News
.NYC chooses Sedo for tourism auction
Good tourism domain names will head to the auction block in May.
Neustar will run an auction for tourism-related .NYC domain names next month. The auction will run May 3-May 10. Some of the domains in the auction include:
Museum.nyc
Tour.nyc
Theaters.nyc
Shows.nyc
Flights.nyc
Limos.nyc
Bidders must either live or own a business in New York City.
This is the fourth registry auction for .NYC domains and the first to be held on Sedo.
The first auction for real estate names was on NameJet. It pulled in over $70,000 in sales led by RealEstate.nyc for $21,300.
The registry then held two auctions on SnapNames. The first was for fashion domains and had about $90,000 in bids. However, the top sale in that auction (Fashion.nyc for $37,000) doesn’t appear to have ever closed. The second SnapNames auction for tech names ended with $29,000 in sales.
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Used Canned Responses to make common emails faster in Gmail
More useful that Smart Reply, Canned Responses let you insert text you frequently use in emails.
Gmail recently introduced Smart Reply, a way to make it easy to respond to emails with short answers generated by Google. While these are very helpful, Gmail users should also look at Canned Responses to speed up their email tasks.
Canned Responses is a Labs feature that allows you to create email templates so you don’t have to type the same thing over and over. And the name is somewhat misleading because you can use these templates in emails that aren’t replies.
Here’s how to use canned responses and how you might use it to save time.
Enable Canned Responses in Labs
Go to your Gmail settings and enable the lab.
Create your canned response
Now you will create your canned response, i.e. template. To do this, create an email as if you were sending a new message to someone.
Then you need to save the canned response. Click the downward arrow button in the lower right hand corner of the email (1), select “Canned responses” (2) and then click “New canned response” (3).
A browser alert will ask you what you want to name your canned response. Enter a name and click OK.
Your response is now saved.
Insert canned responses
To use the canned response, create a new email or open the email you want to respond to. Click on the arrow button again, select “Canned responses” and then look for your template under “Insert”. Select the one you want and it will be added to the email.
Ideas for using canned responses
You can use canned responses to start a new email, respond to an email, or add uniform text to an email you’re sending. Here are a couple of ways I use it:
1. Add a disclaimer to domain name inquiries.
When I receive an email request for a price on one of my domains, I type a personal response and then insert my “domain sales” canned response. This inserts a disclaimer at the bottom of the email noting that the domain might be listed for sale on a marketplace and so the domain is subject to sale until I hear back from the person, even if I’ve provided a quote. It also includes a quote expiration.
2. Send out regular emails.
I have to send out a half dozen confirmation emails each week for my PodcastGuests.com service. These include instructions that are the same for each email other than one URL. My canned response includes the instructions and a placeholder for the URL.
I also have to send about a dozen follow up emails to people that use the service each week and I use canned responses for these.
If you frequently send out emails with similar content, canned responses is a great Labs plugin for you. It sure beats copying and pasting a template from notepad. Or worse, re-typing the messages.
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Categories: Domains
Whois and GDPR with Tim Chen – DNW Podcast #179
What happens if Whois, which is often used to hunt down bad guys, goes dark?
Security companies and brands rely on Whois records in order to quickly identify and mitigate all sorts of bad behavior: phishing, counterfeiting, fraud, spam, DDoS and more. What happens when these experts can no longer get access to Whois? On today’s show we talk with Tim Chen, CEO of security company DomainTools. Tim explains how companies use Whois to thwart the bad guys and what happens when Whois goes away. This is especially relevant given what registrars are planning to do because of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Also: UDRP conflict of interest, GoDaddy picks AWS, Google goes mobile first, Brexit for domain names, Scientology domains and more.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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Google is now one of the Top 10 .com registrars
Google Domains finishes 2017 among the top 10 domain name registrars for .com.
Google Domains is now a top 10 registrar for .com domains.
Google launched its domain name registrar in the middle of 2014. It grew quickly and is now among the top 10 registrars in the world for .com domain registrations as of the end of last year. It surpassed OVH in the latest official data from Verisign.
