Tag Archives: registrars

Wed 1st April 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
IBM's Softlayer strike with ICANN crack notice - Notice appears to be triggered by customer complaint. ICANN has sent a breach notice (pdf) to Everyones Internet, Ltd. dba SoftLayer, citing multiple contract infractions. Softlayer was acquired by IBM in 2013. According to the most recent .com registry report from November, Softlayer’s domain business is meaningful. It had about 90,000 .com registrations at the time. The breach appears to be triggered from a dispute about the domain name southaustralianweddings.com and maintaining registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy goes open today, raises $460 million - Company prices above expected range, valuing company at over $3 billion. GoDaddy will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol “GDDY”. The company priced at $20 per share and sold 23 million shares, raising $460 million. This was above its planned price range of $17-$19, and values the company at just over $3 billion. The initial public offering should bring a lot of attention to the domain name industry today. It will be interesting to see if it has an effect on other ... read more ...
Tue 31st March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rightside batch adult 50% this year - Shares rebound from tough 2014. 2014 was miserable for owners of Rightside stock. Its shares sank 58% from $15.82 after being spun off from Demand Media to $6.72 at the close of 2014. Ouch. 2015 is seeing a big reversal. Shares opened today at $10.11, up 50% from the January 2 open of $6.76. The fundamentals of the business don’t seem to have changed, but people are buying the stock. I suspect a lot of the sell-off in 2014 was from people who invested in Demand Media and didn’t care to own a ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Motley Fool Ponders if Go Daddy is Cheap - Alex Dumortier on Motley Fool took a look at the Go Daddy IPO and honed in on the history of operating losses and whether or not the stock is cheap based on projections. From the article: We have a history of operating losses and may not be able to achieve profitability in the future. That is one of the prominent risk factors that greets prospective investors in GoDaddy’s most recent prospectus. On a GAAP [generally accepted accounting principles] basis, GoDaddy has lost $622 million cumulatively ... read more ...
Mon 23rd March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Shocking? Google Domains Now Listed Organically Number 1 On Google For "domains" -                 Just a little over 2 months after launching out of Beta, Google new domain name registrar Google Domains is showing as the number one organic entry under Google when you search for the term “domains” replacing registrars like Godaddy.co,, Network Solutions.com, 1and1.com, NameCheap.com and Domain.com Google Domains is also ranking organically, number 2 under the term “domain registrar” number 4 for the term “domain” number 6 for the term “domain registrars” Not ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Weebly introduces module for domain name registrars and hosts - Reseller program allows hosts and registrars to offer Weebly website builder tools. Website builder Weebly launched a new program for domain name registrars and webhosts today, enabling them to offer Weebly’s website creation tool to their customers. NameCheap and Endurance International Group (which owns a number of hosting companies and Domain.com) are initial customers of the new Weebly for Hosts. Weebly for Hosts is essentially a reseller program, allowing companies to offer a simple website ... read more ...
Thu 19th March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Author Asks Security Expert To Steal His Godaddy Domain/Account & He Does - csoonline.com, just published a Troubling post on  how easy it was to gain control of a domain name and access to a Godaddy account they did not own.  The author of the story, Steve Ragan, tells the tale of how he asked the CEO of Night Lion Security Vinny Troia, to try to take control of the author’s domain name and account at Godaddy. The story entitled “GoDaddy accounts vulnerable to social engineering and Photoshop” and subtitled “GoDaddy’s layered verification protections defeated ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy sets IPO range, skeleton to lift $400M during adult to $3B valuation - Company sets anticipated range in SEC filing. GoDaddy revealed a planned IPO range of $17.00-$19.00 per share in an SEC filing this morning. At the mid price point of $18.00, GoDaddy will raise $396 million. If it prices at the high end, and its underwriters exercise and option to purchase 3.3 million more shares, it could reach $481 million. If it prices at $19.00 per share, the IPO would value GoDaddy at just shy $2.9 billion. On the low end it will be about $2.6 billion. The private-equity investment ... read more ...
