HungryGirl.com is a pretty cool domain name. It’s catchy, easy to spell and very easy to remember. The site is about low calorie recipes and appears to focus on women. The site started by sending a newsletter to about 150 people and has grown to over 700,000.

This has lead into a successful website and has lead into a book called "Hungry Girl, 200 under 200" Which is 200 recipes under 200 calories.

 So what’s the problem that I see? When you visit HungryGirl.com it brings you to a page that you have to click a link to enter the site? This is a big no, no to me!

Hungry Girl Home Page

Now I have no idea why somebody would do this. To me, it’s almost gives a spammy feel. Even more so, as the "Welcome To HungryGirl" link is linked to a different domain name and uses the hyphened version, Hungry-Girl.com .

Added: It appears that HungryGirl.com is not owned by Hungry-Girl.com. This is likely why the "click here" is in place on the HungryGirl.com page but I’m not 100% sure on the reason the owner of HungryGirl.com is doing what they are.

There is a small "Sponsor" on the HungryGirl.com home page, but it’s below the fold (have to scroll to see it) so I’m sure not many see it.

Added: Either the owner of the HungryGirl.com domain is doing this forward so they can track traffic and CTR as maybe they are working a deal to sell the domain (but it appears to have been forwarding like this for years. At least since 2004)

If you happen to own both domains in a case like this, do not make your site confusing when somebody lands on it. People can easily get scared off, if you are forcing them to "click a link" to see/enter your site! If you want to have a sponsor pop-up, that is fine, but have it pop-up after about 30 seconds they are on the Actual Site!

Some proof of this potentially being a problem is an Alexa.com chart showing the two domain names. Technically, both domains should rank about the same.

Now the Hyphened version get’s "more" traffic, but to me, this has to do with SERP’s as the hyphened version of the site ranks # 1 & # 2 on Google.com and I’m sure due to the content on the site, not the domain.

The bottom line, I see no reason for the "Click Here" on the HungryGirl.com domain to send people to the Hungry-Girl.com domain. Even if the site first was created on the hyphened version, a script redirect or simply domain forwarding would work better and look less spammy.

Added: Again, it appears according to Whois that HungryGirl.com and Hungry-Girl.com are not owned by the same people. This could be a case of a Domain Name Lease or some kind of partnership between two domain name owners.