I’m up in Eagle River, Wisconsin on vacation with my sons this week.  We visited last year around this time, and I blogged about that trip as well. 

My birthday was on Saturday, and in addition to my two boys Charlie and Oliver, my sister, my parents and my grandmother were all here to celebrate with me.  We spent all day out on the lakes, fishing, swimming and boating.  For my birthday dinner, I chose bratwurst – which you can see pictured here – and my mom made her homemade coleslaw. 

As the brats sizzled away on the grill, I got curious about who owns bratwurst.com.  Turns out it’s Johnsonville Sausage, which got its start here in Wisconsin.  Bratwurst.com is obviously a great name for the company to own, so way to go, Johnsonville.  Now, if only they would build a separate site – even a very basic one – at bratwurst.com, they should get it to rank separately in organic search results.  Their competitor, The Sheboygan Bratwurst Company, did and they fairly easily grabbed a spot on page 1 with bratwurst.net.  Johnsonville.com ranks on the first page of a search for “bratwurst,” but if the company could also get bratwurst.com to rank, they could potentially push another site off page 1 and collect even more traffic.

The clever marketer behind the Charlie Murphy ads should leverage its digital assets better and dominate online just like it does in the grocery store.

I was driving with my family to Nationals Park to see the Nats play the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, when I noticed a Windows Catering truck drive by. As it passed, (because I can’t help myself) I noticed the company’s domain name displayed on the side of truck. Again, because I can’t help myself, I asked my wife to slow down so I could take a picture of the truck for this post. I knew that a local business using a name like CATERING.COM would make a dynamite blog post. Alas, the truck pulled off at Navy Yard before I could call up the camera function on my BlackBerry. (I wish I had gotten the photo; if we can get a picture from the catering company, I will update this post later.)

It’s likely that the domain name windows.com was not available when the catering company first looked to “get online,” for obvious reasons (think Microsoft). So Windows Catering had to come up with an alternative domain name.

I wish I knew the story of how they came to acquire this domain name because it’s extremely valuable. I routinely run valuations for my clients and research how much domains are trading for in the domain aftermarket. I think a domain like catering.com could easily fetch between $1 million and $3 million today.

Why? Because catering.com likely garners a fair amount of type-in traffic, but it also has a unique ability to rank well in organic search results. Google and Bing (especially) assign page rank to older domains with keyword-to-domain root parity and sites linking in, so this domain has special attributes that earn it “search love.” This means that with even a modest SEO investment in the website itself, search engines are likely to assign it a high placement in organic search results. This gives the domain/website maximum visibility and increases the opportunity for it to earn organic click-throughs, without the incremental costs associated with paid search. Internet users broadly search the term “catering” over 16,000,000 times per month, and each time, they see catering.com among the top results.

This high rank not only drives traffic to Windows Catering from local D.C. searches, but it also introduces the brand to the wider U.S. search audience by delivering their impression to searchers throughout the country. For another example of how this works, go to google.co.uk and search for “catering.” You will see a UK company that owns a different domain with “search love,” caterer.com – this site’s owner has earned the top position in organic search in the UK because the domain has a Google page rank score of “5.” (In comparison, Guinness.com and Cadbury.com each have a Google page rank of “6,” despite being much better known brands.)

Smartly, Windows Catering also owns WindowsCatering.com, which it redirects to catering.com, for those customers who are familiar with the brand and search for it directly.

I think that this is a great example of the positive effects that a well-chosen domain name can have on a company. Sometimes unbranded domains can enhance a brand strategy, and not just for smaller players like Windows Catering. Just look at what Toys.com and Mortgage.com have done for Toys “R” Us owner Geoffrey, LLC and Citigroup, respectively.

UPDATE: Windows Catering got in touch after reading this post and sent over a picture of the catering truck that a fan had posted on Twitter:

The other night, I was at dinner with my wife and she pointed out that, in addition to the usual sweeteners (sugar, Equal, Splenda, etc), the restaurant also had a stevia sweetener.  I had not heard of stevia before, and was unfamiliar with this particular brand, Stevia Extract in the Raw (SEITR), so I picked up the packet to take a look. 

