I have multi-personality disorder on this question. The SEO in me says "I would take a strong, exact match .NET over a weak .COM every day of the week and twice on Sunday." For example, if you want to do restaurant scheduling, restaurantscheduling.net is better than servrschedulr.com or whatever the convention is these days.
However, I don't think exact-match domain names are the answer for everybody on this forum. I like them and swear by them, but a lot of y'all have goals which would be better served by something brandable, even if it does sound like twitpickr.ly.
PG mentions that people will always look for you at the dot com. This is true, but the dot com they're looking for you at is google.com, because direct navigation is dead. The ascendancy of search engines, broadening of the Internet away from technical Americans, increasing use of mobile devices, etc etc etc, have killed it convincingly.
As always, check your stats if you don't believe me.
This is something that I started noticing a few months ago myself. Almost all of the non-technical people I know have stopped using their address bar in exchange for using Google's search box when they want to go somewhere.
If I say to go to foobar.com, they'll open their browser, either go to their home page or type in google.com, then type foobar.com into Google's search box, search, and then click on the first link.
When I've asked, they've almost all said that it was "easier" than typing in the address. I'm talking about tens of people... it's very strange, but I've certainly been seeing what you're talking about first-person.
I have the same experience. It seems strange in the age of address bars with searchable history and automatic search that people are still going out of their way to go to a URL they already know.
direct navigation isn't really dead at all. As someone who has been involved in buying domains for 7 years, I can attest it still exists. However, this is only true of your real generics. Anything you hand register today won't be a type in, far from it.
Furthermore, there is always a tradeoff between generic/brandable. A few large companies have gotten away with the generic (Hotels.com for example) but most take the brand route because in the long run there is more value/protection. You need to decide based on your goals and timeframe.
1) You don't need to hit enter, it looks up the domain as you type. Pressing enter to be redirected to GoDaddy is a convenience. There's a bunch of other useful shortcuts too, like Ctrl + S.
2) I have no idea why you think looking up a domain on GoDaddy will cause the price to go up, or someone to buy it out from under you, or whatever else you've dreamt up. Must be leftover paranoia from the Moniker fiasco a couple years ago?
Apologies for my earlier tone. It seems there is some genuine confusion here.
Thanks for posting the link, it confirms my suspicion re: leftover paranoia from the Moniker fiasco. A couple of years ago Moniker was buying domains their customers searched and then trying to ransom them. It was a huge issue at the time, but Moniker was the only big registrar engaging in the practice and has since stopped.
Moniker is owned by Network Solutions. Although the OP on this thread claims he only searched on GoDaddy, its hard to believe GoDaddy would be pinging their chief competitor with domaining tips. The much simpler answer is he used Moniker at some point in the process, or that Heart Internet is a Moniker affiliate.
FWIW, the reason so many people fell for this is that Moniker had a really nice bulk WHOIS tool at this time. But no one buys domains from NetSol because they rip you off, so they would use the tool to find domains and then go reg them @ GoDaddy. That's when they would discover that Moniker had bought the domain and was trying to extort them. Apparently some people did not understand the distinction between GoDaddy and Moniker, and shot the messenger instead.
I'm not here to defend GoDaddy, although in this case they've done nothing wrong, so much as to refute an unfounded accusation made against a site I like (AjaxWhois). Nothing personal.
However, I don't think exact-match domain names are the answer for everybody on this forum. I like them and swear by them, but a lot of y'all have goals which would be better served by something brandable, even if it does sound like twitpickr.ly.
PG mentions that people will always look for you at the dot com. This is true, but the dot com they're looking for you at is google.com, because direct navigation is dead. The ascendancy of search engines, broadening of the Internet away from technical Americans, increasing use of mobile devices, etc etc etc, have killed it convincingly.
As always, check your stats if you don't believe me.