Choosing a domain name for your business (key points)

1. Keyword domains are always a safe bet, but they can be a tad on the bland side. Is it better to go for a cool brand or a dull keyword laden domain? My vote is for the cool brand… people love their brands. People do not *love* keywords. Not to mention, brandable names tend to be more readily available on the open market than awesome keyword domains.
2. (Easy to Say + Easy to Spell) or (Clever + Easy to Say) = Easy to Remember
3. Hyphens are okay, and in some cases good, but remember to think about the big picture. If your primary domain has a hyphen in it, make sure you also snag the non-hyphenated version and 301 it to your hyphenated domain. This way you don’t end up with gross sounding radio spots, i.e. “Visit Bob’s-Tech-Hut.com. That’s Bobs Hyphen Tech Hypen Hut Dot Com!”
4. Make sure you’re not stepping on someone else’s trademark before you sink your entire life’s savings into a project. You don’t want to have to change domain names after you’ve already printed your literature and spent money on producing your ads, etc. We’re not saying it can’t be done; we’re just saying it’s incurring an avoidable expense and causes avoidable pain and anguish.
5. Domain Tools has a nice domain suggestion tool. Be prepared to jump on a domain once you find one you like… it might not be there when you come back the next day.

Getting the Domain You Want (key points)

1. Use a reputable domain registrar, and register as many years in advance as you can comfortably afford.
2. Check the backorder services to see if the domain you might want is going to expire soon. Backorders are generally free unless they successfully “catch” a domain for you when it drops.
3. Check after market sites for registered, but for sale domain names… search for “domains for sale” and you’ll come up with dozens of sites offering after market domain sales.
4. If you need to buy a domain from a broker, have a price in mind ahead of time and be prepared to walk away from the domain if the price isn’t right, or be prepared to write a really big check.
5. Consider having a third party contact the domain registrant to negotiate a sale, or at least contact them via a throw-away email address. Sometimes sellers up the sale price if they think you’ve got deep pockets, or if they figure out what your business name is and know how desperately bad you want the domain.

Keeping Your Domain (key points)

1. Make sure the contact information you have in the domain registration file is accurate and current.
2. Make sure your registration is paid up.
3. Throw some backorders on your own domains just in case… especially if you know you’re prone to bouts of forgetfulness.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
SEO 101: Domains – Picking them, getting them, keeping them

“Protecting the identity of the registrant…” 

While the intent is noble, I have to wonder exactly what this is going to accomplish that private domain registrations don’t already cover? Aside from sort of ruining the private registration business in general. If a registrant is truly concerned about protecting their identity and their contact information, private domain registrations are a perfectly good way to do it, are already available, and are administered by private companies (rather than some pseudo-governmental agency).

If you’re not doing anything illegal, immoral or fattening with your domains, then you probably don’t have to worry about anyone using your whois data to track you down and sue you.

If you *are*, then you ought to have a private registration. Period. I don’t recommend using bogus whois data because I secretly hope ICANN (or someone) starts enforcing the existing rules about that being a bad-bad-bad offense and revokes registrations from people who are caught doing it.

Also, whether this new recommendation is enacted or not, the people who want to sue you will still be able to get their hands on your registration data, they just might have to pay their lawyers for a couple more hours of work (and then turn around and take it out of your ass when they finally get a hold of you).

Eliminating the Technical and Administrative Contacts

Switching from Admin and Tech contacts to an OPoC is all fine and good, but really, it’s not going to alleviate the issue of fake whois data because no one enforces the rules about NOT using fake whois data. I checked in my usual domaining haunts and no one had any concrete evidence anyone has ever lost a domain for using fake data. There were two third hand accounts of someone knowing someone who knew someone who had their domain revoked, but nothing that could be substantiated.

What it will possibly accomplish is clarify the purpose of the contact and hopefully businesses/individuals who are not well versed in the terminology will better understand the role the OPoC plays in their domain registration and will use better judgement in selecting the responsible party.

Also, the recommendation doesn’t really address how the registrar is going to verify that the designated OPoC *knows* he’s been named. If correspondence is no longer being sent to the registrant and is only sent to the OPoC (as recommended), you’re really putting a LOT of trust into this contact person. Even assuming the OPoC info is real and not completely fake, the system still breaks just as badly as before if that contact can’t be gotten in touch with, or forgets to renew their P.O. box, etc.

So… what’s to be done?

Ultimately, I think we already have mechanisms in place to protect our privacy if we choose to utilize them, and the means to address the bogus whois data also already exists, but needs to be enforced. Serious, legitimate registrants will either opt for privacy protection or just stop using fake info if they care about not losing their domains.

