Having an "and" in a domain name, not recommended?

Is it bad practice? any SEO, usability or word-of-mouth penalty?

Website Domain

asked May 30 '10 at 09:25

Eric
352 points

Top digital marketing agency for SEO, content marketing, and PR: Demand Roll

This question is off-topic because it is not about starting or running a new business. – Zuly Gonzalez 10 years ago

5 Answers

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ is doing fine with it...

answered May 30 '10 at 10:09

Stefanos Tses
981 points

(barnes and noble) (barne sand noble) – Ross 14 years ago
And I bet they chose to use it because it keeps their branding consistent - unlike the variations below. – Susan Jones 14 years ago

I personally would not use "and" in domain names. To me it is unusual, and there is no clear convention on how it's used, so I would worry that customers mistype it. To re-use the existing example, I would worry that the end user could misspell it as barnes-and-noble.com, barnes&noble.com, barnes-&-noble.com etc (you can't use ampersand in conventional domain names, but again, end users might not know that).

I would most likely use a dash instead of the "and", as well as registering the domain both with and without dash. So I would have used barnes-noble.com and also have registered barnesnoble.com (and set up redirection to the domain in use).

The use dash or not discussion has already been covered on this site and elsewhere. :-)

answered May 30 '10 at 18:40

Jesper Mortensen
15,292 points

I used to work for a firm with "&" in the name but their domain included the full word "and". It was highly confusing and (pun fully intended) I bet they lost half of the people who googled to try to find them.

answered May 31 '10 at 00:03

Smart1 Cpa
171 points

I will not recommend using "and" in domain name. It can be confusing. There are some rare exceptions perhaps. My focus is mainly in the area of 2 word domain names, 1 word are not available or too expensive for me and 3 words are too long.

Try also to split by hand the domain names on all the possible combinations. This will give you an idea of how confusing is you domain name for people that see it for the first time. Some domain names are to ambiguous.

answered May 31 '10 at 16:41

Ross
2,288 points

On my site, HotNamelist.com, I help people find domains. I've found that fewer than 0.5% domains regisitered thru my site include the word "AND". Mostly this is because you have at least a 3-word domain when using "AND", so those are already less popular.

Given that, some of the ones that are registered are not so bad. Here's a list of the ones that people have taken... good examples of decent 3-word domains:

BallAndStick.com
ForwardAndBackward.com
DrinkAndEnjoy.com
AtomsAndMolecules.com
ToolsAndWidgets.com
BradPittAndAngelina.com
SpotAndStainRemover.com
ComedyAndDrama.com
CloningAndStemCells.com
NotesAndIdeas.com
HipHopAndHouse.com
TravelDealsAndTips.com
NectarAndPollen.com
EmbassyAndConsulate.com
WindowsAndLinux.com
TipsAndToys.com

SeedsAndSeedlings.com
CapAndTradeBill.com

SanitationAndHygiene.com
CocoaAndChocolate.com

PittAndAngelina.com
OneAndOnlyGod.com

DesignAndFineArt.com
FacialAndBody.com
LeavesAndGrass.com
ComputerFraudAndAbuse.com
ViolenceAndSex.com
IphoneAppAndGame.com
HotelsAndCarRental.com
TheseusAndTheMinotaur.com
MoneyAndInflation.com
FeastsAndFestivals.com
KneeAndHipReplacements.com
FoodAndBeverageMarket.com
FireplacesAndChimneys.com
OilAndSpices.com
CatsAndMonkeys.com
DataStructuresAndAlgorithms.com
CareAndService.com

answered Jun 2 '10 at 05:45

Jorgem
749 points