Flex – Owning the Singular and Plural Versions of a Domain Name

We are doing some business with a local company that has Northern Lights in its branding. This is not a unique name, as it is shared with thousands of other companies. When we began working with them, I did a Whois search for NorthernLights.com to see who owned the domain name. Everyday dealings often spur me to do Whois searches as I continue to improve my portfolio.

Yesterday afternoon, Dommunity shared a list of companies that recently raised funds. Included on the list is a company called Northern Light that uses NorthernLight.com for its website:

This brand caught my attention because it also owns NorthernLights.com. If you visit NorthernLights.com, you are forwarded to the NorthernLight.com website. Personally, I think the NorthernLights.com domain name has a higher commercial value than the singular.

I don’t often see companies own both the singular and plural version of their domain name, especially when the brand is descriptive / generic in nature. It will cut down on any confusion between Northern Light and Northern Lights, and it is also quite a flex.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

8 COMMENTS

  1. My personal favorite is when only the singular or plural is commonly used. This negates much of the need to own both.

    For example, I own CandyCorn.com. No one really says CandyCorns.

    Another is ShortBread.com. It’s not really used as a plural.

    • Yes, Andrew, I agree with you on these as “shortbreads.com” signifies nothing, nor does candycorns.com
      but yes for:
      property.com properties.com
      sportsbet.com sportsbets.com
      game.com games.com
      coin.com coins.com
      job.com jobs.com

      etc etc(s) LOL (LOL)s

  2. So happened that someone dropped BullShitwebsite.com
    And happy I got it
    Now I am the King

    Remember to listen to the BullS song…#1 chart on the billboard chart

  3. If companies have the funds, they should get the singular, if the primary brand is plural and vice versa,
    The companies that do this GET IT.
    Many companies do not —
    I own the exact match 2 word .com of a billion dollar company that uses a hyphen .,.,and they will probably have a valuation north of 10 billion this year — and how can I argue with them …they’re growing exponentially even with the hyphenated website
    BTW — wasn’t NORTHERN LIGHTS one of the first search engines ..I recall these amazing commercials they ran on TV … cosmic, vibrant — while Google ran zero ads until about 10 years after they launched

  4. Flex – more specifically it can signify girth to a customer that questions an investment into a certain brand or product. Does the company have enough backing to be around to support their product or service?

    Along those same lines, it can also preclude brand confusion by preventing a non-related company from commercializing a near match website.

    This brings up the possibility of bundling near match websites for sale in auctions.
    Different owners could still have the option to sell their domain name individually (option to back out of the bundle) and also bundle them with other near matches for sale in a high reserve auction.

    That bundling could provide the ‘flex’ to generate pre-sales publicity and possibly act as an accelerator in transacting a potential sale.

  5. Best of all for the seller it always facilitates the deal if you pair both on a request for the singular. Often the plural may have different meanings. For example Ectogenic.com and Ectogenics.com different meaning that stresses the “ethics” of ectogenesis. If an acronym of course the s at the end gives a totally different meaning. ie EVPAL and EVPALS

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