Over the past year, we’ve given a lot of thought to how customers search for domain names. The rising popularity of domains, combined with the proliferation of the domain name ‘aftermarket’, has made the task of finding the right name much more difficult than, say, four or five years ago. And to be honest, it doesn’t look like finding the right name is going to get any less challenging any time soon.
In response, we introduced a couple of features late last year designed to improve the quality of search results returned to customers. We unveiled our Name Suggestion feature, which uses technology from domain search gurus DomainsBot, to display available domain names related to a query based on keyword popularity, domain extension, word relevance and more. We also built some improved search logic directly into the heart of OpenSRS, so that searching for queries like ‘hockey&league’ or ‘tucows!!!!’ wouldn’t return errors – instead, they would return relevant search results.
If you’re not taking advantage of these features, you should. They’re free to all Tucows customers, are easy to implement, and have proven to increase sales (not to mention they’ll make your customers happier). They provide your customers with more relevant results, increasing the chances you’ll sell more domain names and related services.
An improved suggestion system, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. We want all of our partners, whether using a domain name suggestion tool or not, to make sure their customers are given the best opportunity possible to find the name they want. To that end, we’re working on some new features to make search results even more relevant. Keep your eye on this space in the coming weeks for details.
Tags: Domains Service
[...] my last blog entry, I wrote that a domain name suggestion tool was the “tip of the iceberg” in re-thinking the [...]