What's in a name?

[Copperhead]

Well a lot if someone is making a play on your B&B name when planning theirs. Leaving our neighborhood Sams today a man stopped us and said "Aren't you the B&B owners?" He must have recongnized us from somewhere as we were 'labelless' at the time. He told us a long story about his land (behind the Sams) and said he was planning to open a B&B there. We offered our services if he wanted to get any info etc...We were happy with the idea of another B&B around here...
BUT then he said he had a website already and told us the name of the site - The name of the future B&B is VERY close to ours! The first word of ours is a compound word - he is using the first half, then we use our state at the end, so is he. I would think of it as a compliment but I know he is doing this to grab my business and that just

me off.
Well at least he has not even broken ground yet. Maybe he will have a change in plans before that comes to pass.

 

[gillumhouse]

Hmmm. Perhaps you should have said, I hope we do not steal your guests from you since your inn's name will be so close to what ours is.

 

[Morticia]

Did you check to see if he has registered the domain name yet? And for how long?
That is beyond annoying. I'm not sure what you can do about it. I guess because he hasn't even broken ground yet, I'd make sure your website will beat the pants off anything he comes up with and hope that it takes awhile for his to start showing.
The problem I have here is my place LOOKS like another place. It's just the way the lots are laid out but I get drop ins all the time who think this is the place they want. Until I tell them the price! Then they realize their mistake.

 

[gillumhouse]

Bree is right! If he has not secured that domain name, buy it.

 

[user 26]

or have an 'anonymous' party buy the domains
jeez.

 

[Copperhead]

As he put it, you can see my property at thiswebsite.com Both DH and I have searched for it or just the words, yet have come up dry. I have not checked the registration yet. Good Idea - will do so tomorrow. Guess we would have thought of that later, just was to steamed this afternoon. - If they haven't been purchased, we may swipe them up.
GH - I wish I were as sharp as you. That would have been a good line!

 

[egoodell]

As he put it, you can see my property at thiswebsite.com Both DH and I have searched for it or just the words, yet have come up dry. I have not checked the registration yet. Good Idea - will do so tomorrow. Guess we would have thought of that later, just was to steamed this afternoon. - If they haven't been purchased, we may swipe them up.
GH - I wish I were as sharp as you. That would have been a good line!.

As he put it, you can see my property at thiswebsite.com Both DH and I have searched for it or just the words, yet have come up dry. I have not checked the registration yet. Good Idea - will do so tomorrow. Guess we would have thought of that later, just was to steamed this afternoon. - If they haven't been purchased, we may swipe them up.
GH - I wish I were as sharp as you. That would have been a good line!

Ooh yes, buy up the domaine names and then have your webmaster aim them all to your website!
Riki

 

[Copperhead]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?

 

[Morticia]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?.

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?

Swirt will know better, but I think redirecting is ok as long as both pages are not the same. So, if you had 'myinn.com' and 'myinn.net' you could redirect 'myinn.net' to 'myinn.com' if you owned both sites. Just don't have anything on the .net other than the redirect message.

 

[swirt]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?.

Redirecting is not frowned upon, but it does have to be done correctly to not have unintended consequences. There should be no "redirect message". The redirection should just happen at the server end (as opposed to javascript redirect which gets initiated by the browser).
The redirect should return a proper 301 (moved permanently) response.
If the redirect is done correctly the address in the browser will just change
Here is an example
www.inngenious.com/tools redirects to another page ...notice that the address bar reflects the address of the final page.
The method for doing the redirect depends on the type of server your site is hosted on. Even if you have somebody set up the redirect for you, I find it is often the case that they did it wrong...they just don't know any better, so it is worth it to use a redirect checker (like the one on the tools page above) to make sure that the redirect does actually return a 301 response code.
Here's some other info on multiple domains for a B&B.

 

[Morticia]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?.

Redirecting is not frowned upon, but it does have to be done correctly to not have unintended consequences. There should be no "redirect message". The redirection should just happen at the server end (as opposed to javascript redirect which gets initiated by the browser).
The redirect should return a proper 301 (moved permanently) response.
If the redirect is done correctly the address in the browser will just change
Here is an example
www.inngenious.com/tools redirects to another page ...notice that the address bar reflects the address of the final page.
The method for doing the redirect depends on the type of server your site is hosted on. Even if you have somebody set up the redirect for you, I find it is often the case that they did it wrong...they just don't know any better, so it is worth it to use a redirect checker (like the one on the tools page above) to make sure that the redirect does actually return a 301 response code.
Here's some other info on multiple domains for a B&B.
.

See, I knew you'd know best.

 

[Copperhead]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?.

Redirecting is not frowned upon, but it does have to be done correctly to not have unintended consequences. There should be no "redirect message". The redirection should just happen at the server end (as opposed to javascript redirect which gets initiated by the browser).
The redirect should return a proper 301 (moved permanently) response.
If the redirect is done correctly the address in the browser will just change
Here is an example
www.inngenious.com/tools redirects to another page ...notice that the address bar reflects the address of the final page.
The method for doing the redirect depends on the type of server your site is hosted on. Even if you have somebody set up the redirect for you, I find it is often the case that they did it wrong...they just don't know any better, so it is worth it to use a redirect checker (like the one on the tools page above) to make sure that the redirect does actually return a 301 response code.
Here's some other info on multiple domains for a B&B.
.

Thanks Swirt - I knew there was something about redirects that tricky. Thanks for bringing light on the subject. I just may need to do some of this to head off possible 'name stealer'.
As I said, I would have NO problem with another B&B around here and I would hope to work with the innkeeper. But he is starting out all wrong with me, and he has not even broken ground yet. Just hope he thinks about this and comes to his sences prior to the shingle poping up.

 

[egoodell]

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?.

After several searches using both state spelled out and abreviated, only one has been taken and that is a oriental restaurant in Calif using the abreviation for our state - also used as an abreviation for that city in CA. Now to determine what I do now..
Isn't redirecting frowned on now by Google?

I don't think so. I have purchased a common misspelling for my name (Arcady) which is Arcadie and my web host has it redirected to Arcady. It has not affected my standing from what I can see.
Riki

 

[Morticia]

Given you haven't found anything with that name, he may be winding you up, just to see what happens...