The system is just a little broken, not in need of an overhaul. Just enforce the rules and let the private registration companies do their thing.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Changing the WHOIS Service isn’t necessary

A visitor from wcsp.wipo.int (193.5.93.24) was logged once, starting at 12:30:02 AM on Monday, January 8, 2007.
The initial browser was Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0).

This visitor first arrived without a referring URL,
and visited www.cshel.com/domains/2006/12/wipo-is-chewbacca/

In keeping with the Star Wars theme, I was going to say something about the “empire striking back”, but it was just one visit and there’s been no subsequent legal action or other contact. I’m thinking perhaps the surveillance droid just paid me a visit to check things out.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
We have a visitor

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.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
WIPO is Chewbacca

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.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Selling Domains Via AdWords

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.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Google easing into domain business afterall

I im’d a friend of mine who used to work for Moniker and asked if he had access to, or if anyone from the registrar side had access to, the WHOIS info on private domain registrations. His reply was that “only registrars have access to the private domain registration information, but only for those domains they hold/manage”.

So, Google, although a registrar, does not have access to anyone’s private WHOIS info because Google doesn’t manage or handle registrations for the general public.

To confirm this, I also read ICANN’s “Preliminary Task Force Report on Whois Services” issued on 22 November 2006. If you look under Summary of task force discussion (including proposals for access to data) you’ll see the following:

There are two different classes of requests for registration information.

1) Requests for information about registrations that are managed through a private registration or registration proxy service (a “type 1″ request)

2) Requests for information for regular, non-proxy/non-private registrations. (a “type 2″ request)

These requests are typically dealt with differently by registrars.

Requests are typically taken in by a single point of contact at a registrar which liaises with or escalates to the registrars legal department or staff.

There’s other information in the report, but that’s the part that I think is the most clear. It confirms what my contact said, which is that registrars have access to the registration data for private registrations, but only for the domains they manage.

So, Google cannot see past private registration protection. That being said, it doesn’t mean webmasters are not being profiled. It just means they aren’t using special, non-public information to build the profiles. (See comments to my previous post)

Just an update… I know I’ll sleep better tonight. ;)

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Google cannot see past private registrations

What I had taken away from that was that Google is profiling webmasters, and when we hit a certain threshhold in terms of quantity and quality of domains registered, it flags us. Flags us as what? Okay, I don’t know that, and I’m fairly positive no one from Google is going to volunteer that information. However, I did speculate on the possible ramifications in my post the other day.

So on to the update…

Brian B., who was sitting with me at the session, commented on Matt Cutts’ recap and pointed out what I had suspected, which is that Google can see past privacy protection.

…you mentioned that you knew that this person owned 40+ sites, and afterwards when you clicked on the WhoIs info that they were all privacy protected. I think you just let it slip that Google has access to all the WhoIs info regardless of what is protected from public domain. That’s a pretty big statement to make and will probably make a lot of people nervous.

Um, yeah! Makes me nervous and I’m not even doing anything wrong. (I swear!) Matt replied to Brian and explained that he did not employ any voodoo or secret Google magic to determine that the domains the reviewee owned were all privacy protected…

You’re correct up to the whois speculation, Brian B. All I did was take one of the domains and run “whois domain.com” from a command-line and noticed that whois data privacy protection was on for that domain. Then I did the same with 1-2 more domains to verify it. So I wasn’t using any special Google data or tool for noting the whois info was private. Sorry if I gave that impression.

Matt knows that everything he says gets completely over analyzed so I’m sure he wants to quell any rumors before they start a hysterical panic. That being said (cshel places tin foil cap firmly upon her head and secures the chin strap) the sequence of events in that portion of the session make me think the checking the “regular” whois data for privacy protection was an after thought.

Let’s consider the following:

• Matt was giving the reviewee the business about his plethora of domain holdings for a good 5 minutes before the privacy thing got mentioned. I suppose that could be a coincidence…
• How would he have known which domains to check for privacy protection if he didn’t already have the list of domains associated with the reviewee’s business?

If the domains were all associated with the same owner via some other means, like they’re all hosted on the same server or subnet, all have the same name servers, etc. he still would have needed some tool or script that would have run out and collected all of that info quickly and in the manner he needed to make the connection.

I’ve sniffed out covert domain owners in a similar manner before, but it was a pain in the butt and took a long time to manually pick and choose which bits of information might lead me to other domains and contact information. I guess I’m just saying that he had a lot of information VERY quickly for not having a tool that did the leg work for him.

Also, while Matt protests that it’s not a special Google data, I might argue that technically, WHOIS registration data wouldn’t be “special Google” data anyway, as any company that is a licensed registrar would have access to it — and Google became a registrar in 2005 even though they don’t actually do domain registrations for anyone (besides maybe themselves). His statement isn’t false; however, his statement also doesn’t confirm or deny that Google has access to the private registration data.

