PALM BEACH, FL – The largest child exploitation website on the Internet “Welcome to Video” which, according to GitHub was using a dark-web address of “mt3plrzdiyqf6jim.onion” was seized and/or shut down last week resulting in over 300 arrests. According to the Department of Justice, the service was the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content. Particularly interesting was the way the sites owners were traced as I have been contemplating my first … [Read more...]
Businesses With 15+ Employees on Hook for ADA Compliance, Growing Lawsuit Trend
PALM BEACH, FL – If your business employs more than 15 people, it might be a good time to ensure your website complies with the rules required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These standards state that all electronic and information technology must be accessible to people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Over the past few years, thousands of lawsuits have been filed against websites for … [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...]
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...]
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...]
Search Optimization or Sponsored Search, Which One Is Better for My Business?
NEW YORK, NY – Whether a company embarks on typical optimization processes or just gives in and goes straight for Google’s recently re-branded “Google Ads” program is probably a question best answered only by someone who has been watching both of them evolve over the years, because both of them do work, and both can be used to grow your business exponentially, but figuring out which one works better or which will cost more is something the average business owner just has no … [Read more...]
What Is Web Site Hosting and Why Do I Need It? Seems Like A Monthly Rip Off
NEW YORK – Once in a while I come across a person, customer or prospect that doesn’t understand what website hosting is and why they might have to pay for it. They seem to feel that hosting is some unknown, unexplained add-on which seems confusing at best or a rip-off at worst. The particular people seem to think a website just 'exists' out there on the Inter-webs or are somehow part of the World Wide Web; they have trouble understanding what website hosting is and why … [Read more...]
Lights Out for Broadway Ticket, GEO Domain Site NewYork.com Over Legal Dispute
NEW YORK, NY – While researching some GEO domain names last night I discovered that NewYork.com has now disappeared. It was a huge site I was quite familiar with as I had some past affiliate dealings with them, but today it appears its gone offline and parked at Godaddy.com. This was initially very hard to believe as last time I visited the site it seemed bustling with traffic and activity similar to its New York City streets in which it ‘virtually’ represented. This … [Read more...]
From $132 to $100M: Was YellowPages.com The Smartest Domain Name Grab Ever?
NEW YORK, NY – Back in April of 1996, Dane Madsen registered YellowPages.com, an idea that popped into his mind after being demanded to come up with ad-copy for one of his firms clients, Sprint, who was rushing to be included in the next issue of the print Yellow Pages book; back then if you missed the deadline, you needed to wait an entire year for your business to seemingly exist. At about the same time, Dan was told about a company called “Network Solutions”, which … [Read more...]
Human Quality Ratings and Guidelines Continue to Become Center of Debate
NEW YORK, NY – It’s nothing short of amazing to see all of the time, money, resources and effort search giant Google engineers are putting towards accessing the trustworthiness of specific web-pages these days. I remember when the entire Google algorithm was simply based on the HTML code which made up a website. However, these days Google uses not only artificial intelligence to rank sites, but they also use 'real people' to give websites something called “QR” ratings … [Read more...]
Clever: Radix Bolsters New gTLD Adoption Through Sponsored Startups, Buzz, Goodies
NEW YORK - They say that 'money talks and bullshit walks' (at least that is what my father used to say) and no-one likely knows this better than domain registry Radix, who maintains and operates several new catchy gTLD domain endings such as .tech and .online. Since 2016, Radix has been helping startup companies by putting a little money where their mouth is and providing new startups sponsorship covering sometimes as much as 100% of their expenses for exhibit booth fees and … [Read more...]
Removing WhoIs Data from Public View Only Removes Transparency from the Net
NEW YORK – There has been no shortage of Data Privacy Leaks in the world; it almost seems like there is a new one every day. However, removing the public registration data behind all domain name registrations makes no-one any safer, and only adds more obscurity and complications to the business for those who buy, sell and trade online, and not just in domains. It’s more a solution that’s looking far-and-wide for its problem. For instance, when someone registers a domain … [Read more...]
