Monthly Archives: May 2008

Sat 31st May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN
1 & 1: 30% boost in .Org Registrations - In a report by 11 Internet Inc., which says its the world’s largest web hosting company,  said today that it has seen impressive growth in the number of .ORG domain names registered by its customers worldwide. The number of 11 registered .ORG domains increased by over 30 percent over the past 12 months Between December of 2006, and December of 2007, the world’s largest web host registered over 70,000 .ORG domains, seeing a unique and impressive increase of 31 percent. Oliver Mauss, CEO 11 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
If domains are so valuable, because are many good ones still dropping? - I started following domain drops in 1997. Back then there was no domain name industry, no trade shows, no blogs, no industry auctions. Very few people knew what a domain was, how to use them, and how valuable they were. Now 11 years later, with countless articles, press releases, blogs and reports of domain sales, why are so many good domains still dropping? Here are just some of the names that have dropped and were auctioned off in the past 30 days: GreenMonday.com $76,000 Helpline.com $70K Surveyors.com ... read more ...
Fri 30th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN
Sedo.com: .Co.UK prices rising, .Com Prices Failing - Sedo.com announced today that the average price of a ‘.co.uk’ domain name has risen by 22 percent in the last three years, while prices on the .com has fallen by 18 percent. According to the report prices for a .co.uk domain now average around £2,614 while .com’s domains average £1,372. “The world is becoming increasingly connected, and the nature of the internet is reducing face-to-face transactions,” said Nora Nanayakkara, director of business development at Sedo. “Companies run the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New York Shuts Down Affiliate Businesses - Affiliate law sends e-commerce companies running for the hills. New York residents already feel the pain of high taxes. But now the state has basically shut down many of its resident’s businesses that rely on affiliate revenue, including domain name owners. In an effort to collect more tax revenue, the state decided that companies (namely Amazon.com) that have affiliates in the state technically “have a place of business” in the state. Thus, they are required ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Names: What’s Hot, What’s Not Now - What’s hot in the domain industry, and what’s not? It’s been a few months since I wrote the What’s hot, What’s not article for domain names. A lot has changed since then, so I’ve updated the list. What’s Hot Geo Domains – geo domains have been a cash cow for a long time, but everyone and their mom is talking about them now. The attention will increase before July’s GeoDomain Expo. Conference Fatigue – with so many conferences on the schedule, ... read more ...
Thu 29th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker.com Silent TRAFFIC Auction Grosses $737K - The Silent Auction of the TRAFFIC show just ended and the total sales was just over $737,000, with DomainRegistration.com selling for $376K.  I would assume at that price it was picked up by a registrar rather than a domainer. In all 195 domains sold Here are the sales: Title Bid domainregistration.com $376,480.00 undies.com $70,590.00 lonelywives.com $35,300.00 grammas.com $28,481.00 kitchenette.com $17,650.00 Q1.com $17,500.00 553.com $14,242.00 vpr.com $11,399.00 refrigerated.com $10,360.00 ringtone.mobi ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Public Direct Navigation Company You Never Heard of - A public company, Elysium Internet, Inc. (OTCBB: USBF) in a press release today today announced that it has closed the acquisition of Pediatricians.com, Psychiatrists.com and Podiatrists.com in a deal valued at $1 Million. Elysium Internet Chairman and CEO Scott Gallagher commented, “With today’s domain acquisitions we have added three of the best currently available dot com domains in the directory space to our growing portfolio. We successfully launched Therapists.net a short time ago. The ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Murdoch: Google is “the biggest association in a World” & Icahn’s Proxy Bid for Yahoo will Fail - In a report by Fortune magazine, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch predicted Wednesday that Carl Icahn’s proxy fight for control of Yahoo will fail, but it will “make him a few hundred million dollars.” Murdoch also said that at one point, Yahoo and his company tried to work out their own deal. He said the two companies talked about adding MySpace, News Corp.’s social network, to Yahoo’s portal. But it never came to fruition, he said. Even without the Yahoo deal, Murdoch said News Corp.’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Paid Clicks Increase: Yahoo and Microsoft’s Fall in April - According to a report by ComScore, Inc. released today, Google’s growth in “paid clicks,” rose sharply in April. Meanwhile paid clicks for Microsoft  and Yahoo declined. Google’s paid clicks increased 20% in April compared with the same period a year earlier. Yahoo saw a 4.4% decline in paid clicks in April compared with the period a year earlier and Microsoft (MSFT) saw a 9% decline. