Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Court grants temporary restraining order against domain mimicking VerisignDNS.com.

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the registry for .com domain names, has successfully taken down the domain name VerisignNNS.com, which it says was about to be used in a cyber attack on internet infrastructure.

A court granted a temporary restraining order against the unknown owner of the domain and granted Verisign the ability to put the domain in registry hold status, meaning it cannot be used.

The company said that the domain was created to deceive users who would otherwise visit or VerisignDNS.com or communicate via email, the domain name for Verisign managed DNS services that are currently being transitioned to Neustar.

Its court filing was originally made under seal and much of it is redacted. However, the unredacted portion references DNSpionage and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Verisign suspects Russian hackers are behind the domain name registration.

The lawsuit is here (pdf).

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The latest data about domain name registrars and .com domain names.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers February 2019.

Starting this month, I’m including 123 Reg in GoDaddy’s numbers. This pushes its .com total to over 50 million.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations:

1. GoDaddy.com* 884,685 (NYSE: GDDY)
2. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 193,620  (214,018)
3. NameCheap Inc. 146380 (160,061)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 126422  (139,405)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 123,707 (217,462 in January)
6. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 112,636 (116,104)
7. Web.com++ 83,164 (108,996)
8. Alibaba (HiChina) 76,420 (97,945)
9. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 70,794 (77,587 )
10. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 69,317 (72,182)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of February 2019.

1. GoDaddy* 50,529,991
2. Tucows** 12,554,559 (12,564,886 in January)
3. Endurance+ 7,076,003 (7,091,446)
4. Web.com++ 7,720,716 (6,727,908)
5. Alibaba 6,193,225 (6,208,947)
6. United Internet^ 5,629,371 (5,631,764 )
7. Namecheap 4,627,488 (4,592,302)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,272,339 (3,181,547 )
9. Google 2,266,405 (2,187,443)
10. GMO 1,965,061 (1,959,506 )

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and 123 Reg
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

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New management desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy.

DigitalTown’s new management is trying to clean up an ugly balance sheet.

DigitalTown (OTC: DGTW), a company that has tried many business models and owns a lot of domains under new top level domains, is hanging by a thread.

Last month the company named Sam Ciacco as the new CEO and former ICANN CFO Kevin Wilson as CFO. I’m surprised anyone would take these roles as there’s a lot to clean up, and the payoff isn’t clear to me.

Today, the company published a press release saying that it’s making “promising progress on clean up efforts.”

In the release, the company admits it doesn’t have a viable revenue generation model and its goal right now is to merely remain SEC-compliant. It is borrowing money to pay for services required to remain compliant.

Much of DigitalTown’s revenue in the past was generated by weird new top level domain deals in which it booked revenue as marketing payments from registries but then agreed to register a certain number of domain names.

The company is trying to convert as much debt as possible into equity. Common shares last traded for five-ten-thousandths of a penny.

I imagine Ciacco and Wilson have to convince creditors that there’s some future business plan possible, or just explain that without converting, their debt is likely to go unpaid and push the company into bankruptcy.

Rob Monster, current CEO of domain name registrar Epik, was the CEO of DigitalTown from 2015 until stepping down in September last year.

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Company with descriptive domain name tries to get the singular version of the name through UDRP.

Mimic Skateboards Inc., a skateboard seller that uses the domain name CustomSkateboards.com, has lost a UDRP it filed against the domain name CustomSkateboard.com (singular). The World Intellectual Property Organization panelist did not find reverse domain name hijacking, however.

The domain name is owned by Point Distribution, another company that sells custom skateboards.

Panelist Scott Blackmer included a lengthy discussion of facts in the case, including how the Complainant is trying to get trademarks for CustomSkateboards.com. One of the applications is for a stylized mark and states that “No claim is made to the exclusive right to use ‘CUSTOMSKATEBOARDS.COM’ apart from the mark as shown.”

Given the facts and descriptive nature of the domain name, I’m surprised that Blackmer did not find reverse domain name hijacking after considering it. He merely denied the claim because the domain wasn’t registered and used in bad faith.

Lewis & Lin represented Mimic Skateboards. The firm is well versed in domain name law and UDRP, and I’m surprised it filed this case.