Internet Veteran, Nat Cohen Discusses His Experience and the ICA with NamePros
NEW YORK, NY – Nat Cohen, an Internet entrepreneur who began his 20+ year journey in domain investing back in 1997, sat with popular domain name forum NamePros.com in a video interview conducted by domaining community speaker and moderator Braden Pollack which took place at the industry’s largest event, NamesCon in Las Vegas this past January. Worth mentioning, over 1,400 people from all around the globe gathered at this year’s event. In the interview, Nat goes into great … [Read more...]
A “PRIME” Example That .COM Leads in Necessity; nGTLDs Registered Defensively
NEW YORK, NY – It has been recently discovered, that the single word domain name Prime.com, which had been reportedly for sale in the seven figure range (Between $1M and $5M), at least since 2011, is now intellectual property of tech-giant Amazon. The name, which was originally registered in 1987, shows being parked since 2004 via archive. An exact ‘price’ of the domain is not currently known (although I am sure someone out there is working diligently to try and dig … [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...]
If I Had Just Started With Domain Names Today, I Don’t Think I Would Make It
NEW YORK, NY – When I started in this industry it was the year 2000. The Internet looked very different than it does today, and people were just starting to get acquainted with Google. Search engine optimization was a lot easier to do with most people not having even heard of the term “SEO”. Back then, as a website owner, you were able to take advantage of certain techniques which could easily put you ahead of the majority. Compared to today, there was little competition … [Read more...]
New gTLD Domain Sales from Major Marketplaces; What’s Developed?
NEW YORK, NY – Another list is being published today; this one is for new gTLD domain names which have been recorded at NameBio. All off these transactions have taken place over the last five years and this list ONLY contains the sales which are listed at NameBio - there are many hand registered and private or unrecorded domain sales which will not be here. Note: I only examined 100 domains max from each extension, highest dollar amounts first. Here is what I looked … [Read more...]
22 Years Later: A Look at the Top 100 .WS Domain Sales Over Past 5 Years
NEW YORK, NY – According to NameBio, there were a total of 336 reported .WS domain sales over the last 5 year period. These top 100 total $82,059.00 in sales. The highest reported sales on this list were the domains “MovieTube.ws” for $3,650.00 with the second place name as “Skaau.ws” for $2,676.00. The .ws domains' official use is a Country code top-level domain for the Country of Samoa which was originally known as Western Samoa (WS). Samoa is an island nation located in … [Read more...]
Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) for “CEOs” – ln Layman’s Terms
NEW YORK, NY - About twelve years ago when “search engine optimization” was beginning to get popular, a competing news publisher invited me to lunch at his restaurant to brainstorm about collaborating. It never materialized, but while there and after getting to know each other for a little while, he then turned to me, changed his posture in his chair a bit, sort of gathered his thoughts, and asked me straight out, “sell me on search engine optimization”, “what is it” and “how … [Read more...]
Behind The Scenes: Sometimes Good Stuff Is Happening That You Should Know About
NEW YORK, NY - Imagine if you had your super premium domain name stolen from you, legally, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it - and nothing you could have done to prevent it, because you never actually did anything wrong in the first place? Holy Smokes; Sounds Terrible Right? Here is the Scenario. You register a domain name for a unique word or phrase which is not currently in use. There are no current sites using the word, no trademarks on the term, and … [Read more...]
A Look at the Top Performing “Alternative” Top Level Domain; What’s Up with .XYZ?
NEW YORK, NY - It’s now been near two years from when Google’s new parent company Alphabet Inc. decided to launch their new corporate website on the .xyz domain, naming it abc.xyz. It’s also been near two years from when .xyz founder Daniel Negari forecasted that Google’s surprising move would effectively end .Com dominance worldwide. Not much has happened. Aside from the 5.2 million .xyz domain names registered, according to NameStat, it has done nothing but decline since … [Read more...]
Best Thing Domain Owner, Investor Can Learn Is “Website Development”
NEW YORK, NY - There are a lot of good courses and books out there that will teach you how to buy, sell and/or choose the right domain names to invest in, or how to choose names which have great resale value or those domain names which will stand the test of time, as far as valuation, but one of the greatest things a domain investor or enthusiast can learn is domain name development. The ability to build your own domain name into a full-fledged website could very well be … [Read more...]
