PALM BEACH, FL – Finding a good, short, “.com” domain name nowadays is much harder than it was in the past, but it certainly isn’t impossible. What you don’t want to do, is listen to bad advice from someone who tells you to go ahead and register an alternative, such as “.net”, “.biz”, or “.info”. Whatever you do, don’t make that mistake, because you will very likely regret it at some point in the future. Unless your business is an ‘organization” you could get a “.org” … [Read more...]
Must Be Nice To Be “THE Sheriff” with “Sheriff.org”… URL Branded Vehicles
PALM BEACH, FL – Sometime back in 1996 someone had a pretty decent idea down in Florida; to register the Internet domain name “Sheriff.org” for the Broward County Sheriff's Office. I’m often reminded of this ‘solid decision’ as I live one county North and often see these URL branded police vehicles Wizz by me with “Sheriff.org” branded on the back bumper. I always think, there’s probably a lot of Sheriff’s offices around the entire country that wish they had that URL. … [Read more...]
Forbes Cites Survey Saying 70.5% Don’t Trust Alternatives Domain Names
PALM BEACH – According to Forbes, 70.5% of consumers don’t trust newer alternative Internet domain names over legacy names. These figures, used in their recent article titled, “Strategies for Getting The Most Out Of Your New Domain Name” were cited from a survey of 1,000 people across the UK who represented a range of ages. Those surveyed were asked, “Do you trust companies with .co.uk and .com domains more than those with other newer domains like .eu, .biz, .net, .fashion, … [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...]
Will People Use Alternative Domain Names Like They Do Toll Free Phone Numbers?
NEW YORK - Much like .com domain names, 1-800 toll free phone numbers with meaning in their letters such as 1-800-FLOWERS, are hard to come by these days – or even impossible to obtain, based on limited supply. Although it is indeed possible to get a 1-800 phone number today, if you’re looking for a vanity number, such as one with clear meaning in its letters, you’re much more likely to get it using an alternative such as 888. This is very much what we are seeing today … [Read more...]
Examining Past Alternative Dots Helps Predict Future Adoption of New Ones?
NEW YORK, NY – Sometimes to predict the future, it is as easy as simply examining the past. Based on a comment from one of my readers, this simple graph shows movements and numbers of registrations for some of the ‘original’ alternative dots and what is happening with them. Alternatives such as .BIZ, .INFO, .MOBI, .PRO, .NAME, .XXX for example, verse the originals. What good are or were these alternative URLs availability and how have newcomers adopted these into branding … [Read more...]
Twitter Verification Requests Get Processed by High Tech Associates in Philippines
NEW YORK, NY – Recently I submitted a request to verify my Twitter account through the online form Twitter makes available for those who want to request verification. Verification isn’t available to all users but those who are either public figures, journalists, celebrities and some media outlets will often be the types of accounts Twitter will verify, depending on the circumstances. Verified users have that cool little blue badge next to their names so Twitter users … [Read more...]
16th Year Anniversary for .biz gTLD: Let’s Look at Top 100 Sales Over Past 5 Years
NEW YORK, NY – According to NameBio, there were a total of 936 reported .Biz domain sales over the last 5 year period. These top 100 total $474,673.00 in sales. The highest reported sales on this list were the domains “Hotel.biz” for $25,000.00 with the second place name as “LLC.biz” for $23,520.00. Hotel.biz redirects to Hotels.com while LLC.biz is developed and appears to be owned by a German company. Significant as far as recent gTLD discussions and debate, although … [Read more...]
Is There a Limit to Your gTLD Stupidity Meter? At $185k a-Pop, Who Cares Right?
NEW YORK, NY - There are a lot of cool looking domain name extensions hitting the market and making the rounds these days – so many in fact it is getting hard to keep up with them all. I mostly like the short ones which at least somewhat represent the Internet such as “.web”, “.site”, “.link”, etc. But who in their right mind would want to register and own a .motorcycles domain name? Could it be any longer? I mean, nine times out of ten the beginning word (what's left of the … [Read more...]
Measuring New gTLD Growth and Market Share via The DNS Zone File System
NEW YORK, NY - As should be no surprise, new gTLD growth and usage is on the rise exponentially. There are several tools available for measuring gTLD growth and market share which are ‘fairly accurate’ as they use the DNS Zone File system which maps domain names and IP addresses. One such tool which I originally thought was new is ntldstats.com, although the owner Stefan Meinecke was interviewed back in 2014 by TheDomains.com - so it is far from … [Read more...]
New gTLD? Not So Fast; History Suggests New ‘Right of the Dots’ Could = Total Failure
It's a time where new generic top level domains are taking a lot of the lime-light in domain circles, sales charts, and buzz; but is the entire thing just a huge distraction from what domainers should really be focused on? I stumbled upon a case-in-point scenario that no domainer should ignore, and I cannot believe no-one is talking about it more. It's got me questioning even my own enthusiasm for these new, right of the dots. And please do not get me wrong; I myself have … [Read more...]