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Country code domains are still the majority outside of North America.

Take a look at the chart above. What do you notice?

While .com dominates North America, it is secondary in ICANN’s other four regions.

It’s easy to be United States-centric, but the reality of domain name demand is very different around the world.

Afnic, which operates the French country code domain name .Fr, released a report detailing the domain name market in 2018 that included this chart. It’s a great look at the market and required reading for anyone interested in the current mechanics of the domain name market.

If you travel or live outside the United States, you have undoubtedly seen the importance of country code domains in other regions of the world.

Of course, regions are large and the dominance of .com vs. ccTLDs varies by country. And .com is still quite common in most countries, even those in which the country code domain is the most used.

ccTLDs are, by their nature, limiting. Afnic notes:

These data highlight the difficulty for new entrants to impose themselves faced with “cultural prisms” in one case prioritizing the notions of region and proximity, and in the other case a global approach that overrides any reductive specific feature implied by the TLD chosen.

The report has many other takeaways. Here’s a good one about the registry/registrar dynamic and how some registries need to follow a different strategy:

As we already noted in 2018, the fact remains that the registry – registrar system will no doubt have to change in the future, by increasingly favoring the emergence of specialized or “proximity” resellers, who will take care of marketing nTLDs to the relevant niche markets. The transformation is not an obvious one for every player and remains slow to enter the mores, registrars often considering themselves as wholesalers whose role is not to build and facilitate dealer networks optimized for this or that target. Current and future nTLDs cannot, however, be successful without the changing of the retail system.

Afnic also notes that 50% of new top level domains are potentially “loss-making” if they sell domains for less than $20 wholesale, and 83% if they sell below $10.

The full report is available online.

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A Mexican tire dealer, a new U.S. political party and a restaurant marketing company bought domain names this week.

We’re headed into the summer season, which can be a bit slow for domain sales. But Sedo had a nice list of sales from the past week, and I uncovered 14 sales that appear to be to end users.

Here’s the list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.

SweatCoin.com £12,000 – Gonna make you sweat? Not clear who bought it but they’ve started setting up the website.

Spedition.de €10,000 – Forwards to the website for Cargo International, a German shipping services provider. Spedition is German for “carrier”.

CyberSix.com $9,880 – CyberSix A software company focused on cybersecurity including a virtual Chief Information Security Officer service.

Productores.com $5,500 – Purchased by Presuel, a Mexican dealer of tires and related automotive accessories. Currently, they operate from Llantas.com.mx (Tires.com) so this new purchase could be to broaden their reach since Productores translates to “Products”.

CenterParty.com $3,500 – A site for a new American political party trying to establish itself between the left and right.

PartsForMyCar.com $3,000 – Fenix parts is a car parts dealer.

EdFrank.com $3,000 – No surprise here — purchased by a guy whose name is Ed Frank.

Scene.ly $2,995 – A video marketing service for restaurants.

EssentricsTV.com $2,945 – The Esmonde Technique operates Essentrics.com for its health site.

SWWC.org – $2,500 Southwest West Central Service Cooperative. It’s an educational group.

Gabru.com $2,500 – An apparel company called Gabru, which is a Punjabi term. The site is under development.

YummyBio.com €2,000 – The domain forwards to its Yummy’s Facebook page. Yummy is an organic frozen food line based in France.

Basket24.com €2,000 – Forwards to Polskikosz.pl/, a website about professional Polish basketball.

CCABA.com $2,000 – The Carolina Center for ABA and Autism Treatment.

 

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Usually a very long time.

Brandable domain names are an interesting domain investment. I’d split brandable into two buckets:

1. One word dictionary domain names that can be used as a brand unrelated to the dictionary meaning. Examples are colors, animal names, as well as verbs and other nouns.
2. Made up words and two+ word combos.

It can take a while to sell either of these two to an end user. And while the first category can be sold to other domain investors, the market for reselling brandables is more limited.

In BrandBucket’s most recent newsletter, the company disclosed how long domains were listed on its service before they sold.

For the most recent month, the median listing time of domains that sold was 29 months. The shortest was 33 days and the longest was over 10 years.

Think about that. This is the time it took for domains to sell, but only a minuscule fraction of the domains on BrandBucket ever sell. And BrandBucket screens out the bad domains, too.

