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.

Mon 27th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A demeanour during Escrow.com's income growth - Company’s topline is up over 50% in past five years. Australian company Freelancer.com has acquired Escrow.com for US $7.5M. This is 6.25x Escrow.com’s 2014 EBITDA. The transaction reveals, for the first time, Escrow.com’s growth in recent years. The company’s 2014 revenue was nearly 55% higher than 2010, representing a 9.1% CAGR since then. 2010: $3.269 million 2011: $4.125 million 2012: $4.646 million 2013: $4.798 million 2014: $5.048 million Keep in mind this only represents Escrow.com’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What is Freelancer.com and because did it buy Escrow.com? - Publicly traded freelance marketplace owns a number of businesses, including a website and domain name marketplace. Yesterday (United States time), Freelancer.com announced that it acquired Escrow.com for US $7.5 million. Freelancer.com is a publicly traded company in Australia with a market cap of about $450 million, but many people probably aren’t familiar with it. The company is similar to oDesk/eLance, where people post jobs they need done and freelancers bid to complete the work. Freelancer.com ... read more ...
Sun 26th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Escrow.com acquired for $7.5 million - Company known for securing domain name transactions is acquired by Australian company. Freelancer.com, an online marketplace for freelance services, has acquired escrow service Escrow.com for $7.5 million. Escrow.com is a popular service among domain name investors and has handled over $2.2 billion worth of transactions to date. Margins for escrow services are slim, and today’s acquisition announcement puts it in perspective: Escrow.com handled $220 million transactions last year, generating $5 ... read more ...
Fri 24th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Digging into .xyz's domain name registrations - A look at how .xyz domain names are being used. .xyz is big — about 900,000 domains — but it’s also controversial since many of the domains were given away for free. Even stripping away the freebies, .xyz is still big. I called upon dataprovider.com to run some numbers. (Earlier this week I used dataprovider to compare usage in .London and .NYC.) Using data from last month, dataprovider was able to reach about 550,000 .xyz domain names (the rest were inaccessible in their spidering). Here are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Orient Express Travel Group intent in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Australian company didn’t disclose prior purchase attempt and its rights post-dated domain registration. A three person World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found Australian travel company Orient Express Travel Group to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking. The travel company filed an aUDRP against the domain name etg.com.au. It uses the domain name etg.travel. The panel found that Orient Express Travel Group was less-than-forthcoming in its aUDRP filing. It didn’t disclose ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired Domain Report: Breaking down Chinese buyers - Joseph Peterson reviews recent expired domain name sales on NameJet, including which short domains were picked up by Chinese buyers. Anyone who reads these weekly reports on the expired domain market (or, rather, NameJet’s share of it) will have noticed that the chart can be divided into Chinese purchases and non-Chinese purchases. The split is fairly clean. GEAI.com ($8.2k)? China. HNBC.com ($6.4k)? China. DAIG.com ($2.8k)? China. DUVI.com ($2.5k)? Probably not China. And why is that an exception? ... read more ...
Thu 23rd April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verisign reports earnings, 1.51 million net adds - Company reports continued growth in domain name registrations and base. Verisign reported first quarter earnings after the bell today, including some fairly solid numbers for new registrations and net additions in .com/.net. 8.7 million new .com and .net registrations occurred in the first quarter, up from 8.6 million in the same quarter last year. It’s not a big jump, but it’s headed in the right direction. That netted out to 1.51 million more names after accounting for deletions. Revenue for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hockey teams possess 9 of 30 NHL group domain names - NHL lags MLB, but teams still own a good number of direct match domain names. In my book, there’s nothing more exciting and intense in sport than NHL playoff hockey. With the playoffs in full swing, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at which NHL team names domain names are owned by the teams (or the league). Team names tend to be common words, which makes them more expensive to acquire and difficult for teams to claim trademark rights. Major League Baseball has spent a lot of money ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Another feign TLD sighting: .Calm - Corona displays .calm on a billboard. .Calm isn’t a top level domain. Marketers have long used dots in marketing, making phrases look like domain names. Consider Sony’s make.believe campaign: Patrick McCleery at Hexonet was strolling around his neighborhood the other day when he came across this Corona ad: It’s cute and clever. But I have to wonder, as new top level domain names ranging from .apple to .wtf proliferate, will these create a lot of confusion? Presumably, once marketers understand ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
More Amazon new TLD reg's and Google's peculiar domain names - I don’t understand what Amazon is doing with these new TLDs, and some curious Google domain registrations. Earlier this week I wrote about Amazon.com’s many generic/descriptive domains registered under new TLDs that it is forwarding to particular pages on its site. Many of these domains were registered when the TLDs launched but just recently had their whois record switched to reveal Amazon. I really don’t understand what Amazon.com is up to here. These domains just popped up in my DomainTools ... read more ...
