Do we really need domains? Why?

[SirOdds]

Here is a trick question to stir up some debate.

Is a domain name really needed? The generic answer is "yes", or course.
But, the vast majority of us are doing paid traffic, where either a pop, redirect, banner or native ad is clicked.

Unless your are using SEO and organic backup methods, where you need to syndicate a bunch of pages, so you need a good URL for basic authority and SEO matters.

But when someone clicks on a banner, what difference does it make if the URL read the IP address vs generic URL that no one will ever care about?

ON pop, for instance, DNS will slow you down. Might as well just run IP. Or am I missing something ?

 

[write01]

if you want to create a brand, you need a domain name. which is better - mashable.blogspot.com or mashable.com?

 

[utdream]

DNS requests really don't add much to response times IMHO. For example, I just tested "viviotech.net" on a DNS Speed Test here:

DNS Speed Test to Check DNS Hosting Speed | UltraTools

And the response time was 64ms. "ms" is short for millisecond, which is one-THOUSANDTH of a second. That's really not a lot of time... essentially unnoticeable to humans.

You're right, you could just do it off an IP and that would remove the amount of time it would take to do a DNS request, but when you compare the amount of time a DNS request takes with your entire request, DNS is barely a factor. Better to focus your efforts on server caching and IO optimization - things that make much more of a difference in overall request times.

Hope this helps!

Edit: I flubbed the definition of "ms" in the earlier post. Sorry!