Brandable domains, specifically made up words and keyword combos are tricky. It’s nearly impossible to do outside marketing to end users.

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Web.com’s platforms generate nearly a half million dollars of sales in May.

Web.com’s aftermarket platforms NameJet and SnapNames combined to sell 97 domain names for $2,000 or more in May, totaling $462,000 in sales.

The three letter domain name vzn.com led the way on NameJet at $23,700. This seems like a domain Verizon would want to own.

Refuse.com led SnapNames at $15,200.

Some other sales that pop out to me are:

• CollegeLoans.com $20,299 – Sure to be a hot topic in the next election cycle.
• Iceland.org $12,100 – Country names are usually too broad, but not for this tourist destination.
• Tripadvisr.com $5,056 – it’s only a matter of time before they lose this domain.
• Inferior.com $2,647 – Thoughts on this negative connotation domain? Maybe an anti-counterfeit group could use it to talk about how counterfeits are inferior.

Here’s the full list of sales for $2,000 or more:

Domain NameSale PricePlatform vzn.com23700NameJet xijiu.com21800NameJet collegeloans.com20299NameJet refuse.com15200SnapNames yona.com13688NameJet iceland.org12100NameJet microcreditsummit.org11700NameJet soca.com10500NameJet vitatech.com10110NameJet xnnn.com8501NameJet madeinusa.org8500NameJet bodyshapers.com8020NameJet ivtherapy.com8001NameJet karta.com7977NameJet 570000.com7500SnapNames qtcp.com7100NameJet pureintimacy.org6500NameJet lecu.com6200NameJet weebeastie.com6118SnapNames agod.com6100NameJet planeo.com5600NameJet lazybear.com5515NameJet xiro.com5200NameJet goxi.com5100NameJet nodeathpenalty.org5100NameJet tripadvisr.com5056SnapNames augustus.org5000SnapNames photolinks.com5000NameJet cahokiamounds.com4900NameJet businessplans.org4800NameJet metals.org4735NameJet cavemen.com4540SnapNames zzaa.com4500NameJet 5d.net4400NameJet cleanlife.com4185NameJet bigsister.com4101NameJet icim.com4000NameJet javajobs.com3656NameJet cops.org3579NameJet megacard.com3520SnapNames netconsult.com3459NameJet dialects.com3339NameJet aesham.com3300NameJet 13797.com3200NameJet tubei.com3010NameJet 13159.com3000NameJet 13220.com3000NameJet 13252.com3000NameJet 13302.com3000NameJet 13309.com3000NameJet 13626.com3000NameJet 13657.com3000NameJet 13676.com3000NameJet 13679.com3000NameJet 13691.com3000NameJet keat.com3000NameJet panicware.com3000NameJet hoyos.com2951NameJet adventuregear.com2910NameJet timeoutgroup.com2888SnapNames redlasso.com2851NameJet u-e.com2822SnapNames ieme.com2800NameJet siccos.com2795SnapNames amtrade.com2650NameJet inferior.com2647NameJet antigrain.com2600NameJet garmentbag.com2600NameJet tapers.com2600NameJet wasil.com2600NameJet theartdepartment.org2577SnapNames epur.com2507SnapNames mxm.org2501NameJet phob.com2501NameJet uran.com2501NameJet 13020.com2500NameJet 13060.com2500NameJet kogls.com2500NameJet sportsclick.com2429SnapNames ardc.com2423NameJet notox.com2374SnapNames humanclone.com2322NameJet panteon.com2311SnapNames agrofeed.com2306SnapNames 13244.com2300NameJet goboomerang.com2295SnapNames kaleidoscope.net2267NameJet 13044.com2200NameJet 13348.com2200NameJet koushi.com2151SnapNames legalia.com2020NameJet kaat.com2010NameJet 13343.com2000NameJet 3gsmworldcongress.com2000NameJet beatthebooks.com2000SnapNames electricman.com2000NameJet starships.com2000NameJet

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WebQuest bought the domain name as part of a $100,000 package; sold free.games for $335,000.

Last week DNJournal reported that free.games sold for $335,000.

I believe this is the highest new top level domain sale between a domain investor and a buyer. There have been larger public sales but they were directly between the registry and buyer.

