Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Google’s registrar now the ninth biggest for .com domain names.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers October 2018.

As forecasted, Google Domains has surpassed GMO to become the 9th largest registrar for .com domains. As of the end of October it had over 2 million .com domains under management.

Starting this month I’m combining United Internet’s main registrars to include more than just 1&1.

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

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 893,103 (868,031 in September)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 204,213 (133,156)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 183,542 (174,114)
4. NameCheap Inc. 139,033 (139,581)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 135,590 (170,284)
6. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 130,915 (143,179)
7. Web.com++ 105,815 (99,859)
8. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 92,312 (85,550)
9. United Internet^ 71,257
10. NameSilo 68,758 (88,409)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of October 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,222,603 (49,079,269 in September)
2. Tucows** 12,709,575 (12,751,782)
3. Endurance+ 7,240,990 (7,335,322)
4. Web.com++ 6,730,384 (6,722,165)
5. Alibaba 5,972,559 (5,852,659)
6. United Internet^ 5,675,949 (3,688,497)
7. Namecheap 4,452,551 (4,405,568)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,639,761 (2,522,185)
9. Google 2,005,816 (1,953,943)
10. GMO 1,975,188 (1,979,668)

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

* 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
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

© 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 Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission.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. A strong month for .com; here are the winners & losers
2. .Com’s Top Registrars
3. .Com Winners & Losers

Organizers issue report summarizing keynotes.

If you missed last week’s NamesCon conference in Las Vegas, the conference organizers have put together a great summary of most of the events on the keynote .Global stage. It’s called the NamesCon 2019 Trend Report.

The report has photos and summaries of:

• What’s Next for NamesCon Global with Soeren von Varchmin, Braden Pollock, Bill Sweetman, Andrew Rosener
• Building a Safer Internet and Fighting Abuse, Pinky Brand
• Learn How to Price and Sell Your Portfolio, Haseeb Tariq
• Data Rules: Rolf Larsen, Bhavin Turakhia, Richard Merdinger, Akram Atallah
• Proven gTLD Strategies For Global Reach: Rolf Larsen
• The More Language Changes: Erin McKean

Even if you were in Vegas it’s unlikely you caught all of the keynotes, so this report is a great way to recap what you might have missed.

© 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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Website builder makes last-minute ad buy for Sunday’s Super Bowl LIII.

Website builder and domain name company Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) will have a commercial in this year’s Super Bowl, making it five Super Bowls in a row for the company. It was a last minute ad buy so it is repurposing a previous ad with supermodel Karlie Kloss.

The Wix Super Bowl commercial will promote Wix’s SEO Wiz and Pro Gallery tools.

Both Squarespace and GoDaddy, which have advertised in previous Super Bowls, will not have commercials in Super Bowl LIII.

Here’s the Wix ad:

© 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. Wix adds 177k paying customer in Q3, revenue up 40% YoY

A video game platform, a forex broker, and co-working company bought domain names last week.

This week the NamesCon live domain name auction brought in $2.3 million in sales. And while there were certainly some end users raising paddles, most of those sales were to domain investors. On the end user front, I uncovered 10 sales at Sedo and one that Greg Ricks sold on his site PerfectName.

Here are the end user domain sales. You can view previous lists like this here.

Olsen.com $51,511 – GLC Softwares builds a number of software products. Its CEO also runs Mastermind.com…and his middle name is Olsen. (This sale was on PerfectName.com.)

Play.de €30,000 – The nameservers for the domain changed to online-casino.de, although the original online games site of the previous owner is still resolving.

PaulValentine.com €24,000 – Jeweler Paul Valentine, which uses the domain name paul-valentine.com.

IAmYours.com $9,000 – The domain forwards to IAm-Yours.de – so this is an upgrade for this German clothing brand.

MoonCast.com $5,000 – It’s hard to say who bought the domain, but the site has a logo of a moon. Perhaps a podcasting service?

Pro.Group €3,000 – Forwards to FXPro.com, self-proclaimed “World’s #1 Online Forex (FX) broker”.

