Proof Keyword Domain Names Get You More Business

All the articles on this website make the claim that generic domain names get you more business. The limited study discussed here provides evidence to support this claim.

See the study here done by Edwin Hayward, operator of MemorableDomains.co.uk.

Hayward ran some tests using ads on Google. He ran the same ad three times with the only difference being the domain name at the bottom of the ad.

The product he was selling was electric bikes. One of the ads used the domain ElectricBikes.co.uk. The other two ads had non-generic domain names.

The ads with the generic domain name performed significantly better. In Hayward's own words.

A challenge for online marketers is getting more clicks out of their pay-per-click search engine campaigns.

One approach is to use a generic domain name in PPC ads, since product- or service-related keywords in the displayed domain name and landing page should attract more clicks from people searching for that product or service.

We tested this theory using an AdWords PPC campaign for electric bicycles.

Ads featuring a generic domain name with an exact match to the product (ElectricBicycles.co.uk) performed significantly better than identical ads featuring an alternative generic (YourBikes.co.uk) or non-generic (InAHurry.co.uk) domain.

The CTR of ads using the ElectricBicycles.co.uk domain name was 15% and 42% higher than the two alternatives.

The ElectricBicycles.co.uk ads produced 45% more clicks than the YourBikes.co.uk ads and 105% more clicks than the InAHurry.co.uk ads.

We conclude that the strong performance of a generic domain name is driven by factors such as:

• The close match between the domain name and the product searched for (irrespective of the search keywords used)
• Automatic bolding of search terms in the domain
• The potential positive impact of the domain name on ad quality score

Marketers should consider using generic domain names for dedicated PPC search engine campaigns for specific products, services or advertising initiatives.

While we do not have extensive studies for how effective generic domain names are in influencing human behavior under other conditions, this is evidence that people instinctively respond significantly more positively to keyword domain names.

You are probably safe in betting that keyword domain names also work better in emails, by word-of-mouth, in printed material and in other ways of promoting your business.