Conspiracy theories are fun!

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Update to the “Anything You Reg” Post

Additionally, he made comments to the site reviewees about the types and quantities of domains regged and how well (or not) the extra domains relate to the site/topic in question, implying that the dozen or so unrelated domains were unnecessary at best and, at worst, possibly harmful to their SERPs.

Apparently, Google has some sort of magic ability to look at all of your domains at once, and uses this information to decide if you’re a dirty spammer or someone who is authoritative about their topic and therefore worthy of better rank. I can’t really decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

On the one hand, I can see where you might be inclined to devalue a site run by someone who owns a ton of keyword laden, hyphen riddled domains because that sort of indicates that he/she might, maybe, be an MFA’er or worse. But then again, there really isn’t any proof based solely on one’s domain holdings.

What if the person in question just went on a drunken registration spree one night (not that I’ve done that before, I swear), or maybe regged a bunch of domains with the plan to park them and offer them up for sale? Should their “real” sites be punished for that? I would seriously hope not.

So now, I’m sifting through my domain portfolio to make sure I’m not sitting on anything that might be held against my “money” site and hurt its rankings. If I do find questionable domains, I think I’ll be transferring the registration to my sister or possibly one of my cats, so they can’t be traced back to me anymore :-)

Related Posts:

• Update to the “Anything You Reg” Post
• Google cannot see past private registrations
• Google easing into domain business afterall

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Anything you register can and will be held against you…

cameras.com $1,500,000
flowers.mobi $200,000
forclosures.com $150,000
mortgage.net $149,000
vb.com $130,000
sailboat.com $120,000
sexeducation.com $120,000
creditcards.net $120,000
own.com $115,000
university.org $100,000
hb.com $100,000
fun.mobi $100,000
credits.com $95,000
hook.com $67,000
wo.com $65,000
fortress.com $60,000
bisexuals.com $60,000
canadamortgagerates.com $60,000
above.com $50,000
workshops.com $48,000
cults.com $45,000
atf.com $40,000
hot.mobi $40,000
trusted.com $37,500
hun.net $35,000
beachfrontproperty.com $32,000
dent.com $30,500
egreeting.com $30,000
ohl.com $30,000
housekeepers.com $30,000
accelerate.com $28,000
stocktickers.com $27,000
stockquotes.mobi $27,000
babies.net $26,000
familyphotos.com $25,000
raise.com $25,000
cams.mobi $23,600
acre.com $22,500
sitcoms.com $22,000
dde.com $21,200
cd.net $20,000
telephonecall.com $20,000
cosmeticsurgery.net $20,000
uniformrentals.com $18,000
vintageautos.com $16,500
girlcams.com $16,000
australiavacations.com $16,000
debug.com $15,000
brooches.com $15,000
cityuniversity.com $14,000
so.net $13,000
xs.net $13,000
party.mobi $13,000
accountspayable.com $12,000
tuscan.com $11,800
sumowrestling.com $11,800
wifiaccess.com $11,500
outsourcing.net $11,000
globe.net $11,000
emergencyclinics.com $11,000
discounts.org $10,600
retirementloans.com $10,500
alberta.org $10,500
automotiveimports.com $10,000
fixedloans.com $10,000
met.net $10,000
wow.mobi $9,000
amethysts.com $9,000
cablebox.com $9,000
portableprinters.com $9,000
pdagames.com $8,500
sweatpants.com $8,500
loanfinance.com $8,000
stockdata.com $8,000
foreigninvestments.com $8,000
rentalcarrates.com $7,000
valueflights.com $7,000
tickersymbols.com $7,000
fileelectronically.com $7,000
babyoutlets.com $7,000
firefighter.org $6,500
blogs.info $6,000
stockexchanges.com $6,000
stereos.net $5,900
antibiotics.net $5,500
americanhistory.org $5,500
bookselling.com $5,500
forexquotes.com $5,000
gossip.mobi $5,000
produce.net $5,000
queens.net $5,000
storageserver.com $5,000
sectional.com $5,000
golfer.org $4,750
idea.us $4,500
foreignexchanges.com $4,000
today.us $3,600
cherries.net $3,600
concerned.com $3,500
currencybroker.com $3,000
barbequesmokers.com $3,000
oilrefinery.com $3,000
laugh.mobi $3,000
cosmeticdentist.us $2,500
celebs.mobi $2,250
deal.us $2,000
computerjunky.com $2,000
cyberwedding.com $1,500
lakerticket.com $1,500
dodgerticket.com $1,000
digitaldates.com $1,000
systemfailures.com $1,000
purebulldogs.com $1,000
guacamole.us $600

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
T.R.A.F.F.I.C Auction Recap: Which domains sold for what