CrewWallet.com $2,999 – This domain was purchased by Apollo Ship Chandlers, Inc. which provides cruise ship catering services.

DrDerm.com $2,999 – This domain was purchased by the Utah Valley Dermatology group that currently uses UVDerm.com for its website.

CreditCardGenerator(.)com $2,600 – I’ve read the home page a couple of times. As best I can tell, it’s selling peoples’ credit card numbers.

FortNetworks.com $2,500 – Fort Network is a Spanish internet/phone/TV provider.

WorkLodge.com $2,499 – A co-working space that has several locations in Texas and Florida.

© 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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NamesCon auction tops $2 million and extended auction closes in two weeks.

This week’s NamesCon domain name auction in Las Vegas grossed $2.3 million in sales.

Five domain names sold for six figures:

OL.com $900,000
Leads.com $435,000
DomainNames.com $370,000
DJs.com $130,000
Stop.com $110,000

The auction went much faster than previous ones as the auctioneer and organizer Monte Cahn did a good job moving the bids and hammer.

An extended online auction is taking place on NameJet and will close on February 13. Last year Great.com sold for $1.2 million in the extended auction, so the $2.3 million total is sure to rise.

Here’s a full list of sales from the live auction:

DOMAINPRICESALE TYPE ol.com900000Floor leads.com435000Phone domainnames.com370000Floor djs.com130000Floor stop.com110000Floor mywebsite.com70000Pre-Auction mez.com29000Floor chatsites.com21000Pre-Auction bg.net20000Floor xga.com20000Floor traceroute.com14300Internet abdul.com13000Floor np.net13000Floor cannabiscompany.com12000Floor repossession.com11000Internet smartdrugs.com9500Floor fk.org9000Internet coordination.com8000Floor solvent.com7600Floor insurance.us7000Internet qv.net7000Floor 70s.com6000Floor shoerack.com6000Floor dietsupplements.com5500Floor ibar.com5500Floor xm.co4500Floor pathological.com4200Internet dieticians.com4000Floor dingy.com4000Internet glucose.org4000Floor illc.com4000Floor numerals.com4000Floor startupfunding.com4000Floor safevape.com3600Floor multiplexer.com3500Floor start-up.com3500Floor corporatebrand.com3200Floor lotus.net3100Floor thebes.com3000Floor localapp.com2600Floor abomination.com2300Internet vap.net2100Floor poov.com1900Floor purged.com1800Floor tms.net1800Internet byuc.com1600Floor antiqueappraisals.com1500Floor coat.net1500Floor rfc.net1460Internet flexible.org1300Floor carpetflooring.com1200Floor chelsy.com1200Floor medschools.com1200Internet mpm.net1200Floor ncb.net1200Floor salvager.com1200Floor surgical.center1200Floor enfl.com1100Floor makingnoise.com1100Floor sharp.net1100Floor byga.com1000Floor city.directory1000Floor nutritionalproducts.com1000Floor bathroomsink.com900Floor billiardgames.com900Floor debtprograms.com900Floor rkn.net900Floor welcomegift.com900Floor bellybuttonrings.com800Floor internetmarketingservices.com800Floor readinglessons.com800Floor pfkc.com700Floor tourism.global700Floor bab.org600Floor qt.club600Internet vok.net600Floor vti.net600Internet bzl.net500Internet een.org500Floor escort.io500Internet lcsm.com500Floor prostitute.org500Floor vab.net500Internet cheapflights.global400Floor equation.org400Floor lasvegas.events400Floor solarbackpack.com400Floor sportswear.co400Floor vm.club400Floor xaf.net400Floor craft.info310Internet

© 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. These domains have met their reserves for next week’s NamesCon auction
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Annual General Meeting will be in the domain capital of the world in 2021.

ICANN will hold its 2021 Annual General Meeting in Seattle.

ICANN has officially selected Seattle for its 2021 Annual General Meeting. The meeting will take place October 23-28, 2021 at the Hyatt Regency Seattle.

