Cshel Chicago SEO, PR and Web Development

WIPO is Chewbacca

Posted on 28. Dec, 2006 by Carolyn Shelby.

WIPO makes no sense. The vast majority of their decisions come down on the side of the complainant (generally also the trademark holder) — by vast majority I mean like 6000 cases decided in favor of and only 1000ish against. Yet, every now and then, they deny a complaint that is (a) pretty clearly a trademark infringement if you go by their past decisions and (b) already been ruled an infringement by another body that governs a specific ccTLD.

Ryanair loses domain name battle. — BusinessWeek

Don’t get me wrong, here. Yay for the registrant. Seriously. As someone who has a domain or two in her collection that might fall into the questionable category, I’m tickled this guy is getting to keep his domain. It gives me hope :-)

What puzzles and concerns me is that WIPO doesn’t seem to have definitive rules for how they make decisions, and even in their Overview of WIPO Panel Views they have more contradictory statements than Heinz has pickles.

For example, Section 2.4 deals discusses “Does a respondent using the domain name for a criticism site generate rights and legitimate interests?” and then goes on to give two completely opposing panel views and cites decisions made that support BOTH of the completely opposite views. How on earth are you supposed to know where you stand until you’re actually involved in a UDRP case and you’re shelling out a nice chunk of change to a lawyer?

The whole thing hurts my head and I think I’m going to try not worry too much until I get slapped with a UDRP notice.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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Selling Domains Via AdWords

Posted on 23. Dec, 2006 by Carolyn Shelby.

There is an interesting thread over at Dnforum.com right now where a bunch of guys have been having good luck selling domains through an AdWords campaign. The theory is that you’ll reach more potential buyers by targeting the keywords that comprise the domain name (with and without extension) and you won’t spend a fortune because there really aren’t that many people who type domain names right into google. Of the people who do type domains right into the Google search field, how many are going to type in the domain you’re trying to sell?

Most of the people giving this a try are going through AfterNIC to sell their domains, and have the ad’s destination URL set to their landing page there. There are some people using Sedo, though I haven’t seen many reports of success yet. I seem to be the lone loon trying to sell the domains on my own (which is fine… I figured someone should be different just to make the discussion interesting).

The CTR on my ads is 20-ish%, but I’m not getting a tremendous number of impressions per day either. I have gotten a few clicks. No inquiries or purchases yet. Part of that might have something to do with the prices I’m asking for the domains, but they’re worth enough to me to sit on for a few years longer if I don’t get the price I want.

This definitely seems to be a good way to reach a broader audience and particularly end-users who aren’t as tight with the purse strings as domainers. The only problem with using AdWords for marketing your available domains seem to be the cost associated with marketing high value, single dictionary word domains because the number of impressions and the cost per click can make it too expensive to continue the campaign for very long.

Popularity: 25% [?]

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Google easing into domain business afterall

Posted on 17. Dec, 2006 by Carolyn Shelby.

Remember when I said Google can’t see behind privacy protected domain registrations because they don’t actually manage any domains? Well… Google just announced they’ve added domain registration to the Google Apps for Your Domain Beta. Adding a domain to your Google Apps account is only $10.00 a year to register AND host AND get private domain registration to protect you from Evil spammers.

So this begs the question…

Is Google finally using their registrar license to manage domains for the general public?

Nope. They’re partnering with GoDaddy and Enom to provide the registration services. I doubt it’s a coincidence that they chose to partner with the registrars that have the first and third largest shares, respectively, of the domain market. Via these partnerships, there are now at least 20 million domain records to which Google (presumably) has full, behind-the-privacy-screen access.

Abhilash previously suggested this type of situation might be possible, and honestly, I didn’t think any of the registrars would get into bed with Google like this because the risk of clients becoming upset and transfering out in droves wouldn’t be worth taking. Sort of makes me wonder what kind of financial incentive they received.

I guess we’ll just have to watch and see how this plays out.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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