Hyphenated .com.au domain or .net.au with no hyphens

[ontherunway]

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Just discovered the .com.au domain I want is taken.
So my options are to have a hyphenated version (its 2 words) and get a .com.au version, or keep the words I want (no hyphen), but go for a .net.au version.

Which would be best? Not really sure of the pros and cons?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[AgentMail]

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I work with a business that has a hyphenated .com.au

I think as long as it is handled as part of your business marketing approach you should be fine. It does, of course depend on the industry. And you may also find yourself in sticky water if the other business is trading in the same field as you, as it may be seen as affecting their online advertising and taking their traffic.

You should hopefully get some responses from the seo bods on here who would be better pleced to advise

[Divert To Mobile]

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Why not take them both.

Steve

[DavidM]

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I’m not a fan of hyphens or .net. It’s counter to normal user behavior. So you risk people simply visiting your competitor who doesn’t have the hyphen.

You will also forever be saying..”yeah, with a hyphen in the middle”. Personally I also think they look less professional.

[kathiemt]

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I own both hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains. Why? So that someone else wouldn’t buy a domain similar to mine. I did have someone in the US getting my emails because they owned the .com and I owned the .com.au. Sometimes people would leave the .au off. That was some years ago. These days I cover all bases.

I’d check to see if these other people have a trademark in place, particularly if you’re planning on a similar business to them. You don’t want to be treading on difficult territory. If they do, then perhaps it’s back to the drawing board for you. Better now than later on when you have printed materials and other things in place.

I had a client once that had a business name that someone else trademarked. They ran two very different businesses but had both chosen the same name – one was a product, the other a service based business. Although she’d run her business much longer she was denied the Trademark because the other business had claimed it first.

These days I think you need to consider business name, domain name and trademark all in the same breath.

[ontherunway]

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eStrategyPro.com, post: 0 wrote:

If I were you, I would find a completely different name.

That’s what happened to one of my clients. I advised her to get a completely different name so that people will not accidentally go to her competitor’s website.

A sneaky way would be to take the .com version of the domain name you want and redirect to the completely new .com.au domain. But if you’re thinking of that, you better do your homework and check that you are not infringing on any trademark or IP.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I note that a couple of you refer to competitor issues. The person who holds the domain I am interested in does not operate in my area, so if traffick did go to their site accientally then they wouldnt gain anything (and probably me neither if it didnt find its way back). So if we’re in different areas would a hyphen be more acceptable?
Regarding the comments on trademarks, I understood that trademarks were registered by category?

[Neddy]

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Just to throw some other information into the mix – in particular sales prices on hyphens in the Aussie market.

Also some good comments from an SEO expert in James Norquay; and from Mark Lye of Netfleet.

Worth a read imho. http://www.dntrade.com.au/said-hyphens-worth-nothing-t4964.html?t=4964

Cheers, Ned

[kathiemt]

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Personally I like hyphenated domain names. Why? Because it’s easier to read the words in the domain and makes more sense. We’ve all seen the likes of silly word combinations such as whorepresents.com and expertsexchange.com for example, that can be misread and misleading, this way they can’t be. I tend to buy both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of domains these days and wish I’d thought of that years ago when I first began buying them. If I think the hyphenated version looks/sounds better I will use that as the main domain and point the other so that people still get to the site no matter what they key in.

[websitedesigner]

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+1 to what David said. For your main brandable business site I would stay away from hyphens and any extension other than .com.au – choose another name or add something to the end.

[tonyk]

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.net.au seems like the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

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