: When should "domain hacks" like del.icio.us be used for most sites? While it's fine for sites aimed at more advanced, I find a lot of non-technical people tend to just add www and .com to

@Pierce454

Your question contains its own answer in the parenthentical comment at the end!. If del.icio.us came to regret cute tricks with their domain name, why would you want to repeat the same mistake?

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@Mendez628

This is pretty subjective and I think the key is the questions, "How do they get to my site?" and "Who is your audience?".

If people are going to see your website in commercials or other non-web based mediums then you probably are targeting a broad enough audience that adding the and .com to your domain would reduce confusion and allow more users to get to your site.

On the other hand if your domain is something that is mostly going to be advertised online (like del.icio.us) then having the and .com is much less important because people will be clicking on links rather than typing the domain in.

Furthermore, your audience matter because if you are lobbying to non-technical people then you have the issue of how do 2 friends verbally communicate the site. For instance if 2 middle age men talk about ebay next to the water cooler it is easy enough for them to communicate the site. But if they are talking about youtube they could have an issue. Case in point, the website utube.com gets thousands of hits daily from people looking for youtube.com.

Finally, the point on the should be moot because you should just have the redirect to the one with out it or vice-verse. The real concern should be about using unusual domain ender (anything but .org, .com, and .net are somewhat confusing in my opinion) and using website names that are phonetically similar or the same as another site, like youtube and utube.

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