Monthly Archives: July 2011

Sun 31st July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Rolls Out “Page Speed Performance” See How Fast Your Site Is Loading - Google has previously stated that how fast your page load may effect your SEO rank. Now Google has put out a tool that tests your Page Performance and gives you hints and tips on how to increase it. In a post on Google’s blog by Ram Ramani, Engineering Manager, Google announced it had rolled out a new product “Page Speed performance” on Friday which test the speed of your site from various locations around the world of your choosing from a drop down menu. You can access the Google Speed Test ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Calls For Public Input On “Formulations of 2012-2015 Strategic Plan” - Open – Public Comment Request for Community Input on Formulation of 2012-2015 Strategic Plan As part of the strategic planning process each year, ICANN seeks public comment to inform the development of the next version of its Strategic Plan. The 2012-2015 strategic planning process kicked-off in May and community input discussions were held prior to and during Singapore. Leadership also held workshops exploring strategic issues facing ICANN. The next step in the strategic planning process is to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Monte Cahn: Acquisition of Moniker Violated Google Contract - Moniker founder says Oversee.net contract with Google violated in Moniker acquisition. Monte Cahn has filed a response (pdf) to Oversee.net’s motion to dismiss certain claims he brought against his former employer. One of the more interesting claims in his response relates to the Moniker acquisition from Seevast and how it may have violated Oversee.net’s contract with ad provider Google: Additionally, since filing the First Amended Complaint, it has come to our ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Neustar Announces .Biz Price Increase - .Biz registration and renewal prices increase in six months. Neustar has informed its registrars and ICANN that it will increase its annual prices for .biz domain names effective February 1, 2012. The new price will be $7.85, or 55 cents more than the current $7.30 per year. That’s about 7.5%. This wholesale price does not include ICANN’s 18 cent “tax” per domain year registered. Neustar’s notice to ICANN does not include a reason for the price increase. Price ... read more ...
Sat 30th July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
HP Loses First Round of HP Pre Battle - Company stunningly loses a domain arbitration case over HPPre.com. With the HP Pre 3 getting ready to hit the market, HP filed a domain name dispute with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name HPPre.com. Here’s what happened: -The day after HP announced its acquisition of Palm (maker of the Pre), the registrant registered the domain name -The registrant created a splog at the domain name that grabbed stories about Palm products from sites such as Engadget -The ... read more ...
Fri 29th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Come End of Next Month Jeff Kupietzky Is Out as CEO Of Oversee: Back In The Day My Meeting With Jeff & The VC Guys - Oversee.net sent out a notice today that Jeff Kupietzky is out as CEO of Oversee.net come the end of August. Of course I  knew this was coming and its really a shame how far a major, maybe the biggest company in the space has fallen so quickly. Several few years ago I sat in room at the first DomainFest with Jeff and the VC folks, Oakhill, who had just invested $150 million into Oversee.net and had a nice chat about the domain business. I remember Jeff saying to the suits something like Mike’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Justin Rachwalski, Strategy Lead during Google: How To Improve Landing Page Conversions - Justin Rachwalski, Strategy Lead at Google wrote a guest post on hubspot.com which I think is pretty interesting The post is entitled “10 Easy Ways to Improve Landing Page Conversions” and while you will have to read the full post on hubspot to read the full explanation here are the highlights of the tips Mr. Rachwalski says will improve your landing pages and conversions “immediately” 1. Landing page headlines and ad copy should match Google AdWords determines cost-per-click in part based ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jeff Kupietzky To Leave Oversee.net Next Month - CEO and president to leave one of domain name industry’s biggest companies. Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky will depart the company at the end of the August, the company has announced. He will be moving his family to Israel. Kupietzky has been with the company for five years, with the last 2 1/2 years as CEO and President. Going forward, day-to-day operations will be handled by Co-Presidents Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow. Kupietzky has had to manage a number of ... read more ...
