Yahoo: All .US Country Code Names Poor Quality!

A very interesting subject on the-web is that ALL .US extension domains are banned by the Yahoo feed under the title of Quality Block. Several pay-per-click parking firms who use the Yahoo PPC feed have confirmed that to be correct, and said yes, Yahoo thinks every single .us domain must be poor quality and thus are banned. Isn’t that an incredible wide-ranging assumption to make!

It’s been an issue for at least 2 or 3 years from what we understand. It appears both Yahoo and some of the parking firms who have been given our .us domains to monetize using the Yahoo feed in-effect keep it a secret and allegedly simply assumed we would not notice the fact we always get zero income from our dot-us country code domains.

It’s amazing there has been basically no discussion we have seen about this serious issue. It would seem like a major internet player like Yahoo allegedly hating its own country-code domain extension to such a degree as to ban them all from pay-per-click revenue should be major news and discussed at length in the media. Instead, it appears to be stonewalled with nothing but silence from most everyone, including the media, other domain blogs and the forums.

Overstock.com is rebranding itself as O.CO

Found this on the Overstock.com website this morning. It’s also Super Bowl Sunday, so perhaps not just a coincidence since the .CO extension domain names will be strongly marketed in today’s Super Bowl commercials, making Overstock.com’s announcement real good timing in that regard.

“Shopping at Overstock.com internationally is about to get easier with the O.co domain. Since the company acquired the O.co domain name in July 2010, Overstock.com has been simpler to access by mobile Internet users. Now, to minimize confusion and hassle while translating the word “Overstock” into other languages, Overstock.com is rebranding internationally and will be known as O.co as of Jan. 2011. This guide will address any concerns you may have about Overstock.com’s new domain.

Q. Why will Overstock.com be known as O.co internationally?

A. In July 2010, .co domain names became available for general purchase, and Overstock.com acquired the O.co domain name in order to reinforce the “O” of the Overstock brand and capture customers’ attention with a short, memorable web address. The short .co domain will also solve translation issues and allow Overstock.com to create a universal logo, brand and web domain name that will be recognizable internationally…”

Click the Overtstock.com® woman on the couch picture below to visit the new O.co® website:

Will GoDaddy’s Super Bowl Ad be a Success?

Godaddy is spending a ton of money on their Super Bowl ad and other heavy .CO marketing but will it make the .CO extension (.CO is actually the South America Nation of Columbia country code) an Internet success?

In our opinion, it’s already apparent .CO will be a flop as far as long-term value goes, and actual use. There are very few .CO developed sites and it has a poor resale market, with rare sales (except for occasional sales of strong single word names).

With that said, .CO is already a big financial success as far as registry and registrars income is concerned, thanks to brilliant and costly marketing, defensive registrations and domainers who can’t get the .COM and think .CO is a good replacement for speculation purposes.

A big hope with .CO was the anticipation of .co getting substantial ‘typo’ or ‘spillover’ traffic intended for the .COM but I can tell you from good first-hand experience that is not happening now, and is also extremely unlikely to occur in the future.

Buy a domain