Chad Wright of WebQuest sold the domain name. WebQuest has purchased many new top level domains and I see the company name showing up frequently in Whois on the best new TLDs combos.

I have confirmed that WebQuest originally purchased the domain from the registry as part of a three-domain package for $100,000. The domains were free.games, shooting.games and racing.games.

Wright said that he picked these names because they have high search volume. He thinks the domain could have sold for more.

“I knew this one could command a much higher price when the right time came,” he told Domain Name Wire. “Personally, I feel I sold it on the lower end of what it could have gone for but I need more Bitcoin.”

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From .co to Neustar.

Nicolai Bezsonoff had a good job in banking in NYC when his friend Juan Calle called him and asked to meet. Juan told him about his plans to turn .Co into a brand and asked Nicolai to join him. Bezsonoff didn’t want to give up his good job to join a domain name company, but then he did what any banker would do: he ran the numbers. He liked what he saw and joined Juan as he relaunched the .co domain. Today, Nicolai joins us on the Domain Name Wire Podcast to talk about how he got into domains and his views on the industry as the current VP & GM of Registry Services for Neustar, which bought the .co registry. Hear his thoughts on what responsibilities registries should have around content, how registries can differentiate and more.

This week’s sponsor: Name.com.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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Non-profit grossed $137 million last year.

ICANN published its most recent Form 990 tax return last Friday (a convenient time to bury news). The return covers the financial year ending June 30, 2018. Here are some takeaways from the tax return:

Net assets fell from $465 million in FY 2017 to $451 in FY 2018.

Revenue fell from $303 million to $137 million; the prior year had a big boost from auctions including .web.

Expenses were essentially flat year-over-year, down less than $1 million.

It paid Jones Day $5.4 million for legal expenses

ICANN paid 183 contractors and employees six figures.

12 employees/contractors had compensation of $400,000 or more. This number balloons to 18 when you consider untaxed compensation.

9 employees/contractors had compensation of $300,000 or more, with six people popping up to $400k when you consider untaxed compensation.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Domains added via GoDaddy listing service now have GoDaddy branding.

GoDaddy adds its logo to landers.

GoDaddy has added its logo to sales landers on client domains, which should give a boost to inquiries and sales.

The company started by changing the branding from Afternic to GoDaddy on its own portfolio of domains. It simultaneously changed the serving for these domains to faster servers. It immediately saw a 10% conversion lift.

A few months ago it added the GoDaddy branding to for sale landers for domains added via Afternic, but not domains that were added via GoDaddy’s listing tool. Just recently it added it to all domain names.

The Afternic name isn’t well-known outside of domainer circles. GoDaddy is a trusted name, so it makes sense that potential buyers will respond better to this branding.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Company hires new counsel after being found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

Celgene is making a second attempt to get the domain name CellGene.com.

In February of this year, pharmaceutical company Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) was found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking in its attempt to get the domain name CellGene.com. The World Intellectual Property Organization panel found that Celgene attempted to mislead the panel.

Now the company is using new counsel at Wiley Rein to try its hand in U.S. courts.

The $66 billion company filed an in rem lawsuit against the domain name in Virginia courts where .com registry Verisign is located.

The lawsuit is for violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and trademark infringement.

In the suit, Celgene points out that it believes the domain owner is PortMedia, the company that responded in the UDRP for the domain. It states that PortMedia has been found to have engaged in cybersquatting on at least five occasions and has handed over obvious trademark domains in other cases. (One of the examples it gives is for Esty.com — a case in which PortMedia actually won.)

The trademark infringement claim is notable. Even if the ACPA claim fails, Celgene shows screenshots of pay-per-click landers that had ads related to the pharmaceutical company.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Google Adsense continues to move away from text-only ads.

Examples of richer Google Adsense ads.

Is the Google Adsense text-only ad about to die?

Google sent an email to Adsense publishers today detailing some changes to its ads. It says:

We’re moving towards richer ad formats, phasing out text-only and display-only ad units to further improve user experience, and to fully reflect the pool of ads we have in the market. As a result, the “Text ads only” and “Display ads only” ad units in your account have been renamed to “Display ads” and from early 2019 will be updated to serve all ad types.

