Whilst if I knew I was looking for a specific
company like Qantas I could guess it is qantas.com.au, I don't think
many looking for something generic would do such a thing.

Search engines have really usurped this kind of thing, because they work
so much better.

| If you're telling somebody about a great site about Byron Bay, do you think 
| you're likely to remember the domain if it's
| byronbay.com.au<http://byronbay.com.au>

Again, I think we are talking fractions of a percent that are impacted
by this, and you could come up with equally memorable names that are not
literally the place name of the enterprise.

kim