| Are domain names overrated? If I understand the reasoning correctly, someone who really wanted to access whatever is at "dajaz1.com" would not be willing to type 108.162.192.76. It is a non-starter. For example, if an announcement was posted on the web that some great music was at 108.162.192.76, giving users a link that is an IP address would not be sufficient to allow people to access the site? While, on the contrary, if it was posted on the web that some great music was at "dajaz1.com" then that would be different. How? Why? Facts, not speculation. I know there are theories about how people evaluate domain names in search results. But how about IP addresses? And what if the context is not a SERP? "dajaz1" as a string really tells me nothing. I could make some assumptions based on the string if it was somehow descriptive, but then anyone could be controlling that domain name. It might be a copyright infringer, it might be DHS, it could be anyone. Even if the string was "music.com". Again, facts not just assumptions. And if I'm diligent and look up the whois record and it's privacy protected, then what? The truth is, I could probably get a better idea of who is running the site just by the IP address and using rDNS and IP registry lookups. The point I want to make is that "domain names", for sites that have decent content, might be overrated. The key word is "content". If the content is good enough for people to _keep coming back_ to the site (i.e. the site is not just looking to fool people once with the lure of false content based on a descriptive domain name), then users will do what they have to do to access the content. Whether it's clicking on a link that is an IP address, bookmarking it, or even writing it down. Writing down a 4-12 digit number!? Who would do such a crazy labour-intensive thing? A user who wants decent content, that's who. If this use of IP's becomes infeasible because the site wants to play constant musical chairs with IP addresses without giving its users advance notice (this is relatively rare in my experiments but not unheard of), then it's probably a good thing. Because users will be alerted that the site is jumping from IP to IP. There may be legitmate reasons for it but it's also what copyright infringers and other criminals typically do. |