PALM BEACH – What do you do when a live and online auction produces lackluster results? Why, you re-run it again a couple of months later (Just kidding - As soon as I saw the title of the email, Back by “Popular Demand”, I thought, yea right – but NUMBERS my friends, do not lie, and those numbers show that Domaining, is indeed very much alive and well; at least at NamesCon it is.) Yesterday, NameJet.com and RightOfTheDot.com announced via email and a formal press release … [Read more...]
U.S. State Domain ILLINOIS.com For Sale
PALM BEACH – According to Above.com’s latest Domain Name Marketplace Report, the exact match domain “ILLINOIS.com” is for sale; a state name I missed and wasn’t aware of in my previous GEO domain article earlier this month titled “Premium GEO Domain Name Shakeup with High Number of Sales and Offerings”. The domain name was originally registered in 1995, around the same time many state and major city names were scooped up. According to some internet chatter it appears a … [Read more...]
Seven Days Remain to State Your Case on Price Cap Removal for Legacy Domains
PALM BEACH – ICANN, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and PIR, Public Interest Registry, are considering the removal of current ‘price caps’ on legacy domain extensions such as “.org”, “.biz”, and “.info”; if you have an opinion on them doing so, you have limited time to make your comments and opinions heard as the window for public comment proceedings will close in seven days on April 29, 2019. The current Registry Agreements expire soon and they … [Read more...]
Coconspirator Faces 20 Years in Prison Over Scheme to Steal Domain Name at Gunpoint
CEDAR RAPIDS – A man who owned a social media company and planned to steal an Internet domain name by force was convicted last week and faces 20 years in prison. According to CNN, a jury found Rossi Lorathio Adams II guilty for hiring his cousin to break into a house in Cedar Rapids and force the transfer of an Internet web address by its current registrant at gunpoint. Adams cousin, Sherman Hopkins Jr., was charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and … [Read more...]
Hallmark Continues to ‘Cash-In’ On Premium Holiday Web Name “Easter.com”, Or Does It?
WEST PALM BEACH – Originally registered in 1998, the domain name “Easter.com” redirects visitors to the Hallmark.com website where conveniently Easter cards and gifts are highlighted. This is a good use of a premium domain name, outside of development of course. Hallmark has owned this domain name since at least 2010 when it was highlighted by Domain Name Wire. Out of curiosity, I decided to visit it this morning to see what’s there. A good question to ask, if even … [Read more...]
Yet Another Proper UDRP Decision Gets Highlighted In “The News”, WTF Is That?
WEST PALM BEACH – There are two main places my Internet travels will take me when I have some extra time to keep up with domain name newlines. These two places are, 1) Domaining.com, where I can find commentary on pretty much anything meaningful that is going on in the domain name space, and if I don’t find something that grabs’ my interest there, I’ll move on over to 2) Google News. If something in the domain space is not happening in at least one of these two places … [Read more...]
One Less Way to Monetize Your Domains As Chitika Network Plans Shut Down April 30th
WEST PALM BEACH – A popular alternative to Google Adsense has announced it will be shutting its virtual doors on April 30th 2019. Chitika, an online advertising network that grew quickly in popularity after hitting the market in 2004 is shutting down. On Wednesday, April 17, the company sent all publishers an email announcing the pending shut-down: After 15+ years in business and millions of publisher relationships, Chitika is hereby shutting down and closing its business. … [Read more...]
‘Pointless’ Concern Could Become Domain Investor ‘Reality’ in AU Top Level Domain
WEST PALM BEACH – Back in 2017, I wrote about the likelihood of growing regulation aimed at domain names; the article was titled, “Could Domain Investing Industry End with Legal Provision for Domain Hoarding”. That writing stirred some discussion, with one domainer going as far as considering such a possibility as ‘pointless’ or as he put it, “like planning for when an asteroid hits your house”. Well, such pointless concern is exactly what is being considered by AuDA (the … [Read more...]
Premium GEO Domain Name Shakeup with High Number of Sales and Offerings
WEST PALM BEACH - If you ever wanted to get yourself a nice flashy city, state or regional exact match GEO domain, right now seems like a good time to take notice of your surroundings. GEO, or geographic domain names are web addresses which are exact match spellings of specific places. "Premium" GEO domains would be considered either entire countries, states or major cities (ending in a .com), and there are a growing number of premium geographic domain names which are … [Read more...]
Google “Adds” Additional Layer of Domain Validation Before Monetizing Websites
WEST PALM BEACH – Google AdSense, once the greatest and easiest way to immediately monetize your domain or website, has added an additional layer of validation to the game, by requiring your domain name be approved before allowing you to run ads on them. One of the greatest things about Google AdSense, was, that in the past you could slap your ad code scripts on any web page, and relevant - targeted ads would immediately appear, assigning each click on an ad, to a … [Read more...]
.Inc Domain Set to Be Next New gTLD ‘Flop’ Accompanied by Ridiculous Price Tag
NEW YORK, NY – If you have been waiting to get your hands on a new .inc domain name, you might as well just keep waiting; that is, until the price comes down somewhere between ‘reason-ability’ and ‘reality’. I’ve been interested in one of these domain names for quite some time now, however, checking the availability of a specific name, I’ve noticed that it will cost a whopping $3,500.00 to secure it during the early registration period. When the name becomes available for … [Read more...]
Sedo.com Releases Inside Look at New Expired Domain Search Functions
NEW YORK – Sedo, the worlds real estate listing service for digital assets, has released a new section dedicated to helping both novice and expert users find and acquire expiring domain names. The new section is hosted at the following URL: https://expiringdomains.sedo.com The tool provides multiple ways to filter, sort and search through domains and includes information about a domain names indexed pages in Google while using the popular Majestic backlink checker to … [Read more...]
Google Search Console Consolidates Common Variations Into Single Domain
BOCA RATON – Not sure why it has taken Google so long to realize and implement a sites various version into webmaster tools, but they have finally sent out a notification letting users know they have done so. It’s been one of the most annoying things; to have to enter each individual version of your sites URL into webmaster tools. For example, www, non www, http://, https, etc. This should go without having to designate as it just creates extra meaningless work when adding … [Read more...]
Almost 10 Years Now Dealing With Google’s Ambiguous “(Not Provided)” Keywords
NEW YORK – I remember when reviewing my domains traffic statistics was not only informative, but fun. I loved to see how my SEO efforts led to pages bringing in more and more keyword traffic from search terms the pages ranked well for. Such is not the case these days as A) most of the free traffic has dried up due to ads, maps, local listings, etc; and B) Google has removed all the keywords that lead to page traffic (within statistics programs), so its not much fun … [Read more...]
Redirecting Domains with Backlinks Helps SEO; Google Doesn’t Want You to Know
NEW YORK – Morgan Linton’s blog caught my eye this morning as it discusses the redirecting of domain names for SEO, an often hotly debated topic. I find this topic especially interesting as it appears to me that Google often dances around the truth with explanations of what works and what doesn’t. Google’s new webmaster PR guy is John Mueller who basically replaced Matt Cutts in a publication relations capacity with webmasters around 2015 when Cutts was on leave. I’ve always … [Read more...]