In my continued effort of watching what companies use for domain names in advertisements, how they use them as sites, keywords used, matching tag lines with domain names and so much more… to help educate on what I think is right or wrong and why… only a handful "go to the left" of their domain names and use subdomains and Honda® is one of them. CR-Z.Honda.com was the latest used.

During the 2010 Superbowl Honda rolled with crosstour.honda.com as the domain name used in its TV ad. I covered the 2010 Superbowl Ad’s domain wise here.

Why am I not a fan of using subdomains in TV ads?

They are rarely used! This means that when a company does use one, consumers are not familiar with them. This often results into confusion in getting to the proper location with direct navigation. Since we are talking about domain names, this often leads to a typo domain with direct navigation or forces the user to hit a search engine.

Direct Navigation is very important. It is one of the reasons companies display domain names in ads. It easily should allow a viewer to visit the companies site directly without having to fight competition at a search engine with other natural rankings and paid advertising with Google AdWords based on keywords used in a search.

So why are advertised subdomain often mistyped? It’s all about the Dot. word.domain.com for an example. word = subdomain, then dot, domain name, dot again and TLD (extension)

Since many people are not use to adding a word then a dot, this is where people start getting confused IMO.

www. is a subdomain name and billions of times that is typed but change www. to a WORD and people start getting confused a bit. Why? I’m not sure but it’s a fact and likely goes back to the point of not many people seeing worded subdomains used.

The most common error when a subdomain name is used in a TV ad, the viewer forgets the first dot after the subdomain and combines "the word" with the actual domain name. The problem? Adding the The Word and The Domain Name together makes a Different Domain Name.

CR-Z.Honda.com is one domain name. The CR-Z. becomes the Subdomain name of Honda.com

CR-ZHonda.com is a different domain name. The hyphen is also part of the domain name.

CRZHonda.com is a different domain name, because the hyphen is not included.

So in this TV ad run during the 2010 VMA Awards show on MTV, Honda displayed the location for viewers to learn more to visit: cr-z.honda.com

Can you see the . after the Z above? I didn’t think so. The . almost appears to become an extension to the end of the z

• z
• z.

The second Z above has a . after it.

CR-Z.Honda.com at a quick glance and your eye missed the subdomain dot and your eyes train on the word without the dot: CR-ZHonda.com

CR-ZHonda.com is a different domain name than CR-Z.Honda.com . In fact, Honda doesn’t (but should) own CR-ZHonda.com. The reason? Because that domain name is very likely getting some traffic due to the paid advertisement! CRZHonda.com wouldn’t be a bad domain name to own either for those who forget the hyphen.

They simply use the cr-z.honda.com as a redirect to http://automobiles.honda.com/cr-z/ so I would rather see them use a more descriptive domain to the car itself, than the subdomain. HondaCRZ.com or something similar.

In my book and IMO, Honda fails by using this subdomain! It presents viewers from mistyping the domain name and since Honda doesn’t cover its tracks to redirect the typo domains to their company site… it is money wasted.  Adding a hyphen in the subdomain extends the potential for a typo as well. Orkin has also went to the left and used a subdomain in a TV ad, but it included a two digit number 01, which I talked about: 01.orkin.com

Pretty sweet car though!