Text ad styles

We’re deprecating text ad styles for “Text & display ads” ad units. From now on, you won’t be able to create ad styles for your new ad units. Your new ad units will have Google-optimized text ad styling. As this feature is being deprecated, your existing ad styles will also be optimized by Google in the following months.

Google frequently adjusts based on the performance of its ads. Its text ads have become more stylized over time, adding simple elements like arrows. Now they are shifting more to include graphics and other elements.

The image at the top of this post is an example of new ad styles that Google says publishers might see on their websites. Note the addition of a logo with text or text overlaying an image.

While these might perform better, I doubt we’ll see many graphical elements on Google’s own search results.

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Alvin Brown provides a tutorial on how to create a personalized domain name suggestion tool using GoDaddy’s API.

It’s been a while since my last tutorial spotlighting the use of GoDaddy’s API to retrieve a list of domains associated with your GoDaddy account.

Today’s tutorial aims to help create a simple tool that returns available domain names based on submitted keywords and domain ideas.

There is no shortage of domain name suggestion tools available when brainstorming what to name your next product, service, business, or project.

Before diving into today’s tutorial, please review and read previous tutorials to learn how to get started using GoDaddy’s API, and its various API endpoints offered to programmatically manage various aspects of your account.

At the end of this tutorial, you’ll find a link to download the zip file containing the entire code example for the domain name suggestion tool.

It’s also worth noting the tutorial code is procedural instead of object-oriented for the sake of simplicity, and not encouraged for use in or as production-ready environments.

Another key detail to pay close attention too, it ensuring you add/replace GoDaddy API credentials with your own credentials, or this tutorial will not work.

Without further ado, open up a text editor of your choice, and let us get started.

Again, I won’t dive into the details but will give a high-level overview of the necessary parts to use GoDaddy’s suggest method to retrieve a suggested list of alternate domains.

Creating search form for domain name suggestion tool

From a text editor of your choice, save and name the following php file: suggest.php. With main file created, the first item of business to address is the HTML form used to submit keywords. Copy and paste the following html into the suggest.php:

 

The code screenshot is really simple, containing a mix of PHP, HTML, Javascript, and CSS. The styling of the page can be found in the following css files for Bootstrap 3 and a local file I created (see zip file):

• bootstrap.min.css
• dnw-gd-suggest.css

The last 10 or so lines of code in the suggest.php contains the logic to display a suggested list of alternate domains once the form has been successfully submitted.

Although contained in the suggest.php file, the results of the PHP code above are not visible from a web browser on initial page load. The form must be completed and submitted to reveal results.

With the frontend UI/UX in place, let us dive into the page functionality once submitting keywords or domains for suggested list of alternate domains.

Creating PHP logic for domain name suggestion tool

At the very top of the suggest.php file, copy and paste the following PHP logic:

The first item to note in the image is the use of PHP’s built-in define function, which is implemented to define the constant variable SITE_NAME (i.e., Domain Suggestions).

The next set of variables to define are mission critical to authenticate and instantiate a GoDaddy API request. The API_KEY and API_SECRET credentials can be obtained by visiting the API Key Management page.

After defining critical variables for GoDaddy API authentication, the next set of variables to define are as follows:

• prepend – an optional variable if you would like to prepend alpha, numeric, or alphanumeric values to submitted keywords
• typer – this is a required variable
• msg – default variable used to capture and return human-readable error messages to display
• searchDNAvailable – default variable used to trigger whether or not to display domain results each time the page is loaded or submitted. If value is 0, then no domains are shown (i.e., initial page load). If value is 1, then form was successfully submitted and suggested list of alternate domains are available for display.

The PHP logic for what should occur when form is submitted can be executed once variables are defined. The code below determines whether or not the submit button has been pressed.

If submit button has been pressed, then an error message is defined by default using the msg variable. In this case, the error message is displayed if the user clicks the submit button without entering a keyword.

The next few lines proceed to sanitize submitted keywords (i.e., $_POST[‘domain’] is cleaned and set as value of keywords variable) to ward off any hackers attempting to hijack the search tool should host on a public web server.

