Thoughts

Andrew Miller

November 6, 2022

The Importance of Exact Match Domain Names: Data Don’t Lie

In sports, we often say, “ball don’t lie,” when a wrong call by a referee leads to a result ultimately in favor of the affected team or player. With domain names, “data don’t lie!” There is no denying the strong trend of acquisitions of exact match domain names and .com domains by the most successful companies and brands in the world.

The Initial Approach

Many companies, when formed, use an extended domain address that is not the .com or exact match to its product or brand. This is sometimes done as an on-ramp, to initially save money, or because founders do not yet understand the critical importance of having the exact match address & the .com. Some do not intuitively get how much it matters and think they can “get away” with an added word or a different TLD, and others do, but risk waiting until their business has more traction or capital.

The Realization

What they eventually learn, sometimes in time, sometimes not, is it is the most important investment they make. If your product or brand is called Extend or Capsule, your address for customers, partners, media, Google search, email address, employees, and investors, needs to be Extend.com or Capsule.com. If you started as “dot du jour” (io, xyx, ai, co) and become more known, then emails, ad dollars, and customers will flow to the .com because that is what is embedded subconsciously in our minds.

Recent Acquisitions

Nobody does a better job reporting on these domain name acquisitions than Jamie Zoch. A few shared by Jamie this week are: MicroAcquire.com becomes Acquire.com (leaving Acquire.io screwed as Jamie highlights), Remini.ai to Remini.com, and Abre.com by Abre.ai. We keep a running list at HilcoDigital.com/comps.

The Investment and Return

It will cost $500k-$15m to acquire your exact match brand. It took Hubspot $10m last month to acquire Connect.com for Hubspot Connect. If a company is going to be a leader and winner, the return is exponential and immeasurable, and the trend is clear. The winners figure this out.