The data are from Verisign’s (VRSN) most recent official breakdown of domain transactions by registrar, which concludes December 2017.
There are four main reasons I believe Google Domains has grown so quickly:
1. It got a great ranking on Google for key terms. Go figure.
2. It can spend whatever it wants on Google Adwords. Take money from one pocket and put it in another.
3. Cross marketing between other Google products/services.
4. Brand trust and recognition.
One curious thing about Google Domains is that it only accepts one-year registrations.
In December, these were the top 10 registrars in terms of new .com registrations:
1. GoDaddy.com* 842,032 (897,003 in November)
2. Tucows** 167,285 (187,418)
3. Endurance+ 155,589 (169,207)
4. HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. 125,286 (163,557)
5. NameCheap Inc. 117,990 (152,154)
6. Xin Net Technology Corporation 89,455 (83,992)
7. Web.com++ 88,067 (96,305)
8. Google Inc. 73,704 (77,297)
9. GMO Internet, Inc. dba Onamae.com 48,918 (51,056)
10. 1&1 Internet 42,570 (54,521)
Here’s the current leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of December 2017. There were approximately 135 million total .com domains registered as of the end of December.:
1. GoDaddy* 46,830,764 (46,542,942 in November)
2. Tucows** 15,578,732 (15,720,758)
3. Endurance+ 8,006,707 (8,076,223)
4. Web.com++ 6,666,853 (6,666,497)
5. HiChina 5,281,736 (5,290,049)
6. 1&1 3,780,143 (3,804,080)
7. GMO 2,196,043 (2,200,618)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 1,653,909 (1,589,452)
9. Namecheap 1,469,175 (1,350,681)
10. Google 1,391,333
Namecheap should leap up the charts next month. Millions of domains were transferred from Enom (Tucows) to Namecheap in January.
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below and let me know if I’ve missed any large registrars.
* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** 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
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New top level domain names at a tech conference
A few new TLDs popped up at a tech conference in Florida.
Michael Ward of The SSL Store attended Innovation Summit in Tampa Bay this week. As he walked through the exhibit floor he had an experience much like what I have at non-domain conferences: companies are using new top level domain names, but they are far outnumbered by other top level domains.
Of the 250 exhibitors, Ward spotted three that were using new top level domains and one of them was using two.
When Ward asked one of the companies why they went with a new top level domain they said “because all of the .coms were taken”.
Here are the new TLDs he saw:
GlobalVillage.world is used by a publishing company.
IOP.global offers a peer-to-peer system and yes, they have a token.
Miami.exchange is coming soon.
Mercury.cash is a cryptocurrency payment system.
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A troubling connection in a UDRP
The complainant’s lawyer and one of the panelists were in the same law school class and worked at the same law firm.
Take a look at this World Intellectual Property Organization decision for the domain name ProntoPro.com.
In a 2-1 decision, the majority of the panel found that the Atlanta company that registered ProntoPro.com did not violate the UDRP because the domain owner had rights or legitimate interests in the domain name.
You can read the decision and I think you’ll agree with the majority of the panel that it’s far-fetched to think an Atlanta company that deals in local services was trying to attract business meant for a company in Italy (where the complainant is based).
The third panelist, Nicoletta Colombo, who was nominated by the complainant, found otherwise. Colombo said the domain owner didn’t show any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name despite operating a company in Atlanta called Pronto.
Colombo is in Italy. So your first thought might be a bit of country pride. But dig a bit deeper and it gets troubling.
The complainant’s counsel was Alessandra Ferreri. Ferreri happens to also be a WIPO panelist. She graduated from Università degli Studi in Milan in 1993 and then worked for Rapisardi Intellectual Property from 2000-2014.
Colombo also graduated from Università degli Studi in Milano in 1993. She also worked for Rapisardi Intellectual Property from 1995-2009.
So both the complainant’s counsel and the dissenting panelist are WIPO panelists. They also appear to have been in the same class at law school. They subsequently worked for the same law firm.
Does that seem troubling to you?
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UK residents might lose their .EU domain names thanks to Brexit
European Commission says United Kingdom registrants will not be able to renew their domains after Brexit is completed.