Wed 22nd April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
15 finish user domain name buyers including Univision - Univision buys a domain name and a lighting company pays big bucks for a co.uk domain. Sedo handled 568 domain name transactions last week for a total of $1.2 million in sales. The company turned in some solid sales to end users, including Spanish-language broadcasting company Univision. The most impressive sale for the TLD was Lights.co.uk, which a German lighting company paid £25,000. Now, let’s get to the list: Previous weeks’ lists can be found here. If you’d like to learn how to sell ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Breaking down Minds + Machines' domain name Portfolio - Registry releases detailed stats on domain name registrations. Top level domain name registry Minds + Machines released an update on its progress today, including a detailed breakdown of how its top level domain names have fared so far. The company has 165,364 registrations as of April 20. The majority of these registrations are for domain names in which Minds + Machines isn’t the outright owner. It either provides backend services or has a partnership. Its wholly-owned domain registration tally ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy acquires Marchex's domain name portfolio for $28 million - An in-depth look at GoDaddy’s purchase of over 200,000 domain names and what it means for domain name investors. GoDaddy has acquired Marchex’s Archeo domain name portfolio for $28.1 million.GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has acquired about 200,000 domain names from Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) for $28.1 million, plus a potential earnout. Marchex has owned the portfolio for a long time, and it includes most of the 100,000 domains it acquired from domain name investor Yun Ye for $164 million in 2005. The company ... read more ...
Tue 21st April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Virtual .US Town Hall assembly takes place Wednesday - .US owners should tune in and ask questions at online event tomorrow. Neustar, the registry that runs the .US country code domain name for the United States, is holding a .US Public Stakeholder Town Hall tomorrow, April 22. The virtual town hall takes place from 1-3 PM ET and registration is required. The usTLD Stakeholder Council, which was organized last year, is planning the event. There are a few topics on the agenda, but there will also be an open floor for people to ask questions. As the owner ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google starts mobile hunt rankings shakeup - Search rankings on mobile devices are shifting starting today. Today is the day. Google has begun changing search results on mobile phones based on if sites are mobile friendly or not. According to a blog post from the company, the search rankings rollout will start today but take about “a week or so” before it gets to all pages in the index. The rankings are on a page-by-page basis, so site owners can’t just make a mobile-friendly home page and skip the rest of the site. The good news for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.London, .NYC and new ways to calculate a success of a TLD - A deep dive into how .London and .NYC are being used. The .London and .NYC top level domain names were both launched last year and have risen to the top of new TLD leaderboards. .London currently has about 60,000 registrations and .NYC has topped 75,000 in the zone file. Does that mean .NYC is “beating” .London? It’s interesting to compare the two domains. Both are world cities and major financial centers. Yet there’s a big difference in eligibility for these domains. Anyone can register ... read more ...
