but does this really matter in a world where people basically Google every business anyways to get to the homepage?

I feel like everyone around me will Google whenever they hear about a cool app, website, store, product etc.

or we're charting online or talking on Zoom and they'll just send me the link directly

I'm not sure what the purpose of a URL is anymore... unless you're this guy [1]

[1]: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/

Except that this is not true. The people you know use google, but there are many people that don't, and just type the full url or use bookmarks, and are not particularely knowledgeable about the web. If they belong to your target group, then you'll miss some visits to your website.

the argument of "everyone will Google" might as well suggest there's no reason for .com even. You could just assume the address is completely irrelevant. As long as Google knows that "Flameswipe" should go to flame-swi.pe it's fine.

As others emphasized, besides people not always using Google, it's a tragic short-term idea to defer your traffic to a search engine and all their power. You really should want people to go directly to you and not to any middle-man.

>I feel like everyone around me

It’s called confirmation bias.

Once you start exploring outside your circle, it might not hold true.

The two words around my hyphen are pretty simple, so word-hyphen-word is not that hard to remember.