We were recently contacted by a potential customer, who then left angry, as we could do nothing to allow them to enter a domain name that was 90 characters in length!

They have actually been to multiple registrars, and of course no one can help them...

Now I don' t know many people who even use 30 characters in a domain name (we only have a few that long in our customer database), but this person was absolutely livid that there is a 67 character limit to a .com domain name, and that they have a need for 90 characters, and why can't they be accomodated.

Is anyone seeing or hearing anything like this at all?

Is this just a freak occurance?

-t

They're going to have to get over it.

Them's the rules :)


Lats...

Sounds like someone who just wants a domain name that long just to be funny? Not sure why anyone would need a 90 char long name. I've never seen anyone ask for one personally.

Maybe he's using it to run some secret stuff.

i want a really long domain!


thisdomainissolongthatitistoolongsoicantreallybuyitthatstoobad.com


i mean, who really wants a domain name THAT long?

This is the same guy who gives you words for his phone number which have more letters than the number...like 1-800-IAMSTUPID, but of course on phones it just ignores the extras....of course people on cellular phones do have problems with that sometimes.

Should have tried to sell him the end of the domain (64 chars) and the rest as a subdomain (just offer him a dot in there)

Douglas

thisdomainissolongthatitistoolongsoicantreallybuyitthatstoobad.comMore like: thisdomainissoinsanelylongthatyoucannotevenregistertheidioticthingsodonotevenattempttodoso.com

Yuck.
I can just see it in a TV ad, filling the entire screen, wrapping right down to the bottom!
:)

Maxwell

Here I am worried about domain names that are ten digits long, and you guys are talking about 60 and 90 digit domains....

amazing.

Originally posted by maxwello
thisdomainissoinsanelylongthatyoucannotevenregistertheidioticthingsodonotevenattempttodoso.com


How about reading something that long?

How easily can you do it?..

huh?????

Originally posted by DougBTX
How about reading something that long?

How easily can you do it?.. I had a hard enough time making it exactly 90 chars, I don't want to even attempt reading it out loud! :D

Maxwell

Originally posted by Vex
Sounds like someone who just wants a domain name that long just to be funny? Not sure why anyone would need a 90 char long name. A lot of extremely long domain names get registered due to the misguided belief that running a key phrase together in a domain name will bring about search engine prominence. If you read daily expired domain name lists you see a lot of them.

Originally posted by JayC
A lot of extremely long domain names get registered due to the misguided belief that running a key phrase together in a domain name will bring about search engine prominence. If you read daily expired domain name lists you see a lot of them.

Yes I think you are quite correct here, so maybe a smart thing to do would be to sell them a RealName Keyword phrase which will reach their web site .. I think that this will soon become a significant factor in the whole web address or DNS landscape, eventhough it just a Microstuft deal right now..

i think the reason why they won't let you regiser a domain that long is because it's not possible. i think i heard somewhere that there's a maximum number of characters. just like your modem's got a maximum speed- a domain can only be so long to work.

Originally posted by JayC
A lot of extremely long domain names get registered due to the misguided belief that running a key phrase together in a domain name will bring about search engine prominence. If you read daily expired domain name lists you see a lot of them.

Actually,
You my friend are almost entirely wrong.
I think it's a moot point today because so many search engine work on a pay per click model these days but here goes.

I've done a bit of search engine placement in my day, and I have found that adding key words to domain names is a VERY effective way of getting noticed and indexed by several of the Spider engines (not the ppc's).

Like anything though, it's a science

A domain name like
thisdomainnameissolongthatyoucouldntevenreaditifyoutried.com

is totally useless.
Beyond useless actually, it's a downright waste of money.
But lets examine that.
We know that spridering search engines to index the actual URL for relevance, so what is wrong with the ridiculously long domain above? There is nothing to separate the key words in the domain name.

Now,
if you had a domain name like:

this-domain-name-is-a-little-easier-to-read.com

And assuming that domain name is actually relevant to what you are trying to do, than you have just added value to your web site.

But like I said,
There are so many pay per clicks out there these days that search engines are becoming more and more useless.
I've actually come to a point where I've sworn off them all together. There are better ways to get traffic to your site. They just cost money. And long domain names can be more of a headache than they are worth.

Just my two cents.

i have found that a longer domain name with searched for keywords does actually work. I bought one and tried it purely as an expirement and to learn more and it does help with search engines.

Originally posted by sam.moses


I've done a bit of search engine placement in my day, and I have found that adding key words to domain names is a VERY effective way of getting noticed and indexed by several of the Spider engines (not the ppc's).



This doesn't happen if you mean creating a domain name from keywords. We hold [and have held] several domains for customers which are probably some of the best possible examples of this, and without actively submitting in the *normal* way they don't have any better chance of being noticed. We actually paid close attention to it, because it's obviously valuable if it were the case, but seems it's merely a myth as JayC says. I suspect if the same keywords are associated with such a domain it may appear to have an affect after the *normal* submission process.

Originally posted by sam.moses
I've done a bit of search engine placement in my day, and I have found that adding key words to domain names is a VERY effective way of getting noticed and indexed by several of the Spider engines (not the ppc's). You get "noticed" by a spider by having incoming links. Which leads to the biggest advantage of using hyphenated keywords in a domain name: the anchor text of all of your incoming links will contain your keywords, and that will provide a definite boost.

Then there's a possibility that some people will type your keywords into the address box of their browser and rely on the browser's autosearch function to act as a search. And that may direct them to your domain name.

So yes, there are some indirect benefits.

But while there did seem to be a more direct benefit to such use at one time, today -- in March of 2002 -- the on-page algorithmic benefit of keyword-based domains has gone the way of that of the meta keywords tag... it's becoming a thing of the past, and for the same simple reason: it's too easily abused.