If you hang out on domain forums, you might have heard that one way to judge the value of a domain name is whether it passes the “radio test”. Simply, this means, if you heard the domain on the radio, would it be easy to understand and then visit if the domain isn’t spelt out for you.
There are many things to consider. Homonyms, words that are pronounced the same but have different spellings or meanings, like: there and their, air and heir, whole and hole, and so on, may make a domain fail the radio test. Some words may be more problematic to English speakers in the USA vs the UK, for example, because of differences in regional pronunciation.
Domains with hyphens are also problematic since you have to clearly pronounce the hyphen when saying the domain. Multiple hyphens or hyphens in odd places are particularly troublesome.
New TLDs may cause confusion if the listener doesn’t know that .whatever is the end of the domain. They might just add a .com at the end when they are trying to visit the site.
If a domain doesn’t pass the radio test, it doesn’t mean it’s worthless, but there may be fewer buyers interested in it. And there are of course exceptions to every rule. Flickr.com did quite well with a domain that fails the radio test and air.com is still worth a lot of money.
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