The last line of logic contains all the heavy lifting. If keywords variable is not empty and is defined, then the following variables are defined:

• msg is set to equal nothing, and this now replaces the previous error message
• typer is set equal to KEYWORD_SPIN (other available values per GoDaddy’s API documentation for suggest method: KEYWORD_SPIN, keyword spin, EXTENSION, extension, PREMIUM, premium, CC_TLD, cctld)
• searchDNAvailable is set equal to 1
• searched is set equal to the getDomains function, passing typer as first argument and keywords as second argument

Completing the aforementioned variable definitions closes out the PHP logic for establishing and displaying the suggested list of alternate domains.

But not so fast though. If you were to open a web browser and attempt to execute code up to this point, you would encounter warnings of the following functions not defined: getDomains, RemoveSpecialChar, and printDomainResults.

Necessary PHP functions for domain name suggestion tool

Below is a high level overview of 3 critical functions necessary for successfully executing this tutorial (each function is included in suggest.php file):

getDomains

The getDomains function is the brains of searching and compiling the suggested list of alternate domains based on source (i.e., typer variable) and keyword (i.e., keywords variable). Within this function exists PHP’s built-in CURL method that makes the API request to the suggest method with submitted keywords and sources.

In addition, feel free to modify the country and limit variables as well as add variables to narrow or expand domain search based on GoDaddy’s suggest method attributes:

• country – two-letter ISO country code to be used as a hint for target region
• city – name of city to be used as a hint for target region
• sources – sources to be queried (see previous section for typer variable)
• tlds – top-level domains to be included in suggestions
• lengthMax – maximum length of second-level domain
• lengthMin – minimum length of second-level domain
• limit – maximum number of suggestions to return
• waitMS – maximum amount of time, in milliseconds, to wait for responses; if elapses, return the results compiled up to that point

RemoveSpecialChar

The RemoveSpecialChar function is the most simple of the 3 functions, using PHP’s preg_replace and regex to remove any special characters from keyword submittal.

printDomainResults

The printDomainResults function prepares domain results to present to web browser display using HTML. Each domain is linked to GoDaddy’s domain availability page to check the domain’s availability for registration (see image below).

Closing Thoughts

I encourage you to download the tutorial code, make necessary modifications, and see where this tool takes you.

DOWNLOAD dnsuggest.zip for GoDaddy API Suggest

If hand registering domains is your strategy, or you simply need assistance in discovering an alternative domain for your next business, idea, project or whatever, this tool aims to help you save time and money.

With not much effort and slight modification to the printDomainResults function, you could easily host your very own domain search tool for the general public to use.

Taking the aforementioned path could transform this tool into a profit center using affiliate services (i.e., CJ Affiliate) to associate domain registrations to domain registrars (i.e., NameCheap.com, GoDaddy, HostGator and many more…). (hint hint)

Um, where do I go for more information?

Take a look at this ad from the most recent issue of The Economist. What’s missing?

Yep, no domain name. No way to find out more.

It would be one thing if this company were a household brand, but most people haven’t heard of it. That’s why it’s advertising.

In fact, when I looked at the ad, I couldn’t quickly figure out what the brand was. Globality seems more like a slogan/tag line than a brand and the color blends in with the other text.

But the company is Globality and uses the domain Globality.com.

A couple of years ago Slack ran an ad in The Economist without a domain name. It added the domain to future ads. Don’t be surprised if Globality recognizes its mistake and adds its domain name in future ads, too.

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No related posts.

An electronics trade association, a plant seller and a cryptocurrency company bought domain names this past week.

 

Sedo closed a whopper of a sale this past week–Cooking.com for $402,500. The domain doesn’t resolve and I haven’t been able to determine if it’s an end user buyer or an investor. But I was able to find 16 end user sales in Sedo’s most recent list.

Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.

HappyLook.com $40,000 – I’m a bit perplexed why the owner of quant trading company AG Capital bought this domain, but this is definitely an end user price.

Electronics.org €12,888 – What a great name for industry association IPC, which calls itself Association Connecting Electronics Industries.

GardenAngel.com $11,250 – The domain forwards to the website for plant company Monrovia. It has a trademark for Angel. Interestingly, someone else has a trademark for Garden Angel for a plant watering device.

