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I asked this on serverfault and was recommended to try here, so I'm reposting this.

Is it still valuable to have a shorter domain name? My company site is currently located at nexustechnologiesllc.com and I have the opportunity to buy nexusllc.com, but I'm really torn on the value of said domain. Shorter names obviously used to be much more valuable because people were more likely to type in a domain name, but now, with everyone pretty much searching, that value seems to be reduced.

The other aspect that I'm considering with this is typing in an email address, because people might still be typing that in semi-regularly. But again, I'm not sure how important that aspect is either.

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    The smaller domain name looks a lot nicer to me, perhaps you'll look like a larger company with the smaller domain name. I guess it depends on how much it costs. Commented Oct 5, 2010 at 20:48

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That's a tough question. Obviously, it's always best to keep your domain name as short as possible, and domain names beyond 25-30 characters are probably too long to be practical.

From a business perspective, the fewer obstacles you put between your customers and your business, the better off you'll be. For instance, if I receive an e-mail containing a mistyped url (because the sender misremembered the long domain name), I might just blow it off and move on. Also, in your specific case, there are quite a few companies with the name "Nexus Technologies" so you may not want people to have to search for that name (unless you're ranked #1 on Google for that term).

That said however, I think nexustechnologiesllc.com is right within the borderline of acceptability. It's long, but not hard to remember. You might want to see if you can grab nexustechnologylcc.com or buy nexus-llc.com or nexusllc.net (both currently available) to make things a little easier for customers, but I wouldn't worry too much about it otherwise.

I would NOT buy a domain name from a domain squatter/prospector/resellers/etc. Remember, they're the reason we're running out of good domain names, and probably the reason you needed to add llc to your domain name. In fact, both nexusllc.com and nexustechnologies.com are owned by squatters/resellers. So buying domains from them for hundreds of dollars is like clicking on spam and encouraging more spam. Just don't do it.

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  • Thanks, Lèse. Great info, and I'm not even sure when nexusllc.net became available, because I'm pretty sure that was taken last year as well. I'm not 1st for Nexus Technologies on Google right now, but I am on the first page, and moving up fairly quickly actually, but I'm definitely going to pick up nexusllc.net, if nothing else just to make my email addresses shorter for clients. Commented Oct 6, 2010 at 1:56
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A shorter name is good for usability as it is easier to remember and type into a browser's address bar. Other then that it really doesn't have much else, if anything, to offer (that I can think of off the top of my head).

If you're considering purchasing an existing name (at a higher then new registration price) or using an alternative TLD (i.e. not a .com) it's a trade off between usability (shorter name is good) and cost/recognizability (higher price or uncommon TLD is not so good). It's up top you to decide which is more important to your business.

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