Romnick

Why do exact-match domains still matter? Five months ago, I launched several localized Minesweeper sites. Same game, same features, same underlying code. The main differences were the language and domain name. For Spanish, I used Buscaminas․com, the exact Spanish name of the game. For English, I used MinesweeperAI․com, a domain I hand-registered. I launched the sites, submitted them to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and let them grow. Today, the sites collectively passed 1 million games played. But look at the difference: 🇪🇸 Buscaminas․com: 465,586 games, or 46.4% of the total. 🇺🇸🇬🇧 MinesweeperAI․com: 17,699 games, or 1.8%. That’s roughly 26 times as many games on the Spanish site. What makes this especially interesting is the search demand. The global monthly keyword estimates according dotDB put “minesweeper” at approximately 6.12 million searches, versus 1 million for “buscaminas.” The English keyword has about six times the search volume. Yet the Spanish site generated far more play. This isn’t a controlled experiment that isolates the domain’s effect. Competition differs across languages, domain histories may differ, and games played aren’t the same as unique visitors. But the contrast is striking. To me, it illustrates why a good exact-match .com can be such a valuable starting point: • Instant clarity. People immediately understand what the site offers. • A memorable address. The word they already know is also the name they need to remember. • Easier sharing and repeat visits. No extra prefix or suffix to explain or forget. • A natural destination for type-in traffic. • Strong category positioning. The name can feel like an obvious home for the product before you’ve spent years building a brand. These advantages can reinforce one another: discovery, recognition, sharing, and return visits. An exact-match .com doesn’t guarantee rankings or replace a great product. But it can reduce the effort required for people to understand, remember, and find that product. Would Minesweeper․com outperform XYZBuscaminas․com if I reversed the setup? I’d expect the English site to be in a much stronger position, though I’d need to test it to know. My takeaway: the biggest market isn’t always your biggest opportunity. Sometimes, a smaller market with the right domain gives you a much stronger foothold. When choosing a domain, you’re choosing the address every future customer will encounter, remember, and share. That decision deserves as much thought as the product itself.