Tue 17th March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Promoting Top Level Domain Names with Google Ads - Verisign is promoting an article about .com when users search for “domain names” on Google. I saw an interesting Google Adwords ad today when searching for “domain names”. Most ads for this search are usually for domain name registrars such as GoDaddy. But this one caught my eye: The ad links to this story on CBSNews.com, and was clearly promoted by .com registry Verisign to keep .com top of mind. This got me thinking about promoting top level domain name choices to people when they turn ... read more ...
Mon 9th March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Com's biggest winners and losers - Uniregistry wins and Moniker loses when it comes to .com domain name transfers in November. ICANN has published the most recent monthly report from ICANN showing .com transfer wins and losses from November. Uniregistry had the biggest net inflow of transfers for a public registrar, while Moniker had the biggest net outflow. As bad as the number was for Moniker (23,847 lost to only 3,136 gained), it wasn’t as bad as its October outflow. Here are the top 5 winners*, measured by net transfers-in (transfer ... read more ...
Fri 6th March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ASOP gets Tucows named in U.S. Government "Notorious" List - Registrar blamed for domain names used for fake online pharmacies. The U.S. government just released its “2014 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets” report (pdf), which calls out markets in which there is apparent widespread counterfeiting or privacy. At the urging of Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP), domain name registrar Tucows has been placed on the list. According to the report: Based in Canada, Tucows is reportedly an example of a registrar that fails to take action when notified ... read more ...
Thu 5th March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Domains joins Afternic - Domains listed on Afternic will show up for searches on Google Domains. Google’s new domain name registrar is now part of AfternicDLS and its fast transfer network, according to an announcement on the Afternic.com website: Google Domains has joined Afternic DLS and will be part of our Fast Transfer network. Afternic domains that are opted into Premium Promotion will be promoted on Google Domains. We are delighted to add Google Domains to Afternic DLS, the world’s largest premium domain reseller ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy names Chief Customer Officer, new CMO - One of GoDaddy’s original employees moves to new position. GoDaddy announced today that long time Chief Marketing Office Barb Rechterman will be the company’s Chief Customer Officer, a newly-formed position. According to a press release, this new position is “responsible for aligning the company’s products, services and engagement models with strategic needs and values of GoDaddy’s unique customer base.” Rechterman has been with GoDaddy since it was founded in 1997. She has been a driving ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: domain name registrars contingency concentration on confidence and price - Domain name registrars must offer strong security and price to attract customers. There are some questions I’ve asked on the Domain Name Wire Survey over the past ten years that have predictable answers year after year. One of these is “Rank the importance of these items when choosing a domain registrar.” Just about every year, security and price are the top two. That was the case again in 2015. The weighted score for these two factors was essentially a statistical dead heat for the most important ... read more ...
Fri 27th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy's latest obvious applications - Company adds to its stack of pending patents. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has just published a handful of patent applications filed by GoDaddy. Methods and Systems for Recommending Packages of Domain Names for Registration (application 14/500711) is a continuation of patents I wrote about earlier this month. It essentially describes a way to determining which domain names a user will want and presenting them as a package. Two others are related to submitting an offer for a domain name when ... read more ...
Wed 25th February 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
EnCirca Becomes 1st Registrar For .Bank & Teams Up With The ICBA - According to a press release just out,  EnCirca.com is the first approved ICANN-accredited registrar for the new gTLD .BANK fTLD Registry Services LLC is the operator of the .BANK top-level domain. The Independent Community Bankers of America® (ICBA)   announced that they will be working together with and EnCirca to help community banks understand and register for the soon-to-be launched .BANK top-level domain. “The new .BANK domain extension, which offers enhanced security, will have a more ... read more ...
Tue 24th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy releases earnings, picks GDDY ticker - Domain name registrar gets one step closer to IPO. GoDaddy filed an amended S-1 statement with the SEC today that revealed fourth quarter and full year 2014 financials, as well as the company’s planned NYSE stock ticker GDDY. Fourth quarter revenue at the company grew to $371.7 million, up from $356.9 million in the third quarter and $305.9 million in the same quarter of 2013. The company reported a net loss of ($26.8) million for the quarter, about in line with the third quarter. For the year, ... read more ...