Last year a DNW Podcast listener asked me what Brexit would mean for people in the UK. At the time, it was unclear.
It’s looking more and more likely that they will lose their domain names because they will no longer be eligible registrants. Michele Neylon of Blacknight noted that the European Commission sent a letter yesterday explaining how this will work:
As of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organisations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names or, if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date.
Ouch.
Of course, there are lots of proxies people can use to generally get around residency and other eligibility requirements. And there’s still time to lobby…
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Payments company commits reverse domain name hijacking
LeuPay company tries to hijack domain rather than pay for it.
A Bulgarian payments company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking in a cybersquatting dispute over the domain name LeoPay.com.
iCard AD offers services under the name LeuPay and is getting ready to start using the name LeoPay instead, according to the WIPO decision.
The owner of LeoPay.com has owned the domain name since well before the complainant had trademark rights in either LeuPay or LeoPay. He also used the domain name.
But iCard went after it anyway, making claims like “retroactive bad faith” and claiming the domain owner didn’t have a legitimate interest in the domain despite his use of it.
Panelist Sebastian Hughes did a nice summary of why this case qualifies as reverse domain name hijacking:
(i) The Complainant is represented and should be held to a higher standard than an unrepresented complainant;
(ii) The disputed domain name was registered well before the Complainant obtained relevant trade mark rights;
(iii) Reasonably diligent enquiries by the Complainant and the Complainant’s representatives would have provided evidence of the Respondent’s rights and legitimate interests in the disputed domain name;
(iv) The assertions in Section C of the Complaint that the Respondent has made no use of the disputed domain name at all, which are contradicted by the submissions in Section B that “the domain name indeed leads to a website that contains numerous links to other websites in Chinese or English language”;
(v) The Complainant’s representatives have unreasonably ignored established Policy precedent set out in WIPO Overview 3.0, in particular in seeking to assert “retroactive” bad faith registration; and
(vi) The manner in which the Complainant’s representatives sought to obtain evidence of bad faith by anonymous email solicitation.
The Panel further finds that, in light of the above factors and in all the circumstances, the following submissions included in Section A of the Complaint highlight the ill-founded nature of the Complaint, and provide further support for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking:
“The Complainant intends to concentrate all its activities, in the near future, under the brand “LEOPAY”, and therefore to make an extensive use of the trade mark LEOPAY and domain names leopay.eu, leopay.uk, leopay.fr, leopay.ch, leopay.nl, and leopay.us”.
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Take a look at The Church of Scientology’s domain names
The Church of Scientology owns thousands of domain names, including over 1,000 registered to protect its leader David Miscavige’s name.
The Church of Scientology knows a thing or two about gripe sites. Not only is the controversial organization subject to countless sites lobbing allegations about it, but it also runs its own gripe sites. For example, it runs a site at WhoIsJeffHawkins.com to discredit critic Jeff Hawkins.
So it doesn’t come as a big surprise that the organization makes a lot of defensive domain name registrations. I started noticing these domains when the group began consolidating domain names at brand protection registrar Mark Monitor this month.
DomainTools records 3,781 domain names registered to Church of Scientology International and 790 domains to Scientology’s Religious Technology Center. In my research I found hundreds of domains registered by the groups that use Whois privacy, and there are perhaps hundreds or thousands that I did not uncover.
What types of domains are they protecting?
David Miscavige
Domain names including Scientology leader David Miscavige’s name make up nearly 40% of the domain names with public Whois records. Of the 4,571 domains with public Whois leading back to Scientology, 1,760 contain the name Miscavige. Examples are:
videosdavidmiscavige.com
biography-david-miscavige.info
church-of-scientology-leader-david-miscavige.us
official-site-david-miscavige.mobi
A few of the domains with Miscavige in them are related to David’s relatives.
Other Scientology Names
While Miscavige is the most protected name in the domain portfolio, many of the other domains cover both insiders and critics. Insiders with protected names include Karin Pouw, Gregory Wilhere, David Bloomberg and dozens of others. Almost all of these domains are in the format whoisNAME.tld or who-isNAME.tld, e.g. whoisdavemiscavige.com. Oh, and there’s tomcruise-scientologist.com.
