My two cents:

"warzone" is a problematic name in terms of search engine rankings. Search engines make a distinction between queries with dominant and common interpretations. There are many things called warzone, so a search engine will list results associated with all types of entities sharing that name (whatever they are) when the users issues the query "warzone". That is because it can't tell right away what the user was looking for. There are many many entities like bands, other games, similar sounding video / flash games, a table top game and so on.

With warlight this is different because this website is the dominant interpretation and will always get first place in the search results. (I've worked in this field for years, I know what I am talking about). It is unlikely that in the future this site will become the dominant interpretation for "warzone" because it a very generic term.

I don't care much for the name change as such, but considering this, changing to "warzone" definitely has this disadvantage.

WARZONE is soooo lame

god, please, don't let it happen

ok, let the name change

but why the new one has to be so stupid

even noobs would cry

WARZONE?

Why change something that is working fine? You are getting clicks and people are playing the game. Changing the name might make it harder to find? I don't know I think Warzone sounds like shit. Its to cliche and sounds really nerdy.

sounds generic to me, and will be easily forgotten.

Fizzer, you behave as you were the smartest guy on the world....

so many people states that this new name is ridicoulus and still you wont change your mind...

thats unreasnable. People for whom the name "warzone" would seem attractive, wont be a reasonable players - in fact you will only atract a bunch of noobs that will play few games and then leave (by being booted of course) because "it is too hard for them". The poblem is that meanwhile the quality of gaming experience for us will deteriorate as even more games will end up broken because of new players that have joined and abandoned them after few turns. If you want to make money you have to built the name that will be unique and intriguing, which will allow it to spread through internet. Warzone surely isnt unique, and I am preety sure that most of this noobs that will get "caught" by this marketing trick will quickly forget that name. And what is more - such stupid name will surelly scary many reasonable players from trying to play this game.

And for all those peple taht state that we sholdin whine because the name change - consider the situation that you are the big fun of rock band that is called for instance "Atom Smasher" How would you react if one day the leader of your beloved band has stated that due to the economic reasons the band is changing the name to "Justin Beibers" or "Dicksuckers". I'd protest

Adding my name to the petition in honor of Queefballs

With warlight this is different because this website is the dominant interpretation and will always get first place in the search results. (I've worked in this field for years, I know what I am talking about). It is unlikely that in the future this site will become the dominant interpretation for "warzone" because it a very generic term.

I would love for you to prove how you've worked in the field of search engines for years and yet understand almost nothing of them. Getting rank 1 on the search engine has little to do with how 'generic' your business' name is. I've never worked in that field but some simple logic comes into play. If your assessment is true, then businesses with generic names would have trouble being search optimized. This is false though, successful businesses with generic names are search optimized. This tells me that popularity, or just simply money comes into play. This site runs Google ads and has a lot of traffic vs any other business running the same sort of name. Therefore once the switch is done, it will automatically beat out all of its competitors because Google makes more money by having the business top searches. It's how Google's business works so well. I've never dealt with this part of the business directly, but it's all logically easy to figure out.

So I pose a question to you:

Why wouldn't 'Warzone' top searches if it has higher traffic than any other business shopping 'Warzone' and stands to make Google more money due to 'Warzone' hosting Google ads?

Getting rank 1 on the search engine has little to do with how 'generic' your business' name is

that is not what he meant, hes saying that there are many other things (games included) with the generic name 'warzone', and that it would be a hell of a lot harder to rank #1 in search engine queries based on that fact alone.

Why don't you actually read my post before trying to make me repeat myself?

Why don't you actually read my post before trying to make me repeat myself?

Oh, I didn't realize you were an idiot. My bad, I'll stop assuming that I'm speaking to intelligent people.

This site runs Google ads and has a lot of traffic vs any other business running the same sort of name. Therefore once the switch is done, it will automatically beat out all of its competitors because Google makes more money by having the business top searches.

I point out that the quantity of businesses operating under the same/similar name seems kind of pointless when we have much more traffic than them and run google ads. Which is why I posed this question:

Why wouldn't 'Warzone' top searches if it has higher traffic than any other business shopping 'Warzone' and stands to make Google more money due to 'Warzone' hosting Google ads?

You see, this is my rebuttal to his argument that search optimization will be harder to do due to other businesses sporting the same name. Why does this matter when this business has higher traffic and runs ads favorable to the top search engine? I ask him this question because I truly want to know if he was making some other intelligent point that he didn't put in his post or that he wasn't aware of the simple business logic. Sometimes people say things like: I'm an expert you should just listen to my argument without thinking things out logically, because they want to feel knowledgeable in some field.

