‘R’ Us Flub $5.1M Toys.com Purchase? — Will Toys

Domain is merely forwarding to ToysRUs.com.

Toys ‘R’ Us’ $5.1M purchase of Toys.com has been approved by the court. The domain has not been transferred as stated by whois, but the domain name is now forwarding to ToysRUs.com.

Big mistake.

Toys.com is extremely valuable for both its direct navigation traffic (people typing the domain name into their browser) as well as search rankings. For example, Toys.com is right now #4 in Google for the search term “toys”.

ToysRUs.com is ranked #1 for the same term. But you better believe that owning spots #1 and #4 is more valuable than just #1.

With Toys ‘R’ Us’ purchase of eToys, right now ranked #3, the firm could lock up the top four spots save for WalMart.com at #3. Toys ‘R’ Us plans to keep eToys a separate site, which is smart.

But the firm could lose Toys.com’s ranking for not only the toys term but many thousands of other terms by merely forwarding the domain to the firm’s web site. That could help arch rival Amazon.com creep up the rankings.

Quick. Call a search engine optimization expert.