Monthly Archives: September 2009

Tue 22nd September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Investors Buy AreaRugs.com Domain Name For $405,000 - Company to launch new e-commerce store for area rugs. A group of investors in Iowa have purchased the domain name AreaRugs.com for $405,000 and plan to create an e-commerce store to sell rugs online. It was an all cash transaction. Lee Weber, head of marketing for AreaRugs.com, said he had to be patient to get the domain name. “It was a name I had on my radar for a long time,” he explained to Domain Name Wire. “I had reached out to [the owner] a long time ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
As New Domain Registrations Fall, Domain Registrars Get Desperate - Domain registrars seek new profit opportunities. Yesterday’s news that new domain name registrations are down sharply and the total base of domains registered is stagnant is bad news for domain name registrars. For years, registrars have been able to count on new registrations to fuel growth. Although the margin on new registrations is small, registrars earn money by cross selling other products to registrants. So the typical margin on a domain may be only $2, ... read more ...
Mon 21st September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
PPC Ads With Logo’s & Icons Coming To Bing - According to Mediapost, Microsoft is going to launch a pilot program this month to test a new paid search ad format, allowing advertisers to not only use text and links in the ad, but  use logos and favicons embedded in listings. “”The formats are intended to make ads pop in search results and to encourage advertisers and media buyers to allocate more paid search campaign dollars to Bing.”” Microsoft wants to make the search experience more “graphically rich.” Consumers who search a ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Indian Marriage Site, BharatMatrimony.com, Gets Injunction Against Google From Selling Trademarked Keywords - Consim.com, an Indian company which owns many Indian dating and matrimony sites, sued Google several weeks ago in India for selling keywords under some of its trademarked sites. Last week, an Indian Court granted an interim (temporary) injunction against Google, restraining Google from selling keywords under the Indian Company’s trademarks including Bharatmatrimony.com. The company’s suit also seeks damages from Google for selling keywords to competitors under its trademarked sites. This case ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
eNom and Tucows to ICANN: Hurry Up and Introduce New TLDs - Individuals and entities push ICANN to move forward with new top level domain names. Many organizations that seek to benefit from the introduction of new top level domain names — including eNom, Network Solutions, Tucows, and Minds + Machines — have sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom asking him to implement the plan for new TLDs “without further delay”. The letter suggests that “special interests” are trying to slow down or stop the introduction ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jets.com Sells for $375,000, One of Three Six Figure Sales during Sedo - Jets.com leads pack at Sedo. By now you’ve probably heard that Sedo brokered the sale of Jets.com last week for $375,000. But that’s not the only great sale from Sedo this page week; it also sold two other six figure domains. But first let’s discuss Jets.com. [UPDATE: We now know that the domain was bought by Concord Private Jets.] The domain is still in the transfer process so we don’t know who bought it. After the nameservers were switched to Sedo parking, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google: We Don’t Use Keywords Meta Tag - Don’t bother with keywords meta tag, and focus description tag on what makes users click. Spending time stuffing the keyword meta tags for your web page? Don’t bother. That’s the official word from Google, which says it doesn’t consider what you put in your keywords meta tag at all. You may as well leave it empty. The company hasn’t used the keywords meta tag for many years because it was often abused. For a while people have suggested that the keywords ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Y Combinator Companies Pick Go Daddy for Domains, Google for Email - Go Daddy and Google popular among Y Combinator companies. Where do Y Combinator’s startups register their domains and host email? Here’s a handy chart generated in August using domain-profiler. Go Daddy dominates the domain registration business for Y Combinator startups, according to the chart. Go Daddy also has a large share of the SSL market. On the email side, most of the startups are fans of Google. When it comes to web hosting, a good number rely on ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New Domain Name Registrations Down 15% - New domain registrations fall. New registrations of domain names were down 15% in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008, and down 14% from the first quarter of 2009, reports VeriSign (pdf). The overall base of registered domain names ticked up 1% to 184 million compared to last quarter and 14% compared to the same time last year, thanks mostly to increased country code domain name registrations. VeriSign blames seasonality and the economy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Number One SEO Secret - The number one way to get search engine traffic to your web site. Want to know a search engine optimization technique guaranteed to get “loads of traffic” to your web site? How to get “laser-targeted” visitors? I’m “going to spill the beans”. It’s not the SEO secret Google doesn’t want you to know about. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts has even publicly discussed this fantastic, white-hat technique to get better search rankings. You just missed ... read more ...
Sun 20th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Hey Rick: Google Doing What Ever The Hell They Want? Nothing New Here - Rick Schwartz has been writing about how Google turned off serving ads on his minisite, a few days ago, without notice or a right to appeal. Rick asks in his 2 posts, what does that type of treatment say, for how Google feels about domainers. Well Rick,  Google has been operating like this for years. Many years. Remember when Google Implemented “Smart Pricing” many years ago? At that time we had a direct contract with Google. One day we noticed our revenue got slashed dramatically, overnight. We ... read more ...