Here I'll make it even simpler for you:

Past the lines you quoted and posted your silly post is the acknowledgement to his argument and my rebuttal to it.

FUCK WARZONE! LONG LIVE WARLIGHT!

Sometimes people say things like: I'm an expert you should just listen to my argument without thinking things out logically, because they want to feel knowledgeable in some field.

Well, you can't deny that there is logic to my point, can you? Bane, got it right btw.

Why wouldn't 'Warzone' top searches if it has higher traffic than any other business shopping 'Warzone' and stands to make Google more money due to 'Warzone' hosting Google ads?

--> Because they put the quality of their results above all. It is the fundamental basis of their success, and not that they put the websites on top whose traffic they make the most money with.

This goes OT, if you want to talk about it more, Lolowut, feel free to send me a PM.

Edited 3/16/2015 14:19:58

Warlight is a lot more popular than any of the top sites google returns for 'warzone'. So I'd say the renamed warlight will also quickly top the rankings after a name change to warzone.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/warlight.net

That sites an interesting read in itself, about the demographics of warlight players.

Two things that stick out though is that 1. Most traffic is generated from googling warlight. The only search terms not specific to warlight is '(play) risk online (free)' ... and that gets only just over 18% of searches. So 82% of people searching google for warlight are already familiar with the name.


Top Keywords from Search Engines

Which search keywords send traffic to this site?
Keyword Percent of Search Traffic
1. warlight 64.18%
2. play risk online free 11.77%
3. risk online 6.38%
4. war light 3.14%
5. warlight strategy 2.28%

However as only 4.4% of warlight traffic comes from a search engine ... I'd say the whole google argument is pretty moot. :)

2. Traffic dropped off in a big way in October ... any reason for that? When were coin games introduced?

(ps I don't care for the new name ... but as others who have been around a while have pointed out ... Fizzer won't change, so I'm not going to bother getting myself bothered. I'm barely around so much these days anyway.

Edited 3/16/2015 14:50:13

Because they put the quality of their results above all. It is the fundamental basis of their success, and not that they put the websites on top whose traffic they make the most money with.

Okay, so why wouldn't this site beat the rest sporting the name 'warzone' on that basis? You just threw away my argument without explaining why your argument actually matters.

Interesting data, indeed. I don't care about the name change myself, but I think it is a stupid name, after all. On the other hand it's not that I haven't played games with stupid names before... and I know how to find the site :D

Lolowut: I never said it can't. Maybe in the future the main interpretation of "warzone" will become this site because of superior traffic, maybe not. But even if it does, it can never be THE one entity associated with the name. "Warlight" is to "Warzone" like "iPhone" to "cell phone" or "President Barack Obama" to "John Smith".

If a name is singular to one entity this entity doesn't have to compete in the search ranks with others sharing the name. It's a pretty simple piece of thought. My counter-argument was against you assumption with the ads, which really is bogus imo. But you are right, this site may succeed as "warzone", which is the same thing as saying it may not.

Edited 3/16/2015 16:19:31

I'm pointing out there's almost 0 chance of us not being the highest on the search lists due to various reasons. Traffic, ads, quality, whatever you say is the criteria for these search engines I haven't seen you say this site is not superior in those fields. I'm pointing out your argument that the name is bad because it's not going to be properly search optimized is shoddy. By constantly repeating this argument you're misinforming people. Most people seem to have the opinion of 'When the site changes names it will no longer be #1 in search engines when typing in just the site name', and your argument just continues that sentiment.

If you want to argue that this name is generic and doesn't sound appealing to the target audience that the site is looking to attract, then that's something I think everyone here agrees on.

I think the site will be fine after the name change, it will probably grab more people's attention. As a business move I don't really see how it could fail. You go from having only a .net to having .com and a bunch of redirects. However, I don't think these are people that will fit in the current community we have. Warlight's community has been un-moderated since its conception, and with this new name it would have to seriously take a look into community management. When their ideas include 'content rating', that concerns me.

Edited 3/16/2015 16:32:23

"Content rating" is an extremely bad idea. Who would enforce these ratings?
Also, from my point of view, changing the name is inconsiderate of the present community.

warlight already sounds cool

Most people seem to have the opinion of 'When the site changes names it will no longer be #1 in search engines when typing in just the site name', and your argument just continues that sentiment.

This may be the case. I should have been more specific there. However, I think I made my point and yes, you're right, one shouldn't worry too much about that. Even if this site rises to only one common interpretation of "warzone" it'll show up in the search results. If not, there are other ways to find it with other query terms etc. So no problem. I just wanted to point at the difference to the present name there.

I am looking forward to the bunch of toddlers to add to my blacklist come the time we play warzone :)