Popularity of Numbers in a Domain

 

 

It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. Suppose you don’t see why someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.”― Paul Erdos’ answer on why numbers are stunning.

 

While numbers are stunning in the senses of other professionals such as Statisticians, Mathematicians, Teachers, and Data Analyst, domainers typically do not encourage using numbers in domain names. For them, putting numbers in a domain just sounds “not ideal” as it will not pass a radio test and causes enough confusion at the listeners’ end.

 

For instance, if you ask a stranger to write down your website name on a paper, are they going to get it right, or they’ll just let it go? An example of this is 2great.com. It’s understandably easy to type the combination of number and letter by seeing the domain name. But if you critically think about it, the number 2 is easily misinterpreted with “too,” “to,” or “two.”

 

Are there domains using numbers?

 

Although domainers disagree with using numbers in a domain name, it is unbelievable that there were actually nine million domain names that just number. Yes! Your read it right. There are nine million domains on the internet that are just number.

 

As we dig deeper, numeric domains are popular among new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), while 70% of all numeric ccTLD domain names are registered in China (.cn). We cannot argue that numeric domains are popular in Chinese people as it decreases linguistic confusion and broadens their national market into the international market.

 

Things to Consider when Using Numeric Domain

 

Numbers in the domain are not common at all. Or maybe in the countries that can write Latin alphabets and do not have linguistic confusion. Most domains stick with words, but we cannot assume that numbers are not suitable to have in domains.

 

Most of the top websites do not use numbers in their domain name ut numbers still offer a great branding opportunity as they carry a well-defined meaning in general or in a particular context.

 

If you ever thought of using numbers on your website, here are some things to consider for your reference.

 

• Stick with numbers with meaning.

 

Numbers and terms do have meaning, especially in Chinese culture. Sure, maybe that is why Qihoo, a Chinese company, bought the 360.com domain at $17 million in 2015.

 

But if you are coming from another part of the world, keep your eyes on numeric domains that have a more precise meaning. The domain 21stCentury.com is much better than 21st.com as it can act like keywords for itself.

 

• Get the spelled-out version.

 

I bet no one will spell out 53rd in the 53rdBattalion.com, but what about “1st,” “3rd,” and “top 3”? With these short and easy to spell numeric domains, chances are there’ll be someone who would spell the number out.

 

In any case, you don’t have to avoid these types of numeric domains, but you must get their spell-out variations to keep valuable traffic going to your website.

 

• Be aware of arbitrary numbers.

 

These numbers are numbers that may have meaning in the context, but visitors would not know it. For example, 37Signals.com. What does 37 mean, for instance? 

 

• Avoid using “2” in replacement of “to” and “4” as replacement of “four.”

 

Go4gold.com, 2gether.com, 4u.com. These are some of the names that use numbers in replacement of to or four. If you cannot get the “for” and “to” versions of the term, you would lose massive traffic to your website.

 

Author’s Conclusion

 

The popularity of numbers in a domain is somewhat unquestionable as a lot of numeric domains are registered from different parts of the world. For whatever reason, I am sure that business owners thought about it several times, but most of the time, it is used to bridge language barriers and branding purposes.

 

Whether you would choose a numeric domain name depends on how you utilize and use them in a common language. There is no doubt that numbers are stunning; you just need to discover how to use them wisely for business.