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A
couple of time each year
I
go back to the small Midwestern town
where I grew up, Delaware, Ohio,
to see my mother who still lives in my
childhood home. I'll be going up again
next weekend and in the course of
deciding what Diana and I might
want to do on this trip, I did a casual
search on Google for
"Delaware, Ohio" to see what
might be going on while we were in the
area (Delaware is 25 miles north of the
state capital - Columbus (home of
the Ohio State Buckeyes). A
little known fact is that in 1812 the
state capital was relocated with
Columbus and Delaware competing for the
honor. Columbus wound up winning by one
vote). In addition to finding some |
Downtown
Delaware, Ohio |
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entertainment
ideas (the County Fair, which I haven't
been to in decades, will be going on so
there is one nostalgic option) I also
found a domain story. |
From
a domain nut/internet entrepreneur's
perspective, what I found interesting was which ten websites Google put on page 1
(out of more than 1.5 million pages
for the term "Delaware, Ohio" in
quotes) in
a search request for this particular geographic
location. To get relevant results you have to
include both the city and state name - if you enter "Delaware" alone most of the
results will be about the State of Delaware
rather than the Ohio town that is predominantly
known for three things - the Little Brown Jug
(part of harness racing's Triple Crown - this
year's race will be held the day before we get
to town), Ohio Wesleyan University and Rutherford
B. Hayes, the 19th President of the U.S.
who was born in Delaware (and for whom my high
school was named).
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The
top result on page 1 of Google is
DelawareOhio.net
- the city's official website. After a Wikipedia
entry about the town, The 3rd entry is Delaware.org
(DelawareOhio.org also
redirects to this site, an independent
city guide that has been online
since 1995). With the .net and the
.org versions
of DelawareOhio leading the results, |
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I
of course wondered what was going on
with DelawareOhio.com and why it
was nowhere to be found? It turns out
that domain, the one you would generally
expect to be dominant, remains undeveloped,
even though it was registered back in
1997. It was also interesting to
see that the domain is owned by a small
business in a similarly sized Ohio town,
Marion, that is 20 miles north of
Delaware (Marion is also the birthplace
of a U.S. President, Warren G.
Harding). The same company owns MarionOhio.com,
registered the same year, so they likely
had an idea to corner some Central Ohio
community domain names for future use -
too bad the future still has not arrived
for those names. |
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By
now, I was finding this little exercise
to be more and more interesting.
Studying page 1 of Google results for a
term that interests you is a good way to
while away a rainy day and at the same
time learn a good bit about about how
certain domains are used (or not used)
and the value Google places on the ones
that have been developed.
One thing that
stands out is how many different
extensions show up in a world that
is dominated by .com. The #4
result was a .US domain
(America's country code) - the official
Delaware County website at http://www.co.delaware.oh.us/.
That kind of convoluted addressing is
common with governmental sites (prior to
2002 .US was reserved for government use
but since then it has been open to all
U.S. citizens). DelawareCounty.us
(which I happen to own) would have been
a more elegant and memorable solution,
as would DelawareOhio.us, however
the latter domain redirects to a page
about the city's best-known cemetery
(presumably aimed at someone other than
the current occupants)! |
Image
from Bigstock |
I
didn't find any other developed websites for the
term DelawareOhio (one of the undeveloped ones, DelawareOhio.info,
is another of mine). The balance of Google's 1st
page included the local Convention and Visitors
Bureau site - VisitDelOhio.com
at #5 (they do not appear to own the
unabbreviated VisitDelawareOhio.com and
it is not developed), a page
about Delaware from the ubiquitous City-Data.com
at #6 and the Delaware County Fair's
website at #7 (located at
DelawareCountyFair.com).
Rounding
out the 10 entries on page 1 were the Ohio
Wesleyan website at OWU.edu,
the local newspaper's website - DelGazette.com
(the Delaware Gazette has been
published continually since it was founded in
1818 and is still in business despite challenges on
ever side from the Internet. They also own the
unabbreviated domain, DelawareGazette.com,
but choose to forward it to the shorter version) and DelawareOhioRealEstate.com,
a blog operated by a local real estate agent
(that high ranking will be appreciated by Rob
Grant who owns the world's biggest
portfolio of .com city-realestate
domains).
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The
late, great Eckel's Lake in Delaware,
Ohio
billed itself as "The World's
Unique Water Gym" |
While
I felt like I knew a lot about my hometown, I left a long time ago so that
quick search on Google gave me a lot of
insight into how the world sees the
city through search engine results
today. It also reminded me how much things
have changed. If Google had existed
when I lived there (Yes kids, there
really was a time when there was no
Google!) the top results might have
included Sharon Phillian, a
Delaware native from my era who competed
in the Miss America contest, Eckel's
Lake and the A&W root
beer stand |
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where
everyone liked to cruise on Saturday
nights. Sharon is still with us but
Eckel's Lake and the A&W no longer
exist. |
Though
Google generates mixed feelings in the
domain world (due to their dominance of pay per
click advertising and a widespread suspicion
that they do not share revenues equitably with
their domain partners) you have to give them
props for serving up a wealth of information on
any topic you can think of and (whether you feel
the criteria they use to rank sites is fair or
not) the price is certainly right (and if you
still don't like them, there is always Bing).
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