Monthly Archives: April 2011

Mon 18th April 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SearchMetrics: Google Panda’s: Top 100 Winners & Losers: eHow.com Loses More Than 50% Visibility - Searchmetrics.com, just released its study how Google’s Panda Update effected the results of sites in the UK where the change first went into effect and just published a list of the top 100 winners and losers. “We’ve performed an analysis with millions of different keywords in the short and longtail of the impact of this update.” “We analyzed the top 100 domains with the greatest gains and losses in our Organic Performance Index (OPI) from the previous week. The OPI is calculated ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TelChina and China Mobile to Build Mobile Payments System on .Tel - Mobile payments system coming to .tel. .Tel registry’s regional partner TelChina has inked a strategic partnership with China Mobile to build a mobile payment solution with .tel. It’s not entirely clear what this entails, but the first phase will enable China Mobile customers to purchase and renew their .tel names via a Mobile-Pay portal using their mobile devices. This phase will be complete in May. Soon customers will be able to purchase .tel domains using ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP Panel Questions Oversee.net’s Automated Domain Registration Processes - WIPO panel questions Oversee.net defense of “automated systems” for registering domain names. A UDRP panel has found against Oversee.net in a UDRP dispute over CarrollHouse.com and has posed significant questions about the company’s domain name registration practices. Complainant Carol House Furniture has used its name since 1965 and it incorporated in 1970. The dispute says that Oversee.net registered the domain on September 4, 2010. But the domain was actually ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TailWords.com Helps You Find Unregistered Keyword Domain Names - Tool searches for domain names with keywords that match your parameters. Here’s an interesting tool to help you find unregistered domain names with competitive advertisers. TailWords.com lets you search keywords based on a number of factors, from AdWords bid prices to keyword search volume. But it also has a handy tool for domainers: the ability to show only keywords that have the corresponding .com domain name available (or .net/.org). Just plugin a keyword and ... read more ...
Sun 17th April 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
PornWikiLeaks.com Exposes Volumes Of Personal Data On Thousands Of Adult Performers & The Free Speech Coalition Fights Back - According to Xbiz.com, “The Free Speech Coalition says it is looking into legal options available for performers affected by the PornWikileaks.com site, which has exposed volumes of personal data information on thousands of performers.” “Free Speech Coalition stands in opposition to the violations of performer privacy by PornWikileaks,” FSC Executive Director Diane Duke said Friday. “This is not an issue of free speech; it is about violating the privacy of performers. It’s about potential ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker.com Is On Pace To Slip To Number 9, As They Lose 100,000 Registrations Over The Last 6 Weeks - Moniker.com appears to be on Pace to drop another spot to the 9th largest registrar in the next month. Just a few months ago Moniker.com was the 7th largest registrar. According to WebHosting.info, over the past 6 weeks Moniker.com has lost about 100,000 registration Consider that the 9th largest registrar, Resellersclub.com is one of the fastest growing registrars gaining some 25K registrations a week. Resellersclub.com on the week ending April 11, 2011 is only about 80,000 domain behind Moniker.com So ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Rio.com Probably Getting a Lot of Unintended Traffic - Visitors looking for movie info might be landing on tourism web site. When Rio.com sold in 2009 for $450,000, the buyer quickly went to work on a site about Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The site’s traffic will increase steadily as the World Cup and Olympics in Rio de Janeiro get closer. But this week the site likely saw an increase in traffic from an unlikely source: kids and parents interested in the new 20th Century Fox flick Rio. The animated movie from the same ... read more ...
Sat 16th April 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.XXX is Added To The Root & Is Live - The .XXX extension has been added to the root and is now live. Domains like sex.xxx,  xxx.xxx porn.xxx and ICM.xxx are resolving. ICM is the registry that ICANN signed a contract last week to operate the .XXX registry. Not all domains ending in .xxx are resolving so the registry did not wild card the extension. The Sunrise period which will be the 1st of several periods including Landrush and general availability are expected to start sometime in September 2011.   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Business Insider: Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry - BusinessInsider.com just published a article entitled “Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry” citing a story published by Australia’s Courier-Mail newspaper. The article tells the story about an Australian,  Daniel Tzvetkoff   “who set up the payment processing schemes used by the biggest poker sites to handle their (mostly illegal) transactions”. According to the story Mr. Tzvetkoff was arrested last year in Las Vegas and “charged with the same crimes those ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Why Is Anyone Surprised Over Yesterday’s Gambling Domain Seizures & Why No Publicly Traded Company Got Charged - Just days after Washington DC announced it was legalizing online gaming including online poker, the US Government charged the operators of the largest online poker sites PokerStars, FullTiltPoker, AbsolutePoker (using UB.com)  all offshore companies, on charges of, violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, operation of illegal gambling business, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The Feds seized 5 domain names, and  are seeking recovery ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New GuideBook For gTLD’s Is Published By ICANN & Open For Public Comment - ICANN has just published another draft of its Guidebook for new  new gTLD’s and it has opened the public comment period today, which will close on May 15. As always the Guidebook is broken down into sections. The sections that domainer would probably be most interested in are: Uniform Rapid Suspension Trademark Clearinghouse I will be checking those out today and be back to report on what’s contained in the lastest verision The ICANN board has already announced its intention to approve what ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
TechCrunch: SocialMedia.com Acquired For $3M: SocialMedia’s Biggest Asset Today Is Probably Its Domain Name - According to TechCrunch.com the site SocialMedia, was purchased today by LivingSocial.com for $3 million, all in LivingSocial stock. “SocialMedia’s biggest asset today is probably its domain name.” said TechCrunch.com Interesting to see that a company that raised millions of dollars in VC money at the end of the day’s most valuable asset is its domain name.       Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
