The commonsense approach that is normally taken in naming most things should also be taken when it comes to domain names.

In having a look around the web I’m not so sure that some domain owners look at their piece of internet real-estate from all angles.

What looks like an acceptable business name can take on a new dimension when all the words are strung together in a domain name.  You may intend for others to pronounce your domain one way, but have you looked at some of the other possible pronunciations.

Here’s a couple of examples  …..

Psychotherapist Kate Burns must get some strange looks with her domain kateburnstherapist.com (thankfully this now forwards through to kateburnstherapy.com).  The original domain could be read as “Kate burns the rapist” or “Kate Burns, the rapist”.  I wonder how many other therapists have “therapist” in their domain name without seeing how others might read it.  I wonder what the people at Therapist Finder where thinking when they chose the domain therapistfinder.com

There is a site called Experts Exchange (which I’m a member of) where techies share knowledge and answer each others’ questions. Intially the owners of Experts Exchange picked out what seemed like the obvious domain name of ExpertsExchange.com and operated with that for a while. That was until they found out that some people were reading the the domain name differently, mispronuncing it as ExpertSexChange.com. They have since added a hyphen and changed the site name to Experts-Exchange.com.

But The guys as Experts Exchange weren’t the only ones confusing themselves as providers of sex change therapy.  What about the guys at dollarsexchange.com (in fact they are a currency exchange).

Before you start questioning where my mind is, I also offer up to you a short trip to Spain choosespain.com (I’m not sure if pain is what I look for on a European trip) or the engineering firm Dickson who used to used the domain dicksonweb.com before changing it to dicksondata.com

And Australian businesses are not imune - what about the guys at Web One (now owned by iinet) webone.com.au

Enough for the frivolities for one day.  The message here is to take care and look at your domain name from all angles, spellings and pronunications.