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Estibot.com Look during Back during a Live TRAFFIC Auction - Before the live traffic auction I looked at the automated appraisal tool, Estibot.com to see what they considered to be the best buys of the live traffic auction. Despite receiving some negative responses and Naysayers, it turned out to be a pretty good indication of what domains would sell. To refresh your memory this is what we found: These were the top ten domains in the live TRAFFIC auction with a reserve price of $5,000 or less, with the highest estibot appraisal estimate: graphicssoftware.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Great Domains and Moniker Silent Auctions End Today - Premium domain names will sell today in two auctions. Domainers will spend the day entering fighting each other for the top bid: both Sedo’s Great Domains auction and Moniker’s silent auction for TRAFFIC Orlando end today. The big name in Sedo’s auction is America.com, which is currently at $1,050,000 and hasn’t met its reserve. Diamantes.com is at EUR 250,000 and also hasn’t met its reserve. So far the highest value domain name to meet its reserve is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Acronym Domain Name Owners Stave Off Attacks - Owners of three and four character domain names win UDRP decisions. Owning short domain names comes with risks. They are prized domains, and many people want to get their hands on them. The owner of Ace.com recently won its case, but the assaults continue. Here are several recent cases that domain owners managed to win. ANU.com In this case, a company you’ve probably never heard of — Anu Enterprises — went after domain owner DomainRegistry.com. Anu Enterprises ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UniversityofTexas.com Handed Over to University - After filing UDRP, owner of domain hands it over. Last month I wrote about a UDRP arbitration request by The University of Texas, which was seeking to get the domain name UniversityofTexas.com. After The University of Texas’ Board of Regents filed the UDRP with National Arbitration Forum, owner Global Access decided to hand it over. According to the decision, “Respondent has no desire to retain the domain name or to interfere with Complainant’s asserted mark. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2008 GeoDomain Expo Coming to Chicago - Conference for “hot” sector of domain names returns in July. It seems like everywhere you look, domainers are talking about “Geo” domains. Those in the geo space will tell you it’s been hot since the beginning, but they probably enjoy finally getting the respect they deserve. And that will be on display at this year’s GeoDomain Expo in Chicago July 11-12 at W Chicago – City Center. (There is a cocktail party the evening of July 10.) I’ve decided ... read more ...
Wed 28th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameJet.com/SnapNames.com Auction Update - Here are some of the notable sales from NameJet.com and SnapNames.com this week toa.com $35,300 clash.com $30,500 iart.com $16,694 mkc.com $11,000 ewomen.com $8,901 8-0.com $7,066 backyardwrestling.com $6,550 woodenflooring.com $6,100 sailplanes.com $5,100 eteens.com $4,800 bookmaker.net $4,000 devastate.com $3,789 casinooffers.com $3,157 giftcardshop.com $2,351 gamblingsystem.com $2,000 ibma.com $1,610 depiction.com $1,600 cosmeticbreastsurgery.com $1,550 leatherwork.com $1,511 irb.net $1,500 assholes.org ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker.com Silent TRAFFIC Auction is Tommorow, Bids already placed - Moniker.com is holding the silent auction of the TRAFFIC show Tomorrow Thursday May 29 and the bids start closing at noon EST. Included in the silent auction are the domains that failed to sell in the live auction, along with over 2,500 other domains. Already getting bids are: 553.com $11,770.00 vpr.com $9,420.00 loseweight.info $5,890.00 gamesupplies.com $1,480.00 antiquerepairs.com $1,180.00 televisionrepair.com $985.00 mensbodywash.com $890.00 saskatoon.net $853.00 unregistered.com $590.00 personalcreditreport.org ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft to Harness Generic Domain CashBack.com for Search - Software giant buys premium domain name for search efforts. The world was abuzz a couple weeks ago when Microsoft announced its new cashback search engine. Less reported was that Microsoft quietly purchased the domain name CashBack.com. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) purchased the domain name from Kansas City, Missouri company Creative Marketing Associates. Creative Marketing Associates owns a number of domain names, including the valuable GiftCard.com, as well as corresponding ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
OVT Matcher Makes Finding Traffic Domains A Snap - I just checked The big NameJet pre-release list and 192 names have OVT an score. Here is the list and a bonus for all visitors to this page: The first Number is January, The second Feb, the third March bigbettysbingo.com, 0, 28, 0 isec.com, 0, 25, 0 mofairsfest.org, 0, 0, 33 thegreens.com, 105, 86, 83 usavoice.org, 1740, 0, 56 airdate.com, 98, 98, 91 eluxuryforless.com, 35, 28, 27 evom.net, 52, 39, 29 gospelnet.com, 315, 217, 280 greekwarez.com, 101, 82, ... read more ...
