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Ask HN: how to test which domain name works better?
I plan to move my astrology site (sorry) to another domain. I have registered three candidates already: mondkalender.cc, mondkalender.us and mondkalender.me (it's a German site, currently on mondhandy.de).
My plan was to just redirect the new domains to the old one and try AdWords to see which domains receive more clicks. Turns out that AdWords doesn't allow redirects, though. I suppose I could create a dummy site for each of them with the text "there will be a moon calendar here soon", but it seems likely that AdWords wouldn't like that either?
Any other ideas for comparing? Chances are it doesn't make much of a difference, but I'd like to be sure before making the move.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoTurns out that AdWords doesn't allow redirects, though. I suppose I could create a dummy site for each of them with the text "there will be a moon calendar here soon", but it seems likely that AdWords wouldn't like that either? Why not just put a full landing page? Adwords won't have any problem with that. In fact, if you want, you can put a big ol' link on the landing page to (temporarily) take people to the old site; this can be changed to link to the winner (on the two losing sites) once you choose.
- Tichy 16y agoLanding page would mean different content for each of the domains? I guess I could, it is just a lot of work (6 sites, since I want to test the www, too). And I am not feeling very creative - how can I make them sound different? It is just a moon calendar. Also, if the sites have different content, I worry it could influence the test. I think AdWords ranks the quality of the sites, so it might put some ads higher than others. (Might not be too bad, if click through rate is all that counts?). Edit: I just tried a single page for all the new domain, and it was rejected, too. Maybe something else than AdWords that is less restrictive could work? Maybe Yahoo or Bing? Edit2: seems currently rejection is because of using multiple domains in the same ad group.
- jaddison 16y agoA startup I know has engaged audiences early on through Mechanical Turk. Basically, they brainstormed and came up with around 10-20 domains. They then registered them all to prevent their loss to others. They spent some time speaking with friends and niche players about which of them made sense (narrowed the playing field further). After that, they simply used mturk to query an arbitrary (yet large) sampling of people out in the world which one was more memorable, less confusing, and more meaningful to their startup values and goals. All this was done before a single line of code was written.