The word is out... for the past two weeks the experts have been  taking advantage of a change in Domain Name regulations that allows up to 67 characters in domain names.

Since 1993, Network Solutions has registered more than 3.4 million domain names -- all limited to 26 characters. Now that their exclusive government contract is ending, competitors have tossed this artificial limit and are allowing longer names.

I did some digging into the original name space RFC to assure myself that the longer names were valid. To quote the RFC, "The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are also some restrictions on the length. Labels must be 63 characters or less.

With this in mind, my advice is to keep your domain name to 63 characters for maximum compatibility. 

WHY ARE LONGER DOMAIN NAMES IMPORTANT?

"As we've frequently reported in our SE Book & Newsletter, placing keywords right in your domain name can give your site a major boost on search engines. We've also reported that some engines (like Infoseek & Excite) are no longer accepting sub-directory pages. This is one of the reasons the smart marketing pros have been buying keyword-phrase domain names. They use them as doorway pages to boost traffic to their sites." says Stephen Mahaney, author of The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.

Michael Campbell points out, in Nothing But 'Net, "The reason we  want keywords in the domain name is that search engines often get 'tuned' to find, and give better positioning to, domains with keywords in them."

He goes on to mention examples like phone-phones.com and mobile-cellular.com, then notes that "After some experimentation the hyphenated domains did slightly better in search results than the non hyphenated ones. The hyphen seems to act as a delimiter."

I just talked to Marlon Sanders, author of The Amazing Formula that Sells Products Like Crazy, who told me "I just registered seven domain names today. This blows my mind! My competitors are going to freak out when they see some of the domain names I snagged... Plus I grabbed a number of primo words for the search engines. You should  do the same thing immediately."

Declan Dunn, author of Winning the Affiliate Game, sent out a memo to his affiliates advising "To get on top of the search engines, one of the critical keys is a good domain name LOADED with keywords."  Declan gives several examples such as:
CellPhone-CellularAccessories-CellularBatteries.com      and
Internet-Hosting-Services-Email-Marketing-Search-Engines.com

Declan goes on to say "this news is spreading among WebMasters, SearchEngine Meisters, Internet marketers, and big corporations.   Don't wait."

Corey Rudl, President of The Internet Marketing Center, also told his readers of the news, saying "When I say this is time sensitive, I AM VERY SERIOUS. If you do not jump on the bandwagon now, and if you even wait a few weeks... you are going to lose out. All of the ".com" domain names that are in demand over 26 characters are going to be registered.
(And trust me, there are a lot!)"

John Audette's I-Search Discussion List, included a new post by the search engine expert, Webmaster T, who explained "Having a domain name with keywords in it is very important as it seems almost all engines are parsing URLs. Not only is the domain name important but also the directory and file names are definitely important."

I have been registering hyphenated domains for our clients over the past year. It works. The past two weeks we have been quietly grabbing several VERY HOT, very long, hyphenated domain names.

If you don't want to get left behind, get your keyword stuffed long domain name right away!

Here's an excerpt from Stephen Mahaney's Unfair Advantage Newsletter:
(reprinted with permission)

Flash Alert - too important to wait till January...

There's a buying frenzy going on! And, if we waited for the January  issue of Search Engine News to tell you about it you'd have reason to think that we waited too long. The change means that you (or anyone) can now register long (KEYWORD RICH) domain names like...

Lowest-Travel-Fares-On-The-Internet.COM
LowestTravelFaresOnTheInternet.COM

Pokemon-Toys-For-Kids.COM
PokemonToysForKids.COM

Discount-Digital-Cameras.COM
DiscountDigitalCameras.COM

Lowest-Auto-Car-Prices.COM
LowestAutoCarPrices.COM

Wholesale-Computer-Hardware.COM
WholesaleComputerHardware.COM

Search-Engine-Placement-Services.COM
SearchEnginePlacementServices.COM

Football-Baseball-Basketball-Hockey.COM
FootballBaseballBasketballHockey.COM

Web-Marketing-Consultants.COM
WebMarketingConsultants.COM

Christmas-Shopping-With-Santa.COM
ChristmasShoppingWithSanta.COM

These are exactly the types of domain names that search engines like and, as of yesterday, they were all available -- both WITH and WITHOUT the dashes! (FYI, search engines like the dashes slightly better while people prefer the domains without. When in doubt, take both).

Anyway, this change is HUGE. It represents both a marketing opportunity and a search engine placement opportunity not unlike the days when the web was new. It means that strategic KEYWORD PHRASES that were previously too long can now be registered. AND, they can be placed directly in the path of the search engines.

There you have it... the biggest news to hit the web in a long time.