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PALM BEACH, FL – About a year and half ago in April of 2018, I wrote about an out-of-the-ordinary domain name sale when the new gTLD domain “Vacation.Rentals” changed hands for a little over ‘half a million’ in cash, supposedly.
I still sort of question the sale as either authentic and insane – or completely bogus, intentionally and strategically planned to not only create industry buzz, but boost sales for nGTLDs. Either way, and it probably doesn’t really mater that much anymore, people will draw their own conclusions, but I still do not see the sale making much sense in this lifetime.
For example, I received an email alert from NamePros.com today, “new gTLD – Vacation.Rentals sold for $500,300 (domain name only)” from a new reply to a watched thread; I figured I would check it out; it was an update mentioning the current rankings of the URL, which for a period of time, utilized that “Buzz Factor” to make it to the front page of Google.
The new post, by Casey L, brings up two important issues: 1) If the purchase was made based on search engine rankings alone – I don’t know if being beyond page one is even remotely worthwhile. (For a short time, the domain ranked #1 for the target term) The second issue, 2) look how horrendous Google is making it – even for sites in the number one position, which is VacationRentals.com. Will Google do to small business, what mother nature [supposedly] did to the Dinosaurs?
It looks like we’re moving in that direction.
Reminds me of Google’s Winners and Losers.
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Internet Marketing Services Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a ‘how to’ book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy brand Searchen Networks®
It’s all a joke and the buyer was acting very defensive and like an idiot at the time which made no sense at all.
I think he must have gotten $300 worth of Google traffic and the other $500,000, well who cares.
Here is their Twitter feed with a WHOPPING 7 followers in nearly 2 YEARS!
https://twitter.com/Vacarent
1285 tweets and 7 followers! It’s a JOKE!
Just a GIANT GTLD end-user SUCCESS!!!???
This .CRAP does not even pass the laugh test.
GREAT Follow-up article!!
Wonder how many domain investors swallowed that nonsense at the time?
Thanks Rick. A whole 7 followers? Geez… Zero effort. And like you said a few months back ‘no one gives a rat’s ass about domain names when they wake up in the morning’. I tried using the website as well today to look up a rental property and it all seemed pretty pointless. The site owner looks to have received nothing much for the purchase; the registry was the only one that benefited, probably by some purchases that wouldn’t have taken place (from the news), and their yearly renewals.
All three 500k new tld sales are highly questionable.
Donuts never did release any proof of that first nonsense sale I called out, which lead to this nonsensical one. Rick hit the nail in the head: Wonder how many domain investors swallowed that nonsense at the time? —— the real question indeed.
I doubt it was a real sale.
If it wasn’t real – that is quite shady, but without proof you could be wrongly tarnishing their reputation.
When DomainSnowflake™ Rick Schwartz bought flowers.mobi for $200,000 it left a lot of people saying that couldn’t have been legit. Many people rightly questioned it. But he has maintained that’s what he paid despite later selling it for $6,500.
In terms of domain investing a 97% loss is probably something most new investors should learn from.
Definitely seemed fishy and even back then people thought he was in cahoots with a registry – but he came out and said that he really was a sucker!
https://domaingang.com/domain-news/smart-sale-of-flowers-mobi-has-domainers-scratching-their-heads-in-amazement/
mmm what less than 15% of users click on ppc ads. so it does not matter how many ads there is for a particular keyword. A descriptive keyword far excels the value of google you know this. Many users will type in the keyword and never use google. Users do not trust google ads..they trust organic traffic.
I’m not sure about that. Google states those who do not use PPC are in most cases, missing out on 89% of web traffic, and even those with a number one organic listing, still miss out on 50%.