Author Archives: DomainNameWire

About DomainNameWire

Domain Name Wire is a blog that deals with the domain name sector. The blog covers a range of domain related topics ranging from issues concerning expiring domains, monetization, domain registries and registrars, ICANN, policy, law etc. The blog began in March, 2005, after Mr. Allemann had dropped out of meetings to become involved in domain portfolio company, iREIT. The project began as a hobby to keep him involved in the domaining business, and then became his full-time business.

Thu 1st December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google tweaks algorithm to flog parked domains out of the index - Hi, @ Arrgo Frank does not need or rely Google search results for the success of “Internet Traffic”. So, you will be ‘hoping’ for a very long time…IMO ____ @RED This discussion is not just about domain parking pages’ getting ranked in Google. Even, going back to the boom of domain parking days, from 2004 – 2008, very few or any domain parking pages ranked high or at all in Google. ___ The problem with Google is that they want it both ways. They do not want the “SOPA/Protect ... read more ...
Wed 30th November 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
www.Buy.xxx – One week until launch - www.Buy.xxx making a big splash as registry gears up for general availability. With just a week to go until general availability of the .xxx domain name, ICM Registry’s commercials are making quite a splash. The company’s site www.buy.xxx (sometimes promoted as go.buy.xxx) has received millions of visitors as a result of the aggressive advertising. Make no mistake. .XXX is the most aggressive (and perhaps expensive) new top level domain marketing push to date. General ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
8 engaging finish user domain sales - Eight domain names that sold to end users last week. Here are eight end user domain name purchases completed over the past week. All sales were at Afternic except for GameTraining.com, which sold at Sedo. Anytime Fitness president David Mortensen.com now owns DavidMortensen.com after dropping $1,788. Internet marketing firm Adventure Marketing upgraded its URL from AdventureMarketingLLC.com to AdventureMarketing.com for $1,000. Telecom networking company Dynamic Network ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panelist: UDRP is not a sword - A well reasoned opinion on registration in bad faith. A recent UDRP decision for scrubology.com includes an excellent analysis of the registration in bad faith element of UDRP. Here are the facts: – Respondent registered scrubology.com in 2005 – Complainant RXGear, LLC filed a trademark for scrubology claiming a first use in commerce date in 2010 This case looks dead on arrival, doesn’t it? But RXGear’s attorneys, Wolf, Greenfield Sacks, P.C. (an intellectual ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 domain name handle news stories of Nov 2011 - Four porn posts and a saviour. 4 posts about porn and one about religion grabbed the most attention at Domain Name Wire this month. I think I need to change the focus of this blog. 1. Apple gets control over porn domain names – Owner of domains agrees to transfer them to Apple (see #3). iPhone4s.com now forwards to apple.com web site. 2. .XXX launches national TV campaign and www.Buy.xxx – ICM Registry’s multi-million dollar ad campaign goes into high gear ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ANA to ICANN: Your attention accord explain is a lie - Group cites widespread opposition as proof of lack of consensus. I’m going to rip off the title of this post from a video released yesterday by Association of National Advertisers (ANA). (embedded below) In the video, ANA says ICANN’s claims that the new TLD program was the result of many years of consensus building is “absolutely false”. Its proof? 103 organizations have “signed on” with ANA to oppose new TLDs. Now, it’s true that there are a lot of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ndamukong Suh might not be on a margin though he’s still winning - Suspended football player wins rights to domain name. Detroit Lions star defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh may have to sit out a couple games because of his stomping incident last week, but he’s still winning off the field. A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has awarded him his namesake — NdamukongSuh.com. The domain name was registered to Tim Evans of Athlete Web Design. He registered the domain name in 2009. According to the complaint, he offered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitration row gives Noah Cyrus domain name - Youngest Cyrus gets domain name. Noah Cyrus, the eleven year old sister of Miley Cyrus and sondaughter (oops) of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, has won rights to the domain name NoahCyrus.com. The domain name was registered in 2006 just as Cyrus became a household name thanks to the Disney channel’s Hannah Montana TV show. But she got her start in acting with a role in the TV show Doc when she was just three years old. She had the lead role in the film Ponyo in ... read more ...
