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Oct
29
2007
Ten Worst Movie Domain Names Ever

A lot of people have been talking lately about how great domains are for marketing and SEO.

A quick trip to the movies last week convinced me Hollywood isn't listening. With millions of dollars made in a single weekend, people in movie marketing still think its a great idea to put their advertising budgets behind a $7 domain name.

brooks10) theressomethingaboutmrbrooks.com

Mr. Brooks. Wait - I thought this was a horror movie? So why did they avoid MrBrooks.com and rip off a comedy in "There's Something About Mary?"

9) thebubble.msn.co.il/eng/index.asp

The Bubble. A subdomain of Microsoft, on a TLD unfamiliar to nearly everyone outside of Israel. Forgot the index.asp? Forget getting to the site.

8) wip.warnerbros.com/inthevalleyofelah

In the Valley of Elah. Why confuse everyone and sneak in a useless subdomain. .wip? wtf?

7) larsandtherealgirl-themovie.com

Lars and the Real Girl. Its unfair to pick on this one along for such a common mistake so a whole host of movies are tied for seventh place, by virtue of their silly addition of a hyphen and "themovie". This is just a tiny sampling:

6) youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com

Finishing the Game. Will this domain name even sense make after we've seen movie? Certainly doesn't before. I think some hyphens might actually improve those domaining monstrosity.

5) billyvssteve.com

The King of Kong: a Fist Full of Quarters. Vaguely homo-erotic undertones to this name make people even more confused about movie that already has two contradictory names.

4) watchthemdielive.com

The Condemned. A classic of the "makes no sense until you've watched it" variety that also ranks up here so highly because the key to the plot is a"where the hell did that underscore come from?" website called www.the_condemned.com.

3) disney.go.com/disneypictures/nightmare/

Nightmare Before Christmas. Nightmare before the domain name. Only three folder names to remember, with Disney included twice and the movie's name cut short.

davinci2) sodarktheconofman.com

Da Vinci Code. Is this domain for a soft drink? No? Its just an odd six-word phrase that makes no sense unless you've already read the book and already know if you want to see the movie or not? Oh, OK, then....

1) wearemarshall-themovie.warnerbros.com

We Are Marshall. A subdomain, a hyphen and its nearly 40 characters long. We have a winner!

 

Comments  

 
#1 David Towers 2007-10-30 10:17
Enjoyed this post Steve! It is incredible that films are using such poor domains! lol! It just seems strange that there isn't more conformity in the addresses, especially the Warnerbros ones: wearemarshall-themovie.warnerbros.com and wip.warnerbros.com/inthevalleyofel ah. Seems a bit odd really.
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#2 Justin Whittaker 2007-10-31 04:42
Why don't they have something like movie.warnerbros.com/wearemarshall and have the others the same way? Would make a lot of sense.
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#3 Barrie North 2007-11-01 21:32
Those guys who own 300,000 domains have led to this problem methinks.

I would still like to see some definitive testing on domains names... the whole keyword debate....
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#4 TJ 2008-02-19 03:28
Try: elah.mov.ie

At the risk of blatant self advertising - I spotted this problem a while back and created www.mov.ie.

The issue is that people generally need to be able to search for the official sites with a part or whole of the name.

Using a general search engines does not always yield the movie makers site at the top of the list and you have to wade through the other movie review sites first. The Movie makers also suffer from sharing the general domain space with others - either domain campers or just clashes with existing sites - hence the long confusing domians.

As you have shown some movie makers just give up and use sites internal to their own without bothering to register external redirects. They are just relying on the general search engines to get their public to them

My site uses Domain Based Searching so the hostname part of the mov.ie is used as a search key. It is not intended as an advertising site or review site - its role is just to redirect the public to the proper official web site.

So if you go to www.valley.mov.ie or valley.mov.ie or elah.mov.ie or ofelah.mov.ie you will get straight to the Official web site.

I have added all the movies above so have a play.
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#5 Classified 2008-04-14 06:14
Time to buy up some more cheap domain names
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#6 Ulas ALKAN 2008-06-07 11:27
it's hard to believe that people can choose those names for domains but on the other side, those movie sites does not need any seo :P :-)
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#7 Bill Sweetman 2008-07-19 15:06
Hi Steve,

This is a fantastic post on the topic of movie domain names. And you know what, 9 months since you first blogged about this, Hollywood *still* doesn't get it!

For example, the official Website for WALL-E is:
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e

Arghhh!!!

Anyway, that's one of the reasons I just launched Hollywoozy (www.hollywoozy.com), the first Website devoted to reviewing movie domain names. Steve, I hope you get a chance to check out the site since I am pretty sure you're still as perplexed as I am about some of Hollywood's movie domain name choices. Cheers... Bill
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#8 Nick 2008-10-02 18:27
@Justin Why not simpler still: wearemarshall.warnerbros.com

The Disney ones are just execrable. I don't see how they can be so stupid. Well I can really. It's just a rhetorical device ;-)

I have just persuaded a client out of: dedhamvalecommu nityhealthcentr e.co.uk in favour of dvchc.co.uk.
The first may be descriptive but is way too long.

Nick
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#9 Company Formation 2009-05-06 03:41
You know I have to admit it really ticks me off when I see domain names like these as I myself am an Internet Marketing Professional and understand that these companies tend to spend a lot of budget marketing their products every where, the tele, the radio, the newspapers, Online marketing campaigns but when they come to choosing a domain name it feels as if they have let their 10 year olds choose them, its a perfect suicide case if you ask me, maybe I should simplify and write a 101 Internet Marketing Don'ts for them :D
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#10 Ralph Jones 2009-07-01 02:46
I agree with Company Formation and the rest here. Domain name should be selected carefully by these companies because these domain names would make anyone think that they are out of their mind, forget copy and pasting it, try saying this to a friend verbally and look at the reaction. I am going to make a section on Explore4Less for all these worst movie names and more to come :-)
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