Seattle is home to more domain name companies than any other city. It’s the home of Donuts, Amazon.com, DomainTools, Epik and Top Level Spectrum. It also has Enom (Tucows), Google Domains and GoDaddy. DNAcademy is based there and it will soon be the new headquarters for Domain Name Wire, too.

Here’s the lineup of ICANN meetings between now and then:

ICANN65 (Policy) June 2019 Marrakech
ICANN66 (Annual General) November 2019 Montreal
ICANN67 (Community Forum/Spring Break) March 2020 Cancun
ICANN68 (Policy) June 2020 Kuala Lumpur
ICANN69 (Annual General) October 2020 Hamburg
ICANN70 (Community Forum) March 2021 TBD
ICANN 71 (Policy) June 2021 TBD

© 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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Just about everything above-the-fold is ads.

For all of Google’s talk about how website owners need to provide good content above the fold, not just ads, Google.com has become a bunch of ads. Today I was searching for “domain name” (no quotes) and this is what I saw above the fold:

There are four ads on top. The only organic content is from Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that registrars (including Google itself) are paying to advertise for the term.

As for rankings, here’s what I currently see on the first page of results (I was not logged in to Google when searching):

1. Name.com
2. Domain.com
3. Wikipedia
4. Network Solutions
5. Google Domains
6. BlueHost
7. Verisign
8. Namecheap
9. GoDaddy

© 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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NamesCon concludes its run in Las Vegas.

.Com pricing panel at NamesCon. Photo by Ron Jackson.

NamesCon 2019 finishes today in Las Vegas with expert roundtables. This was the sixth and final installment of the conference at The Tropicana in Las Vegas. Next year the conference moves to Austin.

If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that no one will miss the Tropicana. It’s not exactly the crown jewel of Las Vegas.

As for this year’s conference, I feel like the enthusiasm level was up a bit from last year. Lots of optimism. We’ll see how that plays out in the year ahead.

On Tuesday I participated in two panels. In the first, I interviewed Blake Janover of Home.loans and Mike Kugler of Vacation.rentals about their experiences with their domains after paying $500k for them. While some of the questions were about new top level domains, this was also a chance to talk to two end-user buyers. They aren’t domain investors; they bought domains because they want to capitalize on the value of good domains.

The second panel was about .com price increases. Derek Newman did a great job moderating the panel, including asking questions back to people in the audience to add value to the panel. Elliot Noss has such a great historical perspective on .com and added a lot. Zak Muscovitch represented the Internet Commerce Association and domain owners’ interests. I talked a bit about the adversarial relationship that has popped up in the past months between Verisign and domain investors, including some of its biggest registrar customers. While Verisign has a duty to its shareholders to make as much as it can from .com, its sudden about-face on domain investors after spending 10+ years courting them and creating tools to help them buy more domains is startling. By the way, Verisign didn’t sponsor NamesCon this year after doing so in the past.

I interviewed lots of people at the conference for Monday’s podcast, so stay tuned for that.

© 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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Come to my two sessions today at NamesCon.

The third day of the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas is about to begin. I’m on two panels today that I invite you to attend.

At 11 am I will chat with Blake Janover of Home.loans and Mike Kugler of Vacation.rentals about their $500k new top level domain purchases. We’ll talk about what they’ve seen with SEO, how their customers have responded to the domains and more.

At 1 pm I will take part it what will surely be a lively discussion about how much Verisign gets to charge for .com domain names. Derek Newman will moderate the session that also includes Elliot Noss of Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) and Zak Muscovitch of Internet Commerce Association.

I look forward to seeing everyone today.

© 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:

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Reports show domains as an investment and the latest trends.

Escrow.com (ASX:FLN) released two reports this morning with data on the domain name market.

The first is a comparison between domain name returns and returns of other asset types such as stocks, real estate and bitcoin. It calculates returns based on domain types, such as two number, three letter, etc. It shows that overall returns aren’t spectacular but that the asset class is more stable than some others. One dataset I’d love to see is a rate of return of domains that have been transacted more than once on Escrow.com.