On the critic’s side, there are the domains related to Jeff Hawkins. There are also names critical of David Miscavige’s dad, Ron Miscavige, who became a critic of Scientology. Scientology has a gripe site at ronmiscavigebook.com and also owns ronmiscavige-ruthless.com and ronmiscavigeshameless.info.
Critical Names
There are many combinations of terms you can use to hate on a group and Scientology has a least a few of them covered.
scientologistssuck.info
scientologykills.us
scientologylies.com
scientology-abuse-at-the-top.info
You get the idea.
New TLDs
Scientology has also grabbed some names in new top level domains. Here are a few examples:
welcometotheageofanswers.church
scientology.cool
welcometotheanswersage.exposed
Good domain names
Scientology’s portfolio includes some domain names that have good generic value as well. Some examples are:
cause.com
clear.org
flag.org
flag.us
ot.org
theta.com
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Categories: Domains
ICANN’s budget crunch: headcount growth
Employment at ICANN has exploded along with the non-profit’s expenses.
Yesterday I reviewed the massive growth in ICANN’s expenses over the past 9 years. Today I’ll examine growth in headcount.
ICANN records the total number of W-2 employees on its tax returns, but these numbers are based on calendar years instead of financial years. ICANN’s financial year ends in June.
However, ICANN publishes a headcount number in its budget documents. These documents have changed over time (mostly for the better with more information), but I was able to get the headcount numbers from FY 2010 to FY 2017. These are the numbers as of the end of June except for 2010 and 2011, which are as of the end of May of the financial year:
The number of six-figure employees has also grown. The chart below shows the number of employees reported on the tax return as earning $100k or more in reportable income. I believe these numbers are based on the end of the calendar year, so data from FY 2016 is actually from December 2015. I also understand that this data does not include non-reportable income, such as the generous contribution ICANN makes to employee’s 401(k) plans.
The FY 2016 tax return lists 14 employees who had total compensation (including 401k contributions and non-taxable income) of $400,000 or more.
The tax returns also include the number of contractors paid $100,000 or more each year. This data is from FY 2009- FY 2016 as reported on tax returns. The information was missing on the FY 2013 return. I suspect contractor numbers were high in 2013 due to new TLDs.
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18 end user domain name purchases including .com, .co, .de and more
A cosmetics company, software firm and parking lot owner bought domain names.
Sedo’s top public sale in the past week was Sturm.de, a domain name acquired by a cosmetics company. Another nice sale was DotData.com for nearly $30,000, although we don’t know who the buyer is yet. The buyer of DotData paid the full asking price so this might have been a buy now purchase.
As usual, many of the other end user purchases were made by companies that own the second level domain in other top level domains.
Noticeably absent this week were cryptocurrency and blockchain buyers.
You can view previous lists like this here. But for now, let’s get to this week’s end user sales list:
Sturm.de €30,940 – Molecular Cosmetics bought this domain name to promote the Dr. Barbara Sturm line of cosmetics.
DotData.com $29,888- The domain name is under Whois privacy. There are a number of companies that would be interested in this domain name including this one.
WayOfLife.com $10,000 – Long Harbour Ltd is a real estate investment firm.
Pens.nl €8,550 – CSC bought this domain name, probably for National Pen Co., LLC.
CubEnergy.com $6,800 – henzhen Cubenergy Technology Co., Ltd. in China.
Bloxs.com €5,000- The domain name now forwards to Bloxs Software at Boxs.nl.
HashBrown.com $5,000 – IT company HashBrown Systems. Now I’m hungry for breakfast.
Silicone-Hose.com $5,000 – The buyer set up an email address sales (at) Silicone-hose.com, so I’ll count this as an end user that plans to sell silicon hoses.
CareProperty.com $5,000 – Care Park is a parking lot owner.
Konzept.net €4,500 – Konzept GMBH uses the domain name Konzept.com and also owns the second level domain in various other extensions.
Eco-1.com $3,750 – Arborjet is a tree and plant fertilization company that sells a product called Eco-1.