Tue 29th November 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple starts forwarding iPhone4s.com to the web site - Company forwards domain name after recovering it from cybersquatter. Apple has started forwarding iPhone4s.com — a domain name it recovered from a cybersquatter that showed porn — to the iPhone page on Apple.com. The domain name started forwarding to Apple’s web site yesterday. Earlier this month Apple filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Forum to get the domain name and six others, all of which forwarded to mobile porn sites. Just before Thanksgiving ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Video orator companies to face off in court - Company files lawsuit against competitor over trademark and domain name. You know those annoying pop up video spokespeople that walk across your screen on certain web sites? Apparently competition to sell web site publishers a video spokesperson is rather intense. Live Face On Web, LLC has filed a lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court against WebsiteTalkingHeads.com, a competitor, claiming trademark infringement and cybersquatting. The defendant allegedly registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Republicans register ObamaVsObama.com to opposite Mitt vs. Mitt commercials - Domain names could be used to call into question President Barack Obama’s record. The democrats just launched an attack ad on republican front runner Mitt Romney called Mitt vs. Mitt. It calls him a flip flopper. But the republicans have a similar trick up their sleeves. Someone affiliated with the republican party registered ObamaVsObama.com and ObamaVsObama.net yesterday. Both domain names use a whois privacy service to protect the registrant’s identity, but ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Oversee.net says Moniker projections “horribly wrong” - Moniker acquisition fell short of expectations. Yesterday Oversee.net filed a heavily redacted document in support of its motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit with former employee Monte Cahn. The motion is to dismiss a claim that Oversee.net owes Cahn money as part of a $13 million Management Incentive Plan (MIP). Oversee.net makes a couple claims (pdf) about the plan in its latest filing. First, it says that Cahn was supposed to identify the plan’s participants ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Bands.com to launch Wednesday - Domain investor unveils new site for bands. A new service for music bands formally launches in beta tomorrow at a killer web address. Bands.com is billed as a one stop shop for a bands’ web presence. Bands.com offers web sites, music and merchandise sales, social network integration, show calendar integration, and other must haves for music groups. Bands can either use a bands.com URL or their own domain name with the service. The site is being launched by Emerge ... read more ...
Mon 28th November 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google genuine time analytics won’t kill ChartBeat and Woopra (Yet) - Google Analytics real time is nice feature but no replacement for dedicated services. Remember when people used to pay six figures to get web site analytics like what Google now offers for free? That shook up the industry. Now Google’s real time analytics threatens to destroy a couple startups including ChartBeat and Woopra. Google just rolled out real-time analytics to the masses and I played around with it a bit last week. My conclusion: tt’s a nice addition ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s CyberMonday. How is your domain traffic? - Traffic to product related domains should swell today. Today is CyberMonday, a name coined by the National Retail Federation to promote online buying for the holiday season. The idea is that everyone is back at work after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and that means they’ll do a lot of online shopping. In 2006 comScore measured $610 million in online commerce on CyberMonday. Last year it measured over a billion dollars. This means that your “product” domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
National A-1 fights to redeem supports paid for stolen Walk.com domain name - Company blames domain name registrar that received proceeds of transaction in its bank account. National A-1, a large buyer of premium domain names, is fighting in court to recover $35,000 it paid to buy the Walk.com domain name. After it paid for the domain name it found out the name was stolen. According to National A-1’s complaint, it was contacted by the supposed owner of the domain name in April of this year. It struck a deal to purchase the domain for $35,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Proactiv wants to be still about the product recall - Company does its best to keep recall out of the press and out of the search engines. Last month I wrote about how the company behind Proactiv, the skin care product pitched by Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, had registered multiple domain names hinting at a recall of its product. Although I couldn’t find information about the recall on Guthy-Renker’s web site, I noticed a steady and increasing stream of web site visitors hitting the article who were searching for ... read more ...
