I agree with the town/county addresses, lots do seem to be business directories and very bad ones at that.

Can't be helped though sometimes, I'm sure will wouldn't have chose this if he had a choice of one that nobody else had used but with towns counties your limited unless you go for longer ones. Just seen one called nuneatonswebsite. something.
Rubbish site, just advertisements in my opinion. seems every site I come across is a business directory.
I think they are different enough for people to know that the other is not a townsweb site.

You got sensible, so I gave you a second chance ;)

I't really just to avoid confusion. Say you have a customer who has not yet visited your site. You give them the url or they hear it word of mouth, forget and enter the wrong one by mistake.

They arrive at a site thats similar and don't like it, find it a waste of time etc etc - you have lost the customer before they have even arrived.

microsoft didn't pay off mike rowe for [url]http://www.mikerowesoft.com[/url] for no reason !

Thought I was on ignore :D thanks for answering though.
whys that?
ones a web development company mines a site and forum, or is that irrelevant to your point?
Thing is I don't like Atherstoneforum as a name because people label it as 'just a forum' you don't get that with online or web.
This site and blackpool have lots of similar urls in use and some perhaps not here but up blackpool are also forums.

I'd try and avoid it as far as possible. Not only will it cause upset for the existing but it will also be detremental to your site as it grows.

I notice that other sites have very similar urls and I was thinking, what legal implications is ther on using a url with the name of another site in it. ?
just for example so you know what I mean warwickshire-online. com and warwickshireonline.com
I'd like to use a url for a forum but its already in use by a company, they are xyz ltd on xzy.co.uk and i want the forum name to be xy-z.co.uk on url xy-z.co.uk