Thu 28th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
VeriSign Report Earnings: Revenue Up 13%; Net Income Up 50%: Q Ends With 110 Million Domains Registered adult 8% - After the market closed today  VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2011. VeriSign, Inc.  reported revenue of $190 million for the second quarter of 2011, up 5% from the prior quarter and up 13% from the same quarter in 2010. Of course in January 2011 Verisign is raising the fees on .net and .com registrations by 7% which should add to their bottom line for 2011, but 2010 is off to a great start for them. Verisign reported net loss of $(11) ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Facebook Files Suit Against 25 Domain Holders & 119 John Doe’s - As ElliotsBlog.com reported earlier Facebook filed a massive cybersquatting suit against 25 named domain holders including corporations and individuals as well as 119 John Doe defendants whose identity is yet unknown to Facebook.  In all about 126 domains with known owners and 119 domains with unknown owners. The lawsuit starts off quite ominously. The Defendants Are Typosquatters. “They Exploit and profit from Internet Domain Names that are confusing similar to Facebook mark”. Interestingly ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Breaking: British High Court Rules ISP MUST Block Access To Sites Which Provide LINKS TO Pirated Movies - According to the BBC in a landmark decision, A High Court judge in Britain has ruled that British Telecom (BT)  must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies. The case involved a site call Newzbin 2 which had links to pirated movies. This is a landmark case since its the first time that an ISP has been ordered to block access to such a site.” “It paves the way for other sites to be blocked as part of a major crackdown on piracy.” The court said in part “In my judgment ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Godaddy Drops Commission On Auction Sales From 15% to 10% A Month After Raising Them From 5% - Back on June 13th we wrote a post calling out Godaddy.com for tripling the commission they were charging their customers for auction sales from at that time 5% to 15% without first notifying their customers. Today Godaddy let us know that they were rolling back auction commissions to 10% effective yesterday. In addition Godaddy informed thedomains.com that “Anyone who listed domains at 15% was rolled down to 10% so they don’t need to relist.” So good news for all seller’s on Godaddy auction ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Flippa.com Report On State of a Website Economy: Focus on Website Domains: $50 Million In Sales - Flippa.com put out this morning a new report called “State of the Website Economy: Focus On WebSite Domains“, and its pretty interesting. Flippa say’s they have sold $50 Million dollars worth of Websites and has the “largest set of data about buying and selling websites anywhere in the world”. So here you go: We find this data absolutely fascinating and thought it high time that we share it with the broader community (rather than just with our immediate friends and family … who roll their ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
New Study: How Do Click Through Rates Vary On SEO Position: How Many More Clicks Does #1 Ranking Get You? - MediaPost.com is reporting on A study released Monday from Slingshot looks at how SEO position effects click through rates (CTR). According to a Press Release by the Company it is the biggest study on the subject in 5 years. The study found that having a No. 1 rankings in A search engine results on average in 18.20% CTRs Having the number 2 position, results in a CTR of almost half of the 1st spot of 10.05%. The study also showed that CTRs for each position below the fold returned 4% or less. “These ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook Files Massive Cybersquatting Lawsuit - Lawsuit goes after typosquatters who redirect to survey offers. As reported on Elliot’s Blog today, Facebook has filed a lawsuit against dozens of people for allegedly typosquatting on its domain names. One of the interesting aspects of this case is what the defendants are allegedly doing with the domain names. Instead of parking them with traditional pay-per-click providers, they are forwarding them to survey sites that mimic Facebook in some way. This type of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
How To Create Your Own Whois Privacy Service - A simple process to add privacy to your whois records while retaining full control. If you don’t like your personal contact information being exposed in whois records, you don’t need to pay a lot of money to a whois privacy or whois proxy service to protect your identity. You can do it yourself. Here’s how. 1. Get a post office box. You can get a box at either the U.S. postal service or places like UPS Store. I’m sure there are equivalents in whatever country ... read more ...