FYN.co $3,700 – This is an upgrade from fyn-co.com for FYN & CO. UG.
FlightBot.com $2,999 – The domain was registered by someone who works at Google but the domain is in a personal name so it might be a side project.
OmFit.com $2,799 – DailyMedia, Inc. operates a yoga and meditation site at DailyOm.com.
AgileCoaching.com €2,499 – This domain is being used to promote a training program.
SunPine.com $2,488 – SunPine AB is a Swedish company that says it “extracts bio diesel from crude tall oil”. Perhaps something was lost in translation there. It uses the domain name SunPine.se.
Kameras.com €2,102 – The owner of CameraMan.com bought this domain name, which means Cameras in German, and is forwarding it to his website.
ZumePizza.us $2,000 – Zume Pizza already owns ZumePizza.com so this was likely a brand protection purchase.
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GoDaddy chooses Amazon AWS
GoDaddy selects Amazon AWS for cloud.
About a half year after it announced it was planning to move from its own infrastructure to the public cloud, GoDaddy and Amazon announced today that it has selected AWS. The move will offload significant infrastructure to Amazon. Here are my thoughts on this move:
1. Moving to AWS will give GoDaddy instant tech credibility
Many people blame website problems on GoDaddy’s constantly aging infrastructure. Moving to AWS eliminates the need to manage this infrastructure and also gives the company’s hosting plans the credibility of being on the market-leading cloud provider. I often hear people blame GoDaddy and its aging infrastructure for website problems. Once hosting is on AWS, the underlying infrastructure shouldn’t be an issue. (Of course, there’s a management layer on top of it.)
2. GoDaddy was right to abandon its own cloud efforts
GoDaddy has taken two stabs at offering its own cloud services to customers. These efforts did not jive with the company’s stated mission of helping really small businesses. These businesses don’t need an AWS-like service; they need simple hosting and site creation.
3. The deal has reciprocal elements that could help GoDaddy’s core business.
According to the release:
“GoDaddy and AWS are working together to incorporate some of GoDaddy’s domain technology and website building products—Managed WordPress and GoCentral—into the AWS experience to provide AWS customers with an array of tools for quickly finding the perfect domain name and building a powerful online presence.”
Amazon sells everything and already offers domain names through some of its AWS services. Why not also promote domain registration and website building through Amazon? Depending on how this is structured it could be huge for GoDaddy. It could also help the domain name industry.
4. The PR mentions domain appraisals.
I was a bit surprised that the press release mentioned domain name appraisals:
“GoDaddy is also using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) P3 Instances—the most powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) instances available in the cloud—to substantially reduce the time it takes to train machine learning models and increase the performance of its GoDaddy Domain Appraisals tool that helps customers understand the value of their domains.”
I wonder if AWS wanted this included to promote its technology for making machine learning faster.
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ICANN’s budget crunch: How we got here
A look at data behind ICANN’s growth and ensuing budget crunch.
ICANN is in a bit of a budget crunch. Lower than expected revenues along with a re-evaluation of the required reserve fund (and tapping into it) are straining the organization.
I have plenty of thoughts on how this happened and what to do about it, but I’m going to start with a series of charts showing the size of ICANN over the past 7-8 years.
Let’s start by looking at the non-profit’s expenses over the years.
Note that ICANN’s fiscal year ends in June. For example, its 2016 financial year ended June 2016, and data from that year was reported on its 2015 tax return.
This chart shows total expenses for FY 2009 to FY 2017. Data is taken from tax returns except for 2017, which is taken from audited financial statements.
You’ll notice a huge jump in FY 2013 as ICANN scaled up to evaluate new top level domain name applications. This was a heavy-lifting year for ICANN. While ICANN’s expenses swelled from $70 million to $150 million, all but $7 million of the difference was attributed to new TLDs. (I’m counting operational new TLD costs and risk expenses, but not financial investment expenses.)
And this is where things get interesting. In the next year, FY 2014, ICANN’s allocated expenses for new TLDs dropped by $50 million but its overall expenses fell by only $26 million.
Here’s a stacked chart showing each year’s expenses divided between regular and new TLD.
