Every Generic Domain Name Is a Potential Search Engine Brand at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

Every Generic Domain Name Is a Potential Search Engine Brand

Published on May 13, 2007 in Domain Names.

If you are a domainer you know the feeling of buying a new domain, that feeling of “wow, I got it, now what? I see potential in this and I see potential in that”. At the end of the day though, you usually go back to domaining and buy the next great domains and go through the same process again.
I came across a really cool site few minutes ago called Octopart.com, a parts search engine. i looked around and thought to myself, let’s see what’s on parts.com, the generic version of what this site is all about.
At Parts.com I saw a search engine, using sponsor links as search results. I remember I’ve seen this few times before, on college.com, and a number of other sites. It just hit me therefore that any generic domain has that potential of covering the industry at large and serve as a search engine, not just as a small lead generation site, as current ppc page tends to be.
On generic domains, why not mine the whole related industry, pre-populate the database with those, and create a Search engine BRAND? I think there’s a huge opportunity here for owners of generic domains to create those types of brands, where the main theme is a search engine but users will be able to add additional revenue generating concepts to the main theme, such as email newsletter, lead generation forms, presentation videos/audio of your brand, all sorts of related widgets, and browser extension to tap into the long term value of the user.
To sum it up generic domain names are so undervalued it is a crime not to buy them today, even for what seems to be high prices. There’s so much upside we’re not doing yet that this isn’t even a matter of technological advances, but a matter of just doing it.
From a tech POV this is all available to us today, right now. What are we waiting for? This is the right time to write to your PPC aggregator partner and ask for more. Ask for real innovation, ask to tap into the inherent brand power of your domain, ask to tap into the long term value of your users. They can do it but you have to demand it.

7 Responses to “Every Generic Domain Name Is a Potential Search Engine Brand”

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1 Franky
May 13th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

You’re right Sahar, I do like this post. :)) This succinctly speaks to what all domainers have surely thought in the back of their mind at one time or another.

—-ANSWER—-

I just don’t understand after all these years asking aggregators to innovate they still don’t do much. I hope you will do something about it soon yourself, as it seems no one really cares.
2 ZFreud
May 14th, 2007 at 8:06 am

One easy path to building a vertical search engine is using Google’s Custom Search Engine. I’d be very curious to hear if anyone has used this and what kind of monetization they’ve seen.

—-ANSWER—-

One way, sure. Also would explore a set up with all sponsored links rather then free. Can go both ways and see wht works better.
You can also combine the two, meaning, send some free traffic to sites and then ask them to either become paid sponsors or be removed.
Sahar
3 crinu iliescu
May 14th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

I believe TrafficZ is giving us the flavour of what’s next and can be done with the realm of the generic names, although I’m not sure they are aware of this Pandora box. The PPC provider has the power to pool generic domains by relation first and remap to keywords next, then grab available free relevant contents. The focus now is on PPC revenue and the advertising links, while the maturization of the internet looks for more expected results than the search engines can deliver now (and the PPC will go way, way up, when automated link generation within the relevant contents will be achieved. And that’s the generic domains future.

crinu iliescu (crinux.com)

—-ANSWER—

TrafficZ are definitely moving forward from the crowd however even that is just the very tip of the iceberg. I’m talking about powerful platforms that let the domain owner create his own brand, and use different revenue streams then just PPC. The real money by the way isn’t even PPC, it is lead generation where one single lead can be worth thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Now imagine that!
4 crinu iliescu
May 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

I was thinking more of a pool of domainers & some generic domain-trees management, where the PPC provider is just another partner (obviously the generic domains are spread around).
5 Peter Denega
May 19th, 2007 at 2:40 pm

Other languages than English will reap the top or second tier rewards, longer time frame but a good investment… EU early members, SA, place your bets…………