Web browsing seems like one of
those things that should be logical.
So where would you expect URLs like
www.skindivermagazine.com and
www.skindiver.net to take you? Odds
are your first guess will be wrong: Rodale’s Scuba Diving magazine has
registered these URLs, and they’ll take you directly to Rodale’s site at
http://www.scubadiving.com. In the web game it’s not uncommon to
purchase additional URLs that will take readers to your site, but buying
and using URLs that people would expect to take them to the competition
is another story.
The owner of http://www.skindiver.com isn’t Skin Diver Magazine but
Great Destinations, a dive travel agent. If you’re looking for Skin Diver’s
site, the address is http://www.skin-diver.com. Skin Diver is a late comer
to the online world, and part of the price for coming late is finding that
some of the best diving URLs have already been snapped up.
Not that there aren’t still opportunities out there. It looks like the
addresses http://www.scubadivingmagazine.com and .net are still
available. Anyone want to grab those?
— W. D.