Every website needs a domain name. In the process of acquiring customers, one of the key identifiers is a memorable domain name. A domain name can match a business brand name or be linked to a product, product feature or task. A digital business might generate its domain name and its brand at the same time as part of the development of its identity.

Whatever the reasons for choosing a specific domain name, there are also issues around domain names and search engine marketing.

There was a fashion for exact match domains (EMDs), where a domain name was the same as a search query (think buying the domain name

‘bestchickenrecipes.com’ because you wanted to attract people who typed in the phrase ‘what are the best chicken recipes?’ in a search engine). There has been some debate that EMDs are no longer part of the algorithm that Google uses to mark a site as relevant as they offered an unfair advantage and were often simply spam sites. Many search engine marketers regard EMDs as a black hat optimisation practice.

Google has stated many times it would penalise what it regarded as

‘low-quality’ websites using EMDs in highly competitive marketplaces.

Which begs the question - is it worth paying for a very specific domain name? In 2014 Gannet bought the site cars.com for $1.8 billion - but that included assets associated with the domain name, such as a website (Sherman, 2014). For a domain name alone, Quinstreet paid nearly $50 million for ‘carinsurance. com’ (along with over $35 million for ‘insurance.com’) in 2010 (Titcomb, 2015). One might expect that there must be very good reasons to pay such a substantial amount of money for a domain - there have to be expected returns or ideas about the level of traffic. But it’s an exceedingly difficult issue to deal with when faced with the potential for EMD penalties on Google, and the movement away from website use that mobile apps could create.