See a problem?
In my next post, we’ll look at headcount at the organization.
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Warning: Be careful of suspicious Skype and Facebook messages
Malware links are going around among domain connections.
Over the weekend I received two Skype messages from people in the domain industry who I haven’t communicated with for years. Both of these messages consisted of merely a link that looks like it’s to Google and includes my name.
I’ve received these in the past. I believe that if you click on the link, it will download malware and send similar links to all of your contacts on Skype.
Shortly after receiving one of the Skype messages I received a notice from Facebook that one of the people (whom I’m also connected to on Facebook) had just joined Messenger. I won’t be surprised to receive a similar link or attachment via Messenger soon. I’ve received these types of messages via Messenger in the past.
When I receive one of these messages I typically receive a couple more from other people in the domain industry shortly thereafter, suggesting that people clicked the link.
So be careful…
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Categories: Domains
GoDaddy gets patent for text-based domain name renewal
System would make it easy for people to renew domains using a third-party texting service.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued patent number 9,929,995 (pdf) to GoDaddy for “Third party messaging system for monitoring and managing domain names and websites.”
The patent is a continuation of an earlier one the company filed for allowing people to make changes to a website via text message.
This latest patent covers technology that would allow GoDaddy to communicate with customers via SMS, app or a third-party social network to help them renew their domain name or expand their webhosting package.
For example, if a customer’s domain is about to renew, GoDaddy could send a text message to the customer and ask if they want to renew it. They could respond ‘yes’ to renew the domain automatically, or ‘no’ if they want to let it expire.
On the hosting side, GoDaddy can send a message to the customer if they are about to exceed one of their quotas and give them the option to upgrade their hosting package.
This is somewhat like a chatbot. When an ad campaign on Facebook expires the company starts a Facebook Messenger chat with the advertiser that lets them get stats and extend their ad campaign by typing plain English words.
GoDaddy Chief Architect Arnold Blinn and former Sr. Director of Product Management Nitin Gupta are listed on the patent as inventors.
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Two new top level domains over the weekend
I saw a couple of new TLDs in the wild on Saturday.
This weekend my wife and I drove to Fredericksburg, Texas to enjoy some wine and celebrate our wedding anniversary. On the way there I saw two new top level domain names.
The first was on a car as we left Austin:
The domain name is registered at Network Solutions and the website is hosted on Wix. At the time the PressureWash.Expert domain was registered, PressureWashExpert.com was registered.
The second domain name I saw was a .wine domain name. Unfortunately, I noticed it too late to snap a picture. I figured I could easily find out which winery it is by Googling for wineries in the area. I can’t find the exact winery that had the .wine domain, but I did come across this wine tasting venue that’s on the way:
vinovium.wine.
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Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
© DomainNameWire.com 2018. 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 is rolling out mobile-first indexing
Mobile version of websites will increasingly be indexed instead of desktop versions.
Google is rolling out mobile-first indexing more broadly for its search index. This means that Google will crawl a site’s mobile website content for indexing rather than the desktop version.
The move will apply to sites that use a responsive web design or are dynamically served. Sites that don’t have a mobile-friendly version will continue to have their desktop sites indexed.
Mobile-first indexing does not affect search rankings (assuming you’re serving the same content). It only impacts which content is indexed. However, mobile-friendly sites get an edge in rankings when people search on mobile devices.
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Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
© DomainNameWire.com 2018. 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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Bill Karamouzis – DNW Podcast #178
Meet a guy who has leveraged the value of good domain names and learn what he is investing in now.
Bill Karamouzis, also known as Bill Kara, has made a lot of hefty domain name investments. Some of them have been for businesses. He bought CookingGames.com for $350,000 and paid $725,000 for MathGames.com for his latest venture, TeachMe. Bill shares data from these domain purchases and also explains why he thinks there’s an opportunity to buy outdated websites and fix them up. You’ll get a lot of business ideas from this episode. Also: Make Your Own Way, Purple.com, Radix data, and an airline’s domain name troubles.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
© DomainNameWire.com 2018. 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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Could GDPR Boost Domain Sales Landers and Parking Services?
