Oct 29 2007
Ten Worst Movie Domain Names Ever Print
Monday, 29 October 2007

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.

Mr 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.

 

In the Valley of Elah8) 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.

The Condemned5) 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.

Nightmare Before Christmas3) 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.

We Are Marshall2) 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 (8)Add Comment
1905
Good Web Practices
October 30, 2007

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/inthevalleyofelah. Seems a bit odd really.

0
Justin Whittaker
October 31, 2007

Why don't they have something like movie.warnerbros.com/wearemarshall and have the others the same way? Would make a lot of sense.

513
Barrie North
November 01, 2007

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....

0
TJ
February 19, 2008

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.

0
Classified
April 14, 2008

Time to buy up some more cheap domain names

2317
türkçe sözlük
June 07, 2008

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 smilies/tongue.gif smilies/smiley.gif

0
Bill Sweetman
July 19, 2008

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

3528
Nick
October 02, 2008

@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 smilies/wink.gif

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

Nick

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