The second report is the company’s inaugural Domain Investment Index giving data for Q4 2018. Here’s a high-level look:

Total domain transaction volume on Escrow.com

As you can see, transaction amounts have slipped for a couple of quarters but were up in Q4 2018 compared to Q4 2017.

The report also breaks down median prices of domains by length over time. There’s also a chart showing dollar volume by country.

You can review both reports here (pdf).

© 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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Paul Nicks delivering his keynote at NamesCon.

This is a live blog of Paul Nick’s keynote at NamesCon this morning.

Paul Nicks shared some valuable data about domain investing.

YoY sales of aftermarket domains from third party inventory were up 41% on 29% increase in inquiries.

30% growth in conversion rate the day they changed the presentation of domains in the purchase path. They added valuations, valuation reasons, video and a bigger presentation.

Sales were up 87% in Latin America, 60% in Asia, 56% in EMEA, 47% USA. (These numbers are all higher than the 41% number; keep in mind that they don’t have location data on all sales, but I will check with Paul to check this discrepancy.)

All regions had average sales prices of $1,822 or more. Average sale price is fairly consistent across regions.

Nicks said there are lots of types of investors at GoDaddy:

1. High volume investors doing closeouts, reg fee and selling on average $300-$500
2. High value investors buying $2,000+ and selling $20k+
3. “Sweet spot” investors buying $30-$60 and selling average $2,000-$5,000.

Nicks advises against #1 and #2 for new people entering the market. He thinks the third option is best.

Domains with 5-14 characters have higher demand and value. 80% of GoDaddy’s sales fall within 5-14 characters.

92% of sales are .com, followed by 2.6% for .org, 1.5% .net and 1.4% .co. Avg. selling price of $2,268 for .com. .Com and .Org number of sales were up YoY; .net and .co were down.

Top 6 new gTLDs sold on GoDaddy’s aftermarket (in order): .app, .xyz, .club, .life, .shop, .online. .XYZ average sales price was the lowest of these six at $924, .online highest at $2,452. Keep in mind that none of these are among top 10 sellers.

Regarding GoDaddy’s automated appraisal tool, 59% of sales on Afternic’s network were within $1,000 of appraisal price and 89% within $2,000. Nick says adding valuations is helping sell more aftermarket domains.

Half of all leads of GoDaddy’s own portfolio come from landers, not registrar searches.

GoDaddy recently started testing GoDaddy-branded landers. This change alone increased conversion 10%. They also internationalize their for sale landers with local phone numbers.

Tested with a customer changing from PPC page to for sale page, sales average per month went from $50k to $150k within a month. Has changed month to month but still much higher overall revenue than PPC lander. Clarification: this was from a PPC only with no for sale message to a for sale only.

© 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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In a keynote at NamesCon this morning, Radix founder Bhavin Turakhia ran through some of the metrics that Radix considers when marketing its top level domain names.

One takeaway is that China isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for new top level domain names. It’s good for boosting registration numbers but longtime revenue is limited.

Radix calculated registrations in 2017 and calculated that China accounted for 44% of new registrations but only 27% of renewals and just 9% of renewal revenue. Here’s a slide showing renewal estimates:

Radix’s domains are in blue and you can see the renewal rates are substantially higher outside of China. This probably has a lot to do with how domains are priced in China vs. elsewhere.

Here’s another interesting comparison:

It’s interesting to see renewal share vs. initial registrations. Again, I think this has to do with how the companies source their initial registrations and their pricing.

Turakhia says Radix uses first year renewals as its metric, not initial registrations. Whenever it undertakes a marketing campaign it runs an analysis to show that it will be profitable. It might not be profitable the first year but over time it needs to see a path to profitability.

© 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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Learn about the HSTS preload list and how to add your domain (or entire TLD) to it.

This week Ben McIlwain of Google talks about SSL on domain names, particularly the HSTS preload list. Learn about the benefits of adding a domain name to this list and how an entire top level domain can be added.