Stevia is a plant with sweet leaves from which a low-calorie sweetener can be derived.  It’s regarded as a more natural alternative to artificial sugar substitutes like Equal and Sweet-n-Low.  SEITR’s parent company, Cumberland Packing Corp, also owns Sugar in the Raw, a popular brand of unrefined sugar.  Presumably, the brand name was chosen based on the “Sugar in the Raw” convention.

On the back of the packet, I quickly noticed the domain name: SteviaExtractInTheRaw.com.  Even though this is simply the brand name appended with .COM, it’s a terrible domain name, mostly because it is so long.  Also, it’s very easy to overlook the word “Extract,” because it is in such a smaller font, tucked under “Stevia,” meaning consumers will be likely to forget to include it when typing the domain name and they might assume, like I did, that “Stevia” is the brand name.

Unfortunately, Stevia.com has already been taken by another company, Healthworld Online, Inc., an online resource for health and wellness information. The site heavily promotes another brand of stevia sweetener: SweetLeaf. 

Here’s a screenshot:

Luckily though, Cumberland Packing Corp also owns SteviaInTheRaw.com and points it to the main SEITR site.  This is a better domain name than SteviaExtractInTheRaw.com because it is shorter and because, based on the logo, it is more intuitive for consumers.  Additionally, it reinforces the ties to the sister brand, Sugar in the Raw.  I think brands should be conscious of these issues and focus on making it easier for consumers to access their content online.  One way SEITR could do this would be to promote SteviaInTheRaw.com as its primary domain name.  Another way the company could gain considerable competitive advantages is to acquire stevia.com and own the category online.

You may have read about flicker.com’s recent transfer to Yahoo!. At first glance a generic verb, the domain name is also a highly-trafficked and very intuitive misspelling of Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site that Yahoo! owns.  Like Flickr, many Web 2.0 brands are utilizing misspellings of common words to make their brands more distinctive (Del.icio.us and Digg come to mind). Some also turn to unconventional spellings because the domain name version of the “correct” spelling isn’t available.  According to Tech Crunch, when the founders of Flickr first came up with the idea for the site, they liked the name “Flicker.”  Unfortunately, flicker.com was already registered, so they adjusted the brand’s spelling to “Flickr” and set up a website on flickr.com.

Despite the prevalence of alternative spellings in Web 2.0 brand and domain names, many consumers are not catching on to these “typos” and are typing the customary spellings into their browser bars when searching for the brands in question. The owner of flicker.com attempted to capitalize on this trend by hosting ads for photo-related products and releasing harmful tweets from a similarly “misspelled” Twitter handle, both of which were problematic for the Flickr brand.  As Flickr’s popularity rose, flicker.com saw a significant increase in traffic, making the name a valuable online asset. 

Right now, tumbler.com is undergoing a similar phenomenon, with traffic increasing an estimated 270% in the last 12 months as Tumblr.com, the social blogging site, also saw an increase in visitors of a similar amount in the past year.  In the case of tumbler.com, however, this “typo” actually points to a branded third-party site.  Tervis Tumbler Company, which produces popular, customizable drinking glasses, known as tumblers, and accessories, is currently using tumbler.com and is redirecting the domain to their site, tervis.com.

Unlike flicker.com, tumbler.com is not attempting to piggyback on the popularity of the similarly named social media site.  Tervis Tumbler aptly purchased this generic product domain many years before Tumblr’s genesis in the hopes that it would boost Tervis’s traffic and that consumers looking online for tumblers in general would come across the Tervis brand.  But I’d be willing to bet that Tervis isn’t too upset that they are getting additional visitors, even if they are finding the site by accident.  What would be interesting to see is if this increased traffic actually results in additional sales for Tervis.

So should Tumblr be worried about this domain?  I don’t think so.  Tervis isn’t infringing upon the Tumblr brand here, and visitors finding a store full of Tervis Tumblers are not going to mistake this for another blogging site and abandon their search for Tumblr.  Also, despite Tervis’ ownership of tumbler.com, Tumblr still ranks first on a Google search for the word “tumbler,” meaning that Internet users who use search engines rather than direct navigation will immediately be presented with Tumblr’s site.  Long story short, I think Tumblr can rest assured that consumers won’t be diverted for long by the 60-year old tumbler company, but Tervis is enjoying the serendipitous stream of potential new customers being introduced to their company.