Sat 26th November 2011
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eBay lays explain to Dominican Republic domain names - A rare case over .do domain names. eBay has filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization for four domain names that use the Dominican Republic top level domain .do. The four domains are: ebay.com.do ebay.do paypal.com.do paypal.do What I find interesting about this case is what you see if you visit any of the domains: DOMAIN FOR SALE info@ebay.do We have adquire this domain in a bulk domain purchase and due to the nature of the domain name it is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Protrada adds integrated lapsed domain catching - Expired domain catching starts at $15. In October I wrote about Protrada, which is like a dashboard for domain name buyers to find and purchase domain names. It works with a lot of major expired domain services including NameJet, SnapNames, and GoDaddy, and isn’t limited to expired domains. Now the service has its own integrated backordering system for domains that go through the complete deletion process and are dropped by the registry. The service is effectively ... read more ...
Wed 23rd November 2011
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French tech discussion LeWeb loses plea for LeWeb.com domain name - Large European tech conference fails to obtain ideal domain name. French tech conference LeWeb has lost a domain dispute with the owner of LeWeb.com. The conference, which attracts 3,000 people, uses the domain name LeWeb.net. Conference organizers claimed that many of its attendees reported confusion when they visited LeWeb.com by mistake. This is no surprise — typing .com instead of any other top level domain name is a common mistake. The World Intellectual Property ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SkullCandy, L.A. Clippers, McKesson buy domain names - Big companies by domain names in the aftermarket. Wow! What a busy week for end users buying domain names. Here are some highlights: (all sales via Afternic unless otherwise noted) Headphone company SkullCandy bought SupremeSound.com for $1,375. Pastebin.com, which says it’s the “#1 paste tool since 2002″, bought pastebin.net for $2,500. FutureDontics, the company behind 1800Dentist.com, picked up DentalSaver.com, DentalSavers.com and DentalSaver.net for a grant ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Monte Cahn files third ammended censure opposite Oversee.net - 1, 2, 3, and now… Moniker founder Monte Cahn has filed a third amended complaint against his former employer Oversee.net. The third amended complaint (so that’s four in total) is in response to the judge dismissing several claims against Oversee.net and on Cahn’s depositions of current and former Oversee.net employees. He reinserts claims for accounting, fraud, and conversion. He essentially says that Oversee.net conspired from the beginning to not have to pay ... read more ...
Tue 22nd November 2011
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Above.com adds 3 new parking companies - Three additional parking companies added to domain rotation system. Domain name parking optimization system Above.com has integrated three new parking companies into its platform: Voodoo, ParkingCrew, and TheParkingPlace. It’s certainly interesting to see new parking companies pop up on the radar given all of the turmoil in industry; you could argue that these companies are appearing because of the challenges domainers face. Voodoo and ParkingCrew use standard pay-per-click ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
.XXX launches inhabitant TV debate and www.Buy.xxx - Ads promote new .xxx domain name option. .XXX registry ICM Registry has launched a five week national TV ad campaign to promote the new domain name option. The ads will start running this week and feature Gavin and his assistants, who go on quests to find out who is buying .xxx domain names. You can see one of the ad spots here. (Update: here’s a link to more commercials.) ICM Registry also launched buy.xxx, a site to connect people to domain name registrars offering ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple gets control over porn domain names - Owner of domain names agrees to give domain names to Apple after company filed complaint. Apple is now the proud owner of iphonesex4s.com and six other (mostly) explicit domain names. The company filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Forum against the owner of the seven domain names last month. All of the domain names forwarded to a mobile porn site when visited on a mobile device. Apple terminated the case after the owner of the domains agreed to turn ... read more ...