Also: Prince settles, Scratch.org lawsuit, NamesCon, WordPress.com deal and Vegas, Baby!

Subscribe via iTunes 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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Three great keynotes to attend today.

NamesCon is entering its second day today at the Tropicana in Las Vegas.

40% of attendees this year are first-timers, a surprisingly high number that might suggest a renewed interest in the domain business.

There are several noteworthy keynotes to check out today.

At 10 am, billionaire Bhavin Turakhia will take to the stage. Along with his brother, Bhavin founded Directi, Radix and Media.net.

GoDaddy VP and GM Paul Nicks presents at 11 am. He will give a data-driven presentation on how to invest in domain names.

I’m also interested in domain broker Kate Buckley’s “Storytelling in Sales” keynote at 1 pm.

The full agenda is 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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Pull out your cowboy boots and get ready for lots of BBQ.

Austin, Texas will be home to NamesCon in 2020.

NamesCon is heading to the Lone Star State for its 2020 show.

Soeren von Varchmin, CEO of NamesCon/CloudFest, announced the news in the opening session at NamesCon in Las Vegas today.

The dates haven’t been selected and NamesCon is seeking input on the time of year. It is considering either January or early September. Having lived in Austin for over 20 years, I can say that January is hit or miss for weather and early September is still very hot.

NamesCon is considering having multiple walkable venues as part of the event. With companies like GoDaddy, WPEngine and Google downtown, it would be interesting to have some events at satellite corporate venues. (There also might be a Uniregistry office in Austin by that time.)

I find it a bit ironic that NamesCon is coming to Austin right after I move from the city, but I look forward to coming back to visit.

© 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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Video promotes .Online domains vs. longer domains in .com.

Radix has launched a marketing campaign for .Online using the slogan “Business is tough. Make your domain name easy with .ONLINE.”.

It released a video in conjunction with the campaign, and I think it’s rather clever. A woman is watching TV commercials and tries to visit the advertisers’ websites. But they have long, hyphenated .com domain names and she can’t type them in before the commercials end. The final commercial is a company using .online, and she is able to quickly type it in.

It made me chuckle, and it’s Friday, so I’m embedding it 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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Pay-over-time domain marketplace will let domainers join the party with any TLD.

Names.Club will soon accept .com and other domain listings from domainers.

Names.Club is expanding its payment-plan domain marketplace to allow third parties to list their domain names in all top level domains.

The Dot Club registry originally created the marketplace for new top level domain registries to offer premium domains on payment plans. Buyers make a down payment and get immediate access to use the domain name. They pay off the balance over 60 months.

Opening the service up to domainers and all top level domains is great. I love seeing domain companies innovate. And payment plans are becoming a popular way to close deals when buyers don’t have enough cash.

Dot Club CMO Jeff Sass told me that there will be protections in place to make sure that buyers don’t use domains in a way that could harm the domain’s value. As a seller, you don’t want a  buyer to use blackhat SEO or use a domain to spam, only to stop making payments a few months in.

When a domain sells, the owner will transfer it to a holding account managed by Names.Club at the owner’s registrar. The domain can’t be transferred from this account but the buyer will be able to change the nameserver.

I’ve only done a couple of payment plan deals. Usually, I like to understand how the buyer plans to use the domain before doing the deal.

I also think five years is a long time for payments. Five years makes sense for domain registries that are playing with “house money” on their domains, but it would be nice to be able to offer shorter terms.

Personally, I’d feel most comfortable putting names on Names.Club that won’t break the bank if the buyer does something bad with them.

Another innovative thing about Names.Club is how it integrates brokers into the action. They can offer buyers a discount code and then they get paid when someone they refer buys a domain.

Bottom line: kudos on expanding the marketplace. Some kinks might need to be worked out, but I love seeing stuff like this.

© 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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Join me for discussions about big new TLD sales and .com prices.

I will be both a moderator and panelist at next week’s NamesCon conference. I invite you to come to my sessions on Tuesday.