eNom and Go Daddy Still Disqualified from Applying for New Top Level Domains - Language of new applicant guidebook disqualifies two large domain name registrars. If you read the spirit of the rules related to new top level domain names, domain name registrars eNom and Go Daddy are still disqualified from applying for their own top level domain names. In the latest draft ICANN tweaked the language regarding applicants for new TLDs who have been found guilty of cybersquatting, but not enough to let these two companies off the hook. The guidebook ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Health Officials on Playboy Mansion: H1N1, Credit Blogs and Social Media - Health officials say H1N1 infected DOMAINfest attendees and evaluates role of social media in responding to outbreak. We go to domain conferences. Health officials go to Centers for Disease Control conferences. You can imagine these events as rather dull. But last week officials from Los Angeles got to spice things up a bit as they discussed the illness outbreak after the DOMAINfest conference in February at the Playboy Mansion. They managed to throw in another ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Just Released New TLD Guidebook Attacks Domain Parking - Applicants for new TLDs must answer question related to domain name parking. Out of nowhere, domain parking appears to be under attack in the new top level domain name application process. The latest guidebook, released yesterday, includes a section for applicants to explain: What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Poker Domain Seizures Show Futility of Nabbing Domain Names - Even without .com domains, sites can continue to operate. You can take away a domain name, but you can’t stop people from visiting a web site. Yesterday’s seizure of five poker company domain names is another case in point. Still want to get your fix of Poker Stars? Just go to PokerStars.eu. It reminds me of when online gambling site Bodog ran into legal problems. The solution? Change the URL from Bodog.com to NewBodog.com. Sure, it lost some players as a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Owners Should Not Worry About Poker Domain Seizures - Poker domain seizures involved complex criminal activity specifically targeted at the United States. Yesterday the online gambling world was rocked by the seizure of five poker domain names used by three large online poker companies. The domain names were seized by the FBI from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker. According to Compete.com, FullTiltPoker.com gets around 1 million unique visitors a month. Some people are drawing references to the Kentucky ... read more ...
Fri 15th April 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Total Damage To Godaddy From Parsons Elephant Shooting? About 100,000 Domains - I’ve been tracking the weekly registrar report on Godaddy since the Parsons Elephant Shooting story broke on March 31. According to Webhosting.info it seems that the damage to Godaddy.com has been minimal and also seem to have been short lived. In all what I’m seeing is a loss of about 100,000 domains. So as you can see from the chart on the week ending 4.4.11 Godaddy only gained 19,864 domains for the week about 100,000 less than the week before. The next week, the one ending just days ago ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Gold Vs. Google A 1 1/2 Years Later - Back in September 2009, there was a day where Google hit $500 a share, having recovered from the bottom of the market price of $280 and Gold hit $1,000 an ounce. This prompted us to write a post Google Vs. Gold and ran a poll on which you thought would be  a better investment. Well its been about 18 months later and we posted about Google announcement of  earnings yesterday and a reader reminded me about the Google Vs. Gold post so thought it would be a good time for an update. So Google is trading ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook Files Trademark Lawsuit Against FriendFinder - Facebook files trademark lawsuit against owner of FriendFinder. Facebook, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Various, Inc., parent company of FriendFinder, along with a couple related companies and John Does. The case was filed in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Califonia on Wednesday. The entire complaint hasn’t been posted online, but it involves Various, Inc’s trademarks for FriendFinder and AdultFriendFinder. I know that Facebook has called its ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameBio Gets a New Look – A Sign of Things to Come? - Domain sales database gets a facelift. Last year domain name investor Adam Strong and a partner purchased domain name sales database NameBio. You probably wouldn’t have noticed, though, as the site stayed the same. Until today. I just went to the site and noticed a new look and feel. It’s a lot cleaner design without that annoying background image. You can access all of the advanced features without clicking between tabs. Also gone is the “instant search” ... read more ...
Thu 14th April 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Releases Earnings: Revenues Up 27%; Paid Clicks Up 18%; Cost Per Click Up 8%: Domainers Income Still Down - After the Market closed today Google announced its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2011: The highlights: “Google reported revenues of $8.58 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, an increase of 27% compared to the first quarter of 2010.” “Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC).  In the first quarter of 2011, TAC totaled $2.04 billion, or 25% of advertising revenues.” Revenues ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
GroceryStores.com Sells On NameJet.com For $22K; Publicize.com Sells for $10,099 - The domain name GroceryStores.com sold on NameJet.com today for $22,329. It was another one of those Nielsen Research domains they received when they bought out another company some of which sold on NameJet.com the other day. Another good domain, publicize.com sold for $10,099 Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sears Files Suit Over DieHardSpray.com - “The point of a trademark is that the owner can oversee/dictate it’s use in commerce.” Although Trademarks are/can be very complicated to understand I’d say they that they can’t “dictate it’s use” in commerce unless they state its use when appying for a TM. More than one person can hold a Trade Mark on the same term if it has been granted for different uses in commerce. If its being used for something else other than what it says in the TM then whats the problem ? Below is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in FR and tagged
Les groupes religieux impriment leurs marques sur le Web - Le prochain défi pour les groupes religieux sur Internet vient déjà à l'horizon : dans un proche avenir, il sera possible – à condition d'avoir les moyens nécessaires, c'est-à-dire une mise de fonds se chiffrant en centaines de milliers de dollars, et de recevoir l'approbation d'une commision d'examen de l'Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – de créer de nouveaux suffixes (top level domains, TLDs, en français : domaines de premier niveau). A côté des ... read more ...