Alvin Brown considers the impact Whois changes will have on domain sales.
Over the last few weeks, a number of industry blogs have shared their insight pertaining to the impact of GDPR, the data protection law set to launch in late May, to the domain industry. GDPR applies to any companies that have data on EU residents.
As it pertains to the domain industry, one of the glaring areas of GDPR impact is the game-changing action companies are choosing to take in regards to Whois.
Many companies industry-wide are taking the stance of obfuscating all of Whois domain information to comply with GDPR, although it’s not completely necessary.
Let that sink in for a moment.
As a domain investor, if your domain selling strategy depends on buyers using Whois to make contact, then you’ll likely want to consider a different approach moving forward due to the GDPR reaction by companies.
I can’t tell you how many times in a given day I execute Whois inquiries for myself or on the behalf of clients in search of owning a particular domain.
A lack of public Whois is not only going to impact domain sales for domain investors, but possibly introduces changes in the Escrow process for domain ownership verification and the increased number of UDRP cases — no public access to Whois phone or mailing address.
There will likely remains a forwarding email address associated with the Whois record, but how likely is the general public to email a domain that looks like domain.com@domainsbyproxy.com?
Whether a pro or con, not having access to public Whois also rules out the opportunity for all parties involved to research a contact person or company — which can be a big deal when negotiating a domain transaction.
But one of the most intriguing thoughts that comes to mind was GDPR increasing the use of parking services and sales landers by domain owners. Domain owners are likely forced to take one of the following actions to keep realizing domain inquiries:
- Redirect domains to website or social platform profiles (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
- Create and redirect to custom landing pages with contact form or seller contact information, or domain marketplaces using 3rd-party solutions (e.g., Efty, Sedo, etc.)
- Use domain parking services like Efty, Sedo, ParkLogic, Voodoo, ParkingCrew, DomainNameSales, or RookMedia to name a few
- Use domain registrar parking services in conjunction with for-sale links/forms.
Of course, domain parking revenues are not what they once were a decade or so ago, but sales landing and marketplace services like Efty and Sedo stand to benefit as an affordable alternative.
And as many domain investors weigh the consequences of no longer having access to public Whois, the same could be said for domain registrars and domain parking providers.
Have you considered how GDPR impacts future business?
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© DomainNameWire.com 2018. 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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Owner of MyBoutique.it fails to take MyBoutique.com from GoDaddy
Company files UDRP after failed attempts to buy domain and threaten GoDaddy.
CSP International Fashion Group S.p.A., a fashion company in Italy, has failed to get a domain name owned by GoDaddy through a UDRP.
The company operates a site at MyBoutique.it and filed a cybersquatting dispute against MyBoutique.com. GoDdddy’s NameFind subsidiary acquired the domain name when it bought Marchex’s domain portfolio.
Implausibly, the fashion company said it only discovered that the .com was registered many years after it registered the .it domain in 2011:
The Complainant says because its domain name myboutique.it had become an important asset it recently decided to register the trademark MYBOUTIQUE and the disputed domain name, and only then discovered the latter had been registered.
Panelist Dr. Clive N.A. Trotman pointed out that companies are free to trade in generic domain names:
Trading in domain names happens in a marketplace. Prices are struck between buyer and seller and it is not a function of the Policy to interfere in people’s bargains. Absent registration and use of a domain name in bad faith, such as the targeting of trademark holders, a respondent may monetise its stock of domain names by way of advertising and may set the asking prices for them.
He also summarized the case nicely:
In sum, this dispute follows an increasingly common pattern. First, the Complainant tries to buy the disputed domain name anonymously. The next step is commonly a lawyer’s letter setting out the intending purchaser’s registered trademark rights, which was not open to this Complainant. The third step is to bring a proceeding under the Policy. As the Respondent’s Declaration put it, “Evidentially [sic], finding the price too high and believing it could get it more cheaply, Complainant initiated this proceeding. As I understand it, this qualifies for reverse domain name hijacking”.
Surprisingly, Trotman did not find RDNH. He wrote that he was “not persuaded that the Complaint was insincere or malicious”.
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