Wed 27th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Afternic DLS Sales Up 94% This Year - Earlier today Sedo issued its 2nd Quarter report. This afternoon Afternic’s Domain Listing Service (DLS) issued its report for the 1st half of 2011 and announced a 94% jump in year-over-year sales volume for the first half of 2011, marking the strongest growth in its history. Afternic DLS service works with registrars to allow customer to buy owned domain names through  “Instant Transfer Enabled” partners including: eNom.com, Network Solutions.com, Moniker.com Register.com, Name.com, and BulkRegister.com Tucows.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
4Square.com Goes For $32K On NameJet.com & Rex.com Pulls In $68K - The domain name 4Square.com sold on NameJet.com for $32,100. With three bidders of $10K or more the domain which is an alternative to the app Four Square went I believe to a frequent buyer Id on NameJet and probably not to the owner of the App. Separately the domain Rex.com sold for a lofty $68K today on Namejet. The domain had 14 bidders of $10K or more,  one of the most active auctions I have seen at that level. There were a few more sales on Namejet.com today listed below. No doubt The buyers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in PT and tagged
Que tal ter o endereço aplicativo.app? - Com a flexibilização das terminações de domínio, aprovada pelo ICANN em meados desse ano, ficou muito mais fácil registrar sites como http://turismo.brazil/ ou http://search.google/. O próprio nome do assunto poderia ser o TLD, forma técnica de chamar a terminação. Um grupo de desenvolvedores já pensa inclusive em como tirar proveito das novas regras para estimular a disseminação de aplicativos. Eles querem comprar a terminação .app. O Projeto .App tem como objetivo garantir que ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
On a Date Restricted Shares of Demand Media Unlock & The Market Sinks, Demand Is Actually Up - Demand Media went public on January 26th, 2011. Shares that insiders receive typically have a 6 month lock up meaning none can be traded until the 6 month period is up. Meaning that today would be the 1st day that the insider shares can be sold. Well the stock market is having a horrible day down as of time of publication around 175 points on the Dow and a whopping 68 points on the NASDAQ and shares of Demand Media are actually up .01. Lets face it a lot of very smart people are insiders at Demand. Insiders ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in FR and tagged
Nouveaux gTLDs, dernières informations - Le principal problème de ces nouvelles extensions, est que la communication publicitaire sur les noms de domaine risque de ne plus rendre identifiable le nom des sites web, si on y accède encore en tapant une URL ou juste un nom de domaine dans la barre d'adresse (et de recherche) du navigateur. Si les gTLD commencent à pulluler, il risque bien d'y a voir de sérieux conflits d'interprétation de ce qu'on saisit dans la barre d'adresses, particulièrement ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Domain Theft Hits Startup & Forces Them Into a Name Change - Last friday, through a compromised email address, someone hijacked and stole the Lissn.com domain. After gaining access, they were able to transfer the domain to their own overseas registrar. The hackers redirected Lissn to a server in the Netherlands, kept our homepage, and replaced the login button with a message that read “Lissn is currently down for maintenance, sorry for any inconvenience,” further confusing visitors coming to try the latest features.” Websites are hacked and domains ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
IAC reports Earnings: Income adult 65% - IAC reported earnings this morning.  IAC is one of the stocks we track in the Domain Stock Index since it owns some major Internet properties including Match.com, Dictionary.com Chemistry.com and Ask.com to name a few. IAC said that: Q2 revenue reflects strong performance with double-digit growth across all segments.  Operating Income Before Amortization saw very strong double-digit growth, up 65% for the quarter and more than 70% year-to-date. Free Cash Flow for the first six months was $137.8 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Releases the Domain Market Study for Q2 2011: $25M In Sales adult 13%; 10,600 Domain Sales - Sedo just released its Q2 2011 Domain Market Study, which reveals domain name industry trends based on its marketplace transactions. In Q2, Sedo’s Domain Marketplace saw close to $25,000,000 in global sales, revealing 13 percent growth compared to Q1 2011 and 4 percent year-over-year growth. Domain sales priced at $5,000 and below accounted for 48% market share The average sale prices of .com domains in Q2 2011 reached $3,114, a 20% increase over Q1 2011 10,600 domains changed hands on Sedo’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google AdWords Now Supports Internationalized Domain Names - Advertisers no longer have to show ASCII URLs in their ads. A couple weeks ago I missed an announcement from Google AdWords that it now supports internationalized domain names (IDN) for display and destination URLs on Google ads. This means advertisers will no longer have to show a non-ASCII ad followed by an ASCII domain name. AdWords clients can enter unicode characters for the URLs and Google will verify that it works correctly in both unicode and punycode. The ... read more ...