Making sense of $500k for a nTLD, 11 am Tuesday 1/29 on the RegistryOffice breakout stage

I interview two people who spent $500k on new top level domains: Blake Janover, who bought Home.Loans for $500,000 and Mike Kugler, who paid $500,300 for Vacation.Rentals. We will discuss what gave them the conviction to spend record-breaking amounts on new top level domain names and how the domains have (and haven’t) worked out for them. I interviewed Blake on my podcast a year ago and Mike about 9 months ago. Both have launched their sites and we’ll get an inside look at how their domains and websites are performing.

.Com Price Increase, 1 pm Tuesday 1/29 on the .Global Keynote stage

Derek Newman will moderate a session with me, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss, and Internet Commerce Association general counsel Zak Muscovitch discussing .com prices. In light of the U.S. government giving the green light late last year to .com price hikes, we will discuss the merits of .com price changes and who wins/loses.

I hope to see you at one or both of these sessions.

© 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 that get lots of https traffic will get an SSL certificate.

Domain name parking company ParkingCrew is now generating SSL certificates for domain names and serving traffic over https once the domains meet a certain threshold.

Parking companies are struggling to figure out how to cope with browser updates that mark sites as ‘not secure’ if they don’t have an SSL certificate. For example, Last year Undeveloped.com created a solution to issue SSL certificates for domain names.

ParkingCrew won’t issue a certificate for all domains. Instead, it will monitor for how much traffic the domain gets over https to determine which domains need them. If there’s a lot of https traffic hitting the domain, then an SSL certificate will be issued and traffic will be served over https for a period of time.

As an example, an expired domain name that used to have a website secured with SSL may receive inbound traffic from https:// links.

Customers must use ParkingCrew’s nameservers in order to use SSL.

© 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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GDPR and a registrar’s parking ads might have saved it from a second reverse domain name hijacking finding.

A wine company changed its branding to Familia Torres and then went after a family’s domain name FamiliaTorres.com.

Wine producer Miguel Torres S.A. lost another cybersquatting complaint filed with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and narrowly avoided being found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking for a second time.

In 2001, the company was found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Torres.com.

The company filed the new case against FamiliaTorres.com, which is owned by a family with the last name Torres in Miami.

In the wine company’s defense, the Whois record showing the owner was blocked because of GDPR when it made the initial complaint. (Using historical Whois at DomainTools would have uncovered the owner’s identity.) Also, the domain registrant’s registrar was showing wine-related pay-per-click ads on the domain.

But once WIPO revealed the owner’s information to Miguel Torres S.A., the wine company didn’t back down. It doubled down in its amended complaint.

While the Respondent didn’t ask for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking, the panelist considered it:

In this case, the Panel has found the Respondent’s evidence to be compelling in demonstrating long-standing rights and/or legitimate interests in respect of the Domain Name in light of the Respondent’s surname and Hispanic background. At the time the Complainant filed the original Complaint, it was likely not in a position to know of this (given especially that, because of redaction in purported compliance with the GDPR, the Respondent’s identity was not known) and it had seen that (albeit it appears for a limited time, unbeknown to the Respondent) the Domain Name resolved to a parking page featuring pay-per-click links to third party websites including those of competitors of the Complainant.

On the face of it, therefore, the Complainant could argue some justification for filing a complaint, despite the length of time since the Domain Name was registered. On the other hand, it could be argued that by the time the Complainant came to file the amended Complaint it knew the identity of the Respondent and might have anticipated the likely defence on the part of the Respondent. The Panel has also noted that the Complainant was arguably coy about admitting that it had only adopted the ‘Familia Torres’ brand very recently.

However, panelist Ian Lowe decided that the “circumstances are not sufficient” to find RDNH.

I’m a bit surprised by this decision given that the wine company only recently started using the Familia Torres moniker. GDPR and the registrar’s parked page ads might have saved the wine company.

The Complainant was represented by Curell Suñol S.L.P. The domain owner was represented by Muscovitch Law P.C.

© 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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