Fri 18th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Mint.com’s Former Owner Makes Millions In Sale Of Mint To Intuit - Last week we told you about the sale of Mint.com, the financial site to Intuit for $170 million. Today according to TechCrunch.com, the former owner of the domain, Hite Capital got a “substantial” amount of stock in the Mint.com site’s company when he sold the domain to “”That stock was worth a “couple of million dollars” after the sale.”” according to TechCrunch source. It is not clear if the stock was an addition to any type of cash payment made at the time, but still another ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Nielsen: Bing Is Fastest Growing Search Engine, With A Market Share Over 10% - According to Nielsen research, Bing.com is the fastest growing search engine, with  1.1 billion searhces for the month of August, 22.1% more than July. Overall Bing share of the search engine market in August was 10.7%. Google share increased by 2.6% to  64.6%. Yahoo saw its search results drop 4.2% in August to 16%. So the good news for Microsoft is that Bing is gaining market share, the bad news is that Yahoo is losing it faster than Bing is gaining it and by next year the two search engines ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tenant Dispute Over HomeAwayfromHome.com - Well written article. I also think, that HomeAwayFromHome.com is the better name. This does show us, that long domains names can make sense, and be better than a shorter one. If I am allowed, to say this: I guess, if had created a such a name, with the same words, I probably would of looked like this: home-away-from-home.com, which I personally would favor, as homeawayfromhome.com is more difficult to read and understand. A lot of companies, who file a domain arbitration case, are not ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Smart Marketing: 300TaxiRides.com - Using a domain name to drive a message home. Wednesday evening I was relaxing at a Mexican restaurant in Austin, sipping a Mexican Martini and reading The Onion. (That’s as close to perfect enjoyment as you can get.) An ad in The Onion caught my eye. The ad was for DWI lawyer Charlie Roadman. Roadman is also a musician and defends a lot of other musicians on marijuana charges. His ad (pictured below) reads “What a DWI Defense Attorney Wishes You Knew”. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Are we Kidding .Me? Project.me in Domain Dispute - Another crazy domain name dispute. A company has filed for arbitration on the domain name Project.me at World Intellectual Property Organization. Confused? So was I. Claiming rights to the term “Project” seems like a stretch. I did a little research and here’s what I’ve come up with. All searches for the complainant, project.me GmbH, lead to a software company at Projectme.eu. I emailed the current domain registrant to see what’s going on. As he ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mint.com Mints Millions for Domain Seller - Mint.com domain name sale worth about $2 million. Mint.com Domain Name sale about $2.M Hite Capital sold the Mint.com domain name to the recently sold finance web site for equity a few years ago. It has paid off, according to an article by Michael Arrington on Tech Crunch. …Mint gave a “substantial” amount of Series A stock to Hite Capital in exchange for the Mint.com domain name. That stock was worth a “couple of million dollars,” says one source, ... read more ...
Thu 17th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Keyword Suit Skips Google & Goes Forward Against The Advertiser, ABC.com - There are several cases in the where the issue of whether the purchase of keywords under a trademarked term violates the Lanham Act and whether it constitutes unfair competition.  Many of these cases have been filed against Google for selling the ad space under trademarked keywords, but in this suit, the trademark holder, skipped  suing Google and sued the advertiser, ABC.com In the case of, Tokyo Broadcasting System v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., CV-08-06550-MAN (C.D. Cal.), Tokyo ... read more ...
 
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hypocrisy.com: How America’s Big Companies are a Biggest Cybersquatters - A look at how big companies have joined forces to cybersquat and how they justify it. In May 2007, I noticed something curious on a new Gateway desktop computer I purchased. When I mistyped a web address, my browser showed a page full of ads. That’s nothing new. But who profited from the page was. It wasn’t some small fry cybersquatter. It was Gateway. I later found out that Dell did the same thing. Both computer manufacturers had teamed up with search ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Update: Lamar Smith and Howard Coble Letter to ICANN - Details of letter sent to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. Yesterday DNW wrote about a letter that House Judiciary Committee members Lamar Smith and Howard Coble sent to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. This letter covers the roll out of new gTLDs and the expiration of ICANN’s joint project agreement with the U.S. Government. Domain Name Wire has obtained a copy of the letter (pdf) and its detailed questions of ICANN. The letter is dated September 15, and requests a response ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Shuts Down Red Register - ICANN terminates Red Register, Inc.’s accreditation. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has terminated Red Register, Inc.’s accreditation. According to a letter (pdf) sent by ICANN Director of Contractual Compliance Stacy Burnette, the registrar was violating many terms of its accreditation agreement. Among those: not paying its accreditation fees to ICANN, failure to maintain accurate contact information for the registrar, and failure to provide ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bido Releases Transaction Manager - Bido releases system to manage domain purchases and sales. Bido’s new transaction manager When you sell one domain name a day, managing the payment and transfer process can be done manually. When you start selling dozens of domains a day, it gets more complicated. Bido has released a new buyer and seller transaction system to make its dozens of daily transactions easier. It includes both buyer and seller overviews and the ability to drill down to manage individual ... read more ...
Wed 16th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Maybe The Third Time Will Be The Charm: .CM Registrations “Go Live” On Sep 18th UTC - Just in from the .CM registry for the third time they have a start date for the Go Live registrations. The Go Live registration for .CM domain opens on September 18, 2009 at 08:00am UTC. The .CM registry also announced that all domains won at Namejet.com will be turned on as soon as paid for. Here is the official notice: “””Netcom.cm Sarl has decided to move the registration platform for .CM top-level domains to its own server instead of a hosted version with Cocca. This will allow Netcom more ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
New Study: Mobile Users 1/2 As Likely To Click On A Banner Ad - According to MediaPost, citing a study from Chitika, a Search Targeted Ad company,  which analyzed more than 92 million impressions, found mobile Internet users had a click-through rate of 0.48%, while non-mobile users had a 0.84% click-through on banner ads. Of the 92 million impressions Chitika analyzed, about 1.5% , or 1.3 million impressions,  came from mobile browsers. Despite the fact that most of the mobile hits came from iPhone users (66%), the group also had the lowest click-through rate ... read more ...