Fri 20th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
So we got a call from Register.com this week… - Registrar called about a renewal, and it was strange. If you have any domain names at a Web.com registrar (Register.com and Network Solutions), you know the company is big on marketing to its customer base. You literally get one email every day from the company, promoting everything from search engine optimization to Facebook pages. Most of them end up in your spam folder. This week I got a call from Register.com that was helpful in one way, but disconcerting in another. I won a domain name in a ... read more ...
Thu 19th February 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rightside Reports 4Q Revenue Up 13.5%: Makes Almost $8 Million on Losing New gTLD Apps - Rightside reported its earnings for the 4th Quarter today and full year ended December 31, 2014 after the market closed. Domain Name Services Revenue Increases 16% Year-over-Year 4Q Total Revenue Increases 13.5% Year-over-Year Domain name services revenue for the three months ended December 31, 2014 increased 16% to $43.2 million compared to $37.2 million for the same period in 2013. Organic growth of 15%, which excludes the acquisition related benefit from Name.com, was primarily due to an increase ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How to Get a Lowest Prices during GoDaddy - GoDaddy has a bunch of pricing tiers and discounts. The best deal depends a lot on the size of your domain name portfolio. If you’re a domainer, you shouldn’t be paying list price for domain name registrations at GoDaddy (or any registrar, for that matter). Since a lot of readers use GoDaddy, I thought it worthwhile to run down the various discount options at the registrar. Price is one of the most important considerations when choosing a domain name registrar, according to last year’s Domain ... read more ...
Wed 11th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Online partnership splits, one association will work new TLD - Companies end .online partnership, but all three will help market the domain name. A three company partnership for the .online top level domain name has broken up, and it appears Radix will now run the domain name by itself. A partnership between Radix, Tucows and NameCheap won the contention set auction for .online last year, reportedly paying more than $10 million for the domain name. All three parties then made capital contributions to the partnership to cover the cost of the auction and running ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy justification IPO filing - GoDaddy updates S-1, but it doesn’t include final 2014 financials. GoDaddy filed an amended S-1 statement with the Securities Exchange Commission today. I’ll save you a couple hours of combing over the new document for changes…there aren’t many, unless you’re fascinated by GoDaddy’s corporate and shareholder structure and its investors’ plans to minimize taxes. Using Intelligize’s Smart Compare feature, I compared the current S-1 to the previous one filed November 17. Essentially, ... read more ...
Mon 9th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web.com strikes understanding with investors, Rightside extends understanding with NameCheap - Web.com and Rightside reveal deals. Here’s some news about two publicly traded domain name companies. Web.com has struck a deal with Okumus Fund Management, which owns about 15% of the company’s shares, to add two new members to the board of directors. John Giuliani, the former CEO of Conversant and Rick Rudman, the former CEO of Vocus will join the board. Shares in Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW) are down about 2% today, slightly above their 52 week low. In other news, competitor Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME) ... read more ...
Fri 6th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web pattern association sues GoDaddy over "It's Go Time" slogan - Company says it was using the slogan first. A small web development company is suing GoDaddy over its “It’s Go Time” slogan, arguing that it started using the moniker well before GoDaddy adopted it. Plaintiff The Easy Life, LLC runs GoWeb1. The company says it is actually a reseller of GoDaddy’s domain name services. It alleges that it has had the same account manager at GoDaddy and has been emailing newsletters to that account manager — including the It’s Go Time slogan – since at ... read more ...
Thu 5th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy wants to obvious domain suggestions formed on geography, business type - Patents reflect techniques for better targeting domain name search results. GoDaddy has filed three patents for targeted domain name search results based on the user’s location or business type. Two of the patent applications were filed in August 2013, and the third (continuation) patent (embedded below) was filed in September 2014. All three applications were published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today. The patents explain methods of determining the location, language and business ... read more ...