PALM BEACH, FL - Right at the start of the year's busiest shopping season, retailer Macy's notified impacted customers (by letter) that an unauthorized third party was able to access sensitive customer payment information from the Macys.com checkout and wallet pages. Macy’s notified impacted customers (by letter); portion of letter. The following information may have been accessed if it was typed into the affected web-pages by a customer: Payment card … [Read more...]
How Much Does It Cost to Build A Mobile App For My Website? Do I “Need” One?
PALM BEACH, FL - One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to building and maintaining your own mobile app is that the development phase is a set-it and forget it endeavor; it is never over. How Much Does It Cost? The cost to maintain a custom app can be steep ($10k-$100k) and each time IOS and Android release an update, most apps will need to have their code modified for the new version so developers must be within reach or on-board continually. … [Read more...]
Think Your Domains Are Safe by Using Two Factor Authentication? Think Again
PALM BEACH, FL – Sometimes I read stories that really make me think (and worry). For those who have great domains under management, you might feel super-safe by using “two factor authentications”, where your mobile device is used to verify each login you make to your registry account by sending you a text message for confirmation. Two Factor Authentication (2FA) What is two factor authentication (2FA)? I’ve often thought how horrible it might be if someone got … [Read more...]
If Google Removes URLs From Search Results, Who Exactly Stands to Benefit?
PALM BEACH, FL – Last week I ran a story about Google’s obvious intent to remove URL’s from search. The story was titled “Google Determined to Remove URLs from Search Results; Replace with Breadcrumbs” and published on October 18, 2019. It was a follow up to “EVIL: Will Google Do Away with Domain Name and Extension Entirely Anyway?” There has been wide reaction from both the SEO and Domain community on the coming change and it warrants added thought and hopefully, added … [Read more...]
Biggest Threat to .COM Dominance Is Google’s Involvement in New gTLDs
NEW YORK – According to industry news website, DomainNameWire.com, Google’s launch of “.dev” domain names is off to a prosperous start with the zone file representing over 64,000 registrations just one day after it entered general availability. That’s amazing even for a bearish believer of nGTLDs. I guess it is only a matter of time until more and more people begin accepting the fact that all of the good .com domain names are long gone, and there are these new sort of odd … [Read more...]
Google Has Begun It’s “Mobile First” Indexing Endeavours; Email Notification
NEW YORK, NY - There has been a great deal of chatter on the Internet about Google's Mobile First indexing endeavours since March 2018 when it was announced. I was just explaining this to a client yesterday who happens to not yet have a mobile friendly website. Rather than giving a long explanation of what it is and why it is important, I could probably have simply forwarded this message I received from Google this morning letting me know that one of my sites will be used in … [Read more...]
Yellow Pages Goes Green ® (Yellow Pages Directory Inc.) Makes Additional Top 100 List
NEW YORK, NY - A project I have put considerable work and time into over the years has made yet another Top 100 list thanks to https://www.vendasta.com. Vendasta offers a platform for companies that sell to local businesses. Calling themselves, an agency-in-a-box solution, it includes a sales CRM, needs-analysis tools, marketing automation, app services, and white-label fulfillment. The listing, which is very detailed and fairly accurate despite it uses only publicly … [Read more...]
Websites and Domain Names to Become Insignificant within 20 Years or Less
LONG ISLAND, NY – Ten or twenty years ago, if you wanted to find information a search engine such as Yahoo would allow you to simply type-in what you were looking for, and countless websites would appear with information related to your search. Sometimes, ugly websites would appear that had keyword-stuffed their pages with the search string, but often you would be able to find what you were looking for within a few clicks around; and your answer was always on a website or web … [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...]
EFTY: Your Own Domain Store Without Having to Build It Yourself; Seems Good
NEW YORK, NY - About a week or so ago I signed up for an EFTY (https://www.efty.com) 30-day trial account to test the platform as a way to have a domain store for some of the domains I would like to eventually sell. I already tried SEDO to sell names as well as DomainNameSales.com and some other places too but what I found interesting about EFTY was the store portion of the platform - and it is responsive (mobile friendly). As a side-note: Back in the old days when the … [Read more...]
Verisign Still Pushing Hard on .Net Domains; Sales Remain Active; New IDN for Korea
NEW YORK, NY - While at NamesCon, I noticed a television commercial for the .net domain extension pushing it as a leading “trusted extension” and touting its long standing history in the domain space; the .net domain name was created on the same day as the .com in January 1985. (I’m pretty sure the video was part of Verisign’s “Uncommonly Timeless” collection of .net marketing pieces - it looked like one of these on YouTube [one is below].) According to Verisign, the … [Read more...]
Expense Report: Domainers to See Increase in Costs via Secure Browser Requirements
Over the last year, buzz on SSL use in general has been skyrocketing due to increased hacking and search engine requirements. Now, web browsers will instill even more urgency for webmasters and site owners to get-their-act-together and prepare to tackle the challenge of converting non-secure sites, to secure. In a business field already difficult to prosper, the last thing you need is another monkey-wrench thrown into the mix. For many domain owners, including myself, it … [Read more...]
Well Holy Smokes: U.S. Internet Ad Revenues Hit Landmark $59.6 Billion in 2015; Record-Breaking Numbers
Q4 2015 Reached $17.4 Billion, Rising 23% Over Same Period in 2014; Mobile Advertising Climbs to $20.7 Billion in 2015, a 66% Upswing Year-Over-Year; Digital Video Increases 30% to $4.2 Billion NEW YORK, NY - U.S. digital advertising revenues reached an all-time high of $59.6 billion in 2015, according to the full-year IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, released April 21, 2016 by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC US. This marks a 20 percent … [Read more...]