There’s millions says Geoffrey - all under one roof. I realise now that the Toys R Us mascot was referring to dollars when he made this bold claim.
Following a fierce auction, Toys R Us have just paid $5.1 million for the domain name www.toys.com. Was it justified?
Search Engines. The top 6 toys-related searches are:
- Toys
- Learning Toys
- Baby Toys
- Kids Toys
- Play Toys
- Action Toys
In terms of Google.com, Toys R Us already dominate for toys. For baby toys and kids toys they fair well, but for the others they don’t. They also don’t always do well for product specific long-tail searches like - Barbie Blooming Thumbelina Doll. Will the purchase of Toys.com help? It depends on what they are going to do with it, but if they just point it at their main domain - it won’t.
To rank well for less generic searches, they could easily improve the main site’s URLs, currently they look like this:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3018529 rather than http://www.toysrus.com/kidsbikes/greenmachine3
The UK site has better URLs on its product pages: http://www.toysrus.co.uk/Toys-R-Us/Learning/Books/In-The-Night-Garden-Flap-Book(0034228).
The main site has over 250′000 inbound links. I didn’t check every one but the majority of these are linking using the brand name in their anchor text, rather than linking to specific sections using less generic anchor text (for example “learning toys”). It wouldn’t cost $5.1 million to contact some of the websites that link to them and ask them to change this.
Also, it’s not as if visitors who find toys.com will be totally unaware of Toys R Us unless they have been living in a cave.
Brand. I read an interesting study of the Toys R Us brand and these days everything about it says brand leader. Does a brand leader need to own generic domains names relating to their products or services? I don’t think so. Tesco doesn’t own food.co.uk or .com. It manages just fine.
Toys“R”Us values all children and families. Toys“R”Us is the only retailer to offer a toy selection guide for parents and friends of children with disabilities. Now in its 14th edition, the Toys“R”Us Toy Guide for Differently- Abled Kids features specially selected toys that promote the development of children with physical and cognitive disabilities.
Now that is the work of a brand leader.
The Competition. Did they consider what would happen if it fell into the hands of a competitor? Perhaps the fear factor played a part here. For the above reasons, I don’t think it would have made any difference to market share if it did.
On the plus side, the US toy market is worth around $25 billion which puts $5.1 million into perspective. Also, a domain name is an asset. So it isn’t actually a huge risk for them. I just think it could have been spent a little more wisely.