PALM BEACH, FL –An interesting opportunity has arisen from new domain name registry company Donuts Inc., which operates roughly 240 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Although I am less than a huge fan of new gTLDs, there are industry veterans who do in fact use them in certain scenarios of ‘super premiums’, and you’ll have an opportunity to filter through a list of over 1.1 million names (previously on hold) now being released in a price-drop by the … [Read more...]
VeriSign Quarterly Reports Indicate Legacy “.net” and “.org” Future Not So Wonderful
PALM BEACH, FL – Each quarter, VeriSign, Inc. (VRSN), releases its “THE DOMAIN NAME INDUSTRY BRIEF” market report, highlighting the growth of the domain name system as well as the individual growth of name registration, in numbers, for various extensions including their own “.com”, and “.net” domain names. These reports also include other legacy extensions such as Public Interest Registry's “.org” and leading country-code “ccTLDs.” Not surprisingly, ccTLDs continue to grow … [Read more...]
Will JP Morgan’s Launch of Cryptocurrency Further Squeeze Domain Name Sales?
NEW YORK, NY – It’s been a very interesting few years recently hasn’t it? As if there weren’t enough reasons for your typical domain name investor to diversify his online bets, here comes another big one. Financial powerhouse JP Morgan Chase has announced it will be launching its own cryptocurrency called "JPM Coin" with a fixed rate value of $1. The move solidifies a [sort of] ‘questionable’ industry with instant validity in my opinion as JP Morgan acts as the first major … [Read more...]
Two New Alternative URLs Hit Superhighway
NEW YORK, NY – If you’re looking around for a few good ways to confuse new prospective customers, you’ve got two new great opportunities to completely derail even your best marketing efforts; .LUXE and .PAGE new gTLDs have just worked their way into the mix. Minds + Machines, the company behind .LUXE domain names, which are intended to serve the Ethereum, blockchain and security industry, has released the .LUXE domain which opens for general availability on November 6, … [Read more...]
Google to Combine Paid Search Ads with Content; Who Needs Organic Anyway?
NEW YORK – Google loves ads, especially when ads are just as relevant and helpful as organic search results. Think about it like this; if you owned Google, imagine a day where your search engine results were just as accurate, relevant and helpful as any of the other organic search results. You could literally have an entire page of results, which were all paid for through your auction system, and users wouldn’t think anything of it. People would just continue to “Google” … [Read more...]
Donuts Acquisition of BudURL Makes Good Use of New Top Level Domain Names
NEW YORK, NY – Donuts Inc, the company behind hundreds of new domain name extensions has acquired a link shortening service formally known as BudURL, and rebranded it as BL.INK. The service had been around for ten years and was founded by Andy Meadows. The acquisition took place sometime in 2017 according to a company press release, yet Donuts had been operating it in “stealth mode” quietly building in key features which will enhance the services ability to customize URLs … [Read more...]
Uh Oh: 400,000 Less gTLD Registrations First Quarter of 2018, Vs Previous Quarter
NEW YORK – New gTLD proponents will be less than excited to learn that according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, new gTLD domain registrations, despite there being more awareness :) and more names available for registration, such extensions experienced a decline of 400,000 registrations or loss of 2% within the first Quarter of 2018 (Q1) when compared to the last Quarter of 2017 (Q4). Verisign creates these industry briefs to include quarter-over-quarter … [Read more...]
CBS News Offers Readers ‘Bad Advice’ in 6 Best Practices for Choosing a Domain
NEW YORK, NY – Usually when you read an article in Google News, you expect it to give you some good advice, especially when it is a reputable news website. That’s not what happened today when Google News led me to question whether or not I was even on a real news website. Rather than focusing so much on cleaning up Facebook and Twitter, maybe Google should check their own inclusion practices. The article is on CBS News Detroit and it is called “6 Best Practices for Choosing … [Read more...]
From the Floor: Premium .COM ‘Dreamers’ May Find Reality of Ownership, Closer
NEW YORK, NY – If ever you considered getting that “big name” in a .com extension, there may never be a better time than right now. The domain auctions are, for the most part, a ‘wholesale market’, so most people expect auction prices to be, well - better than average. However, most would not expect the “super-great” deals we all saw at NamesCon this year (2018), which were potentially better than any year past. And talk about “Great”... its .com version (Great.com) sold for … [Read more...]
US Fortune 500 Businesses, Their Domain Name Characteristics, and Secure Status
NEW YORK, NY - Each year Fortune Magazine publishes a list of the largest companies in the United States by revenue. Below is the list for 2016. Also below, are some interesting characteristics of their domain name choices including whether or not these companies are prepared for SSLs on their corporate websites. 494 are using .com domain names, 4 use .nets, 1 .org, and 1 .xyz. 494 (98.8%) have chosen the ".com" extension for their domain name. 235 (47%) are running … [Read more...]
What Do You See Here? Top 10 Legacy Domain Name Sales Over Last Few Years
NEW YORK, NY - Thanks to sites such as Namebio, we can examine REPORTED domain name sales over the years in just about any order or scenario. Today I wanted to look at the top 10 domain name sales over the last few years for legacy and some popular domain extensions. They are listed here twice; once accounting for only characters in the domain and then again for those including numeric and dashes. There has been some changes in the investments from foreign countries such as … [Read more...]
Forget That: Bing Wants Users to Ignore Ending .Com Domain Extensions
NEW YORK, NY –They say that actions speak louder than words. This holds true with Microsoft’s Bing.com search engine, the second most popular search engine service, which has implemented an interesting change new gTLD lovers may be pleased about; they’ve removed the right-of-the-dot extension in search results for all .com domain names. So what is the subconscious message here? Performing a search on the BING.com search engine this morning, here, New York Eastern Time … [Read more...]
Corporate Giant with New gTLD Explains What, How and Why It Chose New Domain
NEW YORK, NY - Canon Inc., a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan, is one of hundreds of global corporations which have applied to operate their very own domain extension on the Internet. These new web addresses, specifically, this one, .cannon, will serve as one of potentially several official sites for the Corporation for ensuring users are on the actual Cannon site as it is an internet address only Cannon will be permitted to use. Other more common addresses … [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...]
New gTLD Success Will Be Measured Only by Use; Not Sales, Not Registrations
NEW YORK, NY - This week a new gTLD sale made the news, not because of its great keyword, but due to its high price and its ending extension. The domain name casino.online recently sold for over $200,000.00 at SEDO. This might seem like a domainers dream-sale turning a lucky registrant into an instant success, but it was far from a general availability registration; it was actually a domain name reserved by the registry. So basically, it was, for the most part, a planned … [Read more...]