Mon 20th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Domain this week: .Poker - Afilias launches .poker this week, and it is the only new TLD launch I could find. I can only find one new top level domain name on Calzone.org that’s launching this week, so it will get a little extra focus. Afilias launches .Poker on Tuesday with support from about 70 registrars. Retail pricing appears to be in the $40-$50 range. Heading into today, there are about 540 domain names in the .Poker zone file, so it’s off to a fairly good start through sunrise and landrush. Some of the good domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Help! My Domain name was stolen! with Pablo Palatnik – DNW Podcast #29 - What would happen if your business’s domain name was stolen? Imagine waking up one day and finding that your business’s domain name was stolen. That’s exactly what happened to Pablo Palatnik, founder of online sunglasses retailer ShadesDaddy.com. On this week’s episode, Palatnik explains how he first learned his domain was stolen, his understandable freakout, and his full court press to get the domain name back. It’s a fascinating story that hopefully can help other people who become a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is Amazon.com a biggest user of new domain names? - Amazon has registered a bunch of domains under new TLDs, and it’s forwarding them to pages on its website. It’s still unclear what Amazon.com’s strategy is for the many top level domain names it will soon control. But we might get a hint from examining its use of other registry’s top level domain names. Amazon.com has been a big buyer of second level domain names in new TLDs. For example, it picked up many city names under .delivery. I’ve also noticed recently that it registered a bunch ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stolen domain name 608.com returned to owners in UDRP - Panel orders 608.com transferred back to its previous owner. An Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (ADNDRC) panel has ordered the domain name 608.com be returned to its previous owner, who said the domain name was stolen from him. In the dispute, Complainant Chiu Tsen Hu said he purchased the domain name at Sedo in 2006 for $6,009. He has used it in various ways since then, including to promote his domain names for sale. He alleged that the domain name was stolen from his eNom account in ... read more ...
Fri 17th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The story of Verisign's Internet Official competition winners - Verisign contest hits its goal in first round. Verisign’s first five winners fit its message perfectly.Verisign has announced the first five winners in its Internet Official contest, a promotion designed to show that good .com domain names are still available. The domain names selected have interesting histories. The first five winners, who will each pick up $5,000, are: 1. ChooseYourTattoo.com: Registered by Tom H. of Niles, Mich. 2. ElectricMotorcycleClub.com: Registered by Adam Y. H. of Pine ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge denies suit to strike UDRP cases from MySchool.com pleadings - Plaintiff asked judge to forbid information about its two UDRP losses over the same domain to be used in pleadings. United States Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson has denied a motion to strike prior UDRPs from pleadings in a cybersquatting lawsuit filed over MySchool.com. Joseph Carpenter has lost two UDRPs against the domain name MySchool.com. After the second loss, he filed an in rem cybersquatting lawsuit against the domain name MySchool.com. The current owner of the domain, Original Web Ventures, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google nixing domain names in mobile search - Search results replace domain name with site name. Google is making sweeping changes to its search rankings on mobile devices next week, but the search giant just introduced another pretty big change. Starting yesterday, Google began replacing the URL in search results with the site’s name and breadcrumb. The site-name-instead-of-domain is rolling out in the U.S. only for now. Breadcrumbs are rolling out worldwide. Here’s an example: In this example, domaining.com has been replaced by “Domaining” ... read more ...
Thu 16th April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WaterCoolers.com sells for $25.2k, and other lapsed domain name sales - A look back at the past week in expired domain name sales. The gossip at the water cooler this week might be WaterCoolers.com itself, which was NameJet’s top expired domain auction, selling for $25.2k. Not too far behind (at $15.1k) is the German word for “style”: STIL.com. Or is it? Perhaps it’s an acronym for people in Illinois. Or a creative misspelling of the English word “still”. Then again, if the buyer is Chinese (as buyers so often are these days), it could be an arbitrary sequence ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
20 End User Domain Name Sales - Here are 20 end user domain name sales that took place over the past week. Sedo handled 593 domain name transactions last week for a total of $1.2 million in sales. End user buyers include a webhosting company that created a shorter domain with .ch, an air conditioning company in Arizona, and a bail bond seller. A whopping 57% of domains that sold at Sedo last week had “buy now” prices. (You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how to sell your domain names like these ... read more ...