Infralink.com $10,000 – M.C. Dean Building Intelligence designs commercial buildings and provides services (such as security) to them. I can’t find anything on its site about Infralink, but it sounds like a product it might offer.

Balance.ca $7,000 – Paradiso Ventures o/a Balance company is a cryptocurrency company.

MRcustomhomes.com $5,995 – MR Project Management, Inc. is a custom home builder in the Washington, D.C. area.

WandaBus.com $4,888 – The domain is registered to Amy Wanda of Peaceful Inc. It’s clearly a play on her name.

CXO.info $4,330 – CXOsync LLC organizes IT conferences.

Thepictaram.club $4,330 – The Pictagram Club is a news site about social media.

Charmian.com $3,750 – Charmian is being developed to sell corsets.

BKMall.com $3,500 – This domain is short for Baby Kingdom. It forwards to kmall.baby-kingdom.com.

LACasinos.com $3,300 – Tumes Media is a performance marketing company in Malta (where a lot of casino affiliates are).

JobsTech.com $3,250 – ConvexTech Inc. is an IT outsourcing company. The domain forwards to JobsRiver.net.

BounceCustomerService.com $2,602 – The domain resolves to a site for Bounce N’ Play inflatables. It has a contact form for customer service. The domain was registered about a year ago.

ExpressVoice.com $2,500 – The Whois record is private and the domain doesn’t resolve, but the nameservers are for Express Employment Professionals.

Pocketbook.in $2,000 – Batmore Capital LTD runs the site Pocketbook-Int.com selling some type of eReaders.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Related posts:

1. 17 end user domain name sales including Hallmark
2. 13 end user domain name sales from Sedo
3. This week’s end user domain name sales

He sells onions on the internet, and people love it.

Peter Askew returns to the podcast this week for an update on his projects. A story he recently published titled “I sell onions on the internet” went viral and sent over 100,000 visits to his website. Peter reveals the impact this had on sales, but that the bigger satisfaction for him was being able to spread the word about the value of domains. We also discuss his purchase of Onions.com, how one business failure led to a six-figure domain name sale, and his plans for BirthdayParties.com.

This week’s sponsor: DNAcademy.com. Use code DNW for $50 off.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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1. New Domain Transfer Policy – DNW Podcast #111
2. Making money with brandable domains – DNW Podcast #132
3. Boost your domain sales chances – DNW Podcast #135

Googlebot will index the mobile version on new sites.

Registering a new domain name to launch a website? Make sure the content works well on mobile devices.

Google announced today that any new sites/domain names it indexes will be on a mobile-first basis. This means its Googlebot will crawl a mobile version of the site for indexing rather than a desktop version.

The search giant already does this for many websites, but for existing websites, it determines if they are ready for mobile first before using the mobile Googlebot. Not so with new websites; they must be ready to go out of the gate.

Of course, almost all new websites are mobile friendly and this is why Google is making the change.

In a blog post about the change, it noted that it still supports dynamic serving and mobile URLs but it advises against it. Instead, site owners should use responsive design. (Can we just get rid of .mobi already?)

I find Google’s desire for fully responsive sites to be somewhat in conflict with its AMP program, which uses separate URLs for fast-loading mobile pages.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Related posts:

1. Google no longer bolding keywords in domain names

Organization wins dispute and will get shorter domain name.

Nelson Mandela Foundation Trust has won a cybersquatting dispute over the domain name Mandela.org.

The organization was established in 1999 when Nelson Mandela stepped down as President of South Africa. It was created for Mandela to do charitable work such as building schools, HIV/AIDS work and research. It now also handles the legacy of Mandela.

It uses the domain name NelsonMandela.org.

It filed the dispute against the domain name back in February.

The owner of the domain name said that he registered it for free software he distributes and that it stands for “Micro Advanced Normalized Database Exploring for Long Activities.”

The panel didn’t buy that argument.

Although the domain was registered in 2000 (and the panel considered that date in its decision), DomainTools records show that the current owner actually didn’t acquire it until 2010.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Related posts:

1. Weed control company files lawsuit claiming Weeds.com is cybersquatting
2. UDRP Complainants should stop misusing the UDRP for business disputes and trademark infringement disputes
3. UDRP has its limits when it comes to taking down counterfeit websites