We’ve been doing a fair amount of consulting on domain names lately. To better understand the dynamics of the domain industry, we started reading a number of blogs on domaining. Elliot Silver’s blog is one of the best ones out there. (In fact, Elliot’s blog was named Best Domainer’s Blog in 2008 by the Domainers Choice Awards and Best Blog Community of the Year in 2008 by Name Intelligence).

Yesterday, Elliot wrote about the acquisition of the “Hooray” domain name by Hoorray.com, a “Free Online Photo Album for Digital Photo Experts.” [Hurray.com, the name which I would first type, is a Chinese “provider of music and music-related products such as ringtones, ringbacktones, and truetones to mobile users in China over mobile networks and through the Internet.]
Elliot makes the point that cool-sounding company (or product) names can become a problem when they confuse visitors who type the domain name phonetically. Hoorray’s management must’ve agreed because they announced their acquisition of the Hooray.com name.

Blogs Elliot, according to a representative of the company,

“This is a significant step as we prepare to relaunch the 2.0 version of Hoorray later this summer,” said Robin Zieme, Director of New Ventures for Hoorray. “While the spelling of Hoorray with two r’s was not a hindrance, it will ensure that all traffic intended for our site comes our way.”

Elliot also points out that can be cheaper to get a cool domain name but you will lose a considerable amount of traffic if you do. I agree.

But cheaper is relative. If you’re trying to get traffic with a cutesy domain name, then you should register as many of the mis-spellings that you can. And if any of those are owned or parked, then you’ll need to pay more for them. Remember, there is a whole industry dedicated to buying and parking mis-spelled domain names.