Tue 27th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tucows.com Ending In House Drop Auction - Tucows.com is the lastest registrar that will be ending its in house drop auctions of it own expired domains. The official announcement should be made within the next two weeks. Tucows.com had been retaining an unknown portion of it own expired domains, then placing the rest through its own auction system. It is unknown at this point whether Tucows.com will use SnapNames.com or NameJet.com to process these names after their auction ends. The last major registrar to stop their exclusive expired domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verizon Sued Over Error Redirects - Communications company will have to defend its DNS wildcarding practices. It looked like a slam dunk case for Verizon (NYSE: VZ) when it sued Navigation Catalyst Systems, Inc. for trademark infringement. Navigation Catalyst owns a number of domains similar to Verizon’s marks. But Navigation Catalyst found this to be a perfect opportunity to point out that Verizon is a hypocrite. It filed counterclaims citing Verizon’s error redirect system that monetizes typos ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sk-Rt.com Does a “Kirtsy” - Site gives into domain pressure and changes name. I first wrote about Sk*rt last November, when I said the company should win the grand prize for worst domain name ever (sk-rt.com). I predicted that Skirt Magazine, which ran Skirt.com, would go after Sk*rt.com, and it did. But I also said this would be a dumb move. If Skirt Magazine didn’t run straight to its lawyer, it would have realized it was seeing lots of free traffic from people who were confused by Sk*rt’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Puts eNom and Moniker “On Notice” - eNom and Moniker were named in “Worst Spam Offenders” report. In the words of Stephen Colbert, ICANN has put eNom and Moniker “On Notice”. The two registrars were named in a recent report from KnujOn titled “The 10 Worst Registrars in terms of spam advertised junk product sites”. That title is a bit misleading, or perhaps I’m the only one who doesn’t quite understand how KnujOn calculated which registrars were worst. The report (pdf) considered a ... read more ...
Mon 26th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Pool.com introduces “Premium” .com Auctions - According to a e-mail we received today, Pool.com is starting premium .com auctions, starting with the domain, frustrated.com, with the extremely inflated (in our opinion) reserve price of $60K. Hopefully future auctions will contain better domains at more reasonable reserve prices as we ar not impressed with this domain at this price. Here is a copy of the release: Pool.com is pleased to present their very first Premium .COM Auction, beginningWednesday, May 28, 2008. This is the first of many ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Final Thoughts on TRAFFIC East - A look back at the latest TRAFFIC domain name show. I’ve read a few blog posts this weekend from people giving their opinion on the TRAFFIC show that just concluded in Orlando. Of course, half of these bloggers weren’t even there, so I don’t know how they can pass judgment on the show. I’m going to give you my thoughts, up to the time I left Friday afternoon during the auction. (After that point my experience went downhill, since a bellman at the Grand Floridian ... read more ...
Sun 25th May 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
When we Travel to a US Your Laptop and Cell Phone are Subject to Search and Seizure - Most of us domainers travel quite a bit to shows, for business or pleasure and when we go, our Laptop and Cell phone goes with. In light of the upcoming Domainers Meeting in Paris and the ICANN meeting next month, I know a lot of US based domainers are travelling out of the country. A recent article in Laptop Magazine reminded me of an important legal issue that I have never seen discussed anywhere in the Domainer community. When you come into the United States your laptop and cell phone, along with ... read more ...