Have you been looking for a suitable domain for your company? Then you’re likely to have been given the following tip: Go for a reputable .com or country code domain pertinent to where you’re located and associate this with the company name, the name of your flagship product or the popular name of one of your services. But you should not always follow this advice blindly. Especially if, in addition to IT management and IT sales, you also offer the disposal of IT hardware under the keyword “IT Scrap”.
However, the manager responsible for domain registrations at Regency Technologies did just that nevertheless. And the result is that the company now owns a very quirky domain for actual IT services it provides: itscrap.com. English-speaking users would probably think at first glance that this website contains a lot of garbage rather than IT expertise.
A funny domain with serious content – an isolated case? Not at all! Unintentionally or not, throughout the history of the Internet a number of domain registrations have turned out to be a mistake at second glance. In this article we have gathered some particularly bizarre examples.
#1 WhorePresents.com
What do you think users are would typically be looking for under the domain name ”whorepresents.com”? Not gifts for sex service providers in any case. It is, rather, a sort of database in which you can find the official representatives of famous stars and starlets. Instead of “Whore presents” they intended the site to be“who represents”: So this means in specific terms: Here you can see which agent and which lawyer represent Rihanna, for example. However, this service is only available through a monthly subscription service.
#2 PenisLand.com
Hard to believe that the founder of the company Pen Island did not have at least a slight grin on his face when choosing the name for his company. After all, he could have also called his business “Pen World”, “Pen Land” or “Pen Universe”. Instead, he opted for a palm tree as the logo and an island of pens as the implied conception of his store. But as he completely oblivious to the fact that he would also someday own the clearly ambiguous domain name “penisland.com”?
#3 Budget.Co.ck
Sex services or primary male sexual characteristics in the web address? Well, a car rental company in the Cook Islands has proved that this doesn’t even require two domains. On the chain of islands in the central South Pacific, already “blessed” with a questionable domain extension, visitors can rent a reasonably priced car at budget.co.ck. Anyone looking for a cheap, male ‘bed buddy’ instead is likely to be disappointed by what is offered on this page, however.
#4 ThePlasticSexChange.com
Plastic surgery and sex change – the two go very well together, right? So it's obvious that some people will suspect that “theplasticsexchange.com” domain stands for the website of a plastic surgeon or corresponding clinic. What you actually do find there could hardly be more contradictory: It is a bone-dry online exchange via which plastic futures contracts can besettled.
#5 TheRapistFinder.com
In the USA and Poland, among other places, convicted sex offenders are publicly chastised. An online database provides unrestricted access to data such as names, locations, descriptions and the nature of offenses committed. People might think spontaneously that the therapistfinder.com domain hosts such a database for convicted rapists. But you’d be wrong: The aim of the website is to help those seeking assistance to find a therapist to meettheir needs.
#6 SwissBit.ch
So many domain extensions do have their pitfalls – and not only the Cook Islands. For example, if you own a Swiss company with “bit” or an “s” at the end of the name, you should perhaps not opt for the country-specific top-level domain of your home country. A whole range of Swiss companies have apparently never received this advice or have simply ignored it. This has resulted in rather questionable domains such as swissbit.ch, littlebit.ch and the medical directory ars.ch (“arsch” being an impolite word for “backside” or an insult in German).
#7 LesboCages.com & LadRape.co.uk
French is, in essence, a romantic and pleasant-sounding language. So it’s no wonder that quite a few company founders or business owners opt for a French company name for their image or marketing reasons. This isn’t always a good idea - particularly in the English-speaking world – as the two domains ‘lesbocages.com’ and ‘ladrape.co.uk’ illustrate. “Bocages” is actually the term for a type of French landscape with lots of hedges. And “La Drape” is actually the name of a British bedspread manufacturer but in English these domains illustrate completely different concepts.
Almost endless list
These examples could be continued infinitely. Or what do you first think of when you hear domain names such as SpeedoFart.com, WeBone.com or DicksOnWeb.com? But we’ll tell you what they really are: reputable or at least serious websites. However, these strange or quirky domain names are not always the result of an oversight or marketing strategy. Like the British energy company, PowerGen secured the domain name powergenitalia.com for its Italian business was, for example, nothing more than a stubbornly persistent hoax based on a fake website (with a fake domain) - which we too only realized when looking at it a second time.
Nevertheless, the following advice needs to be given: Take care when choosing a domain name to ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises later. We have compiled a few tips for you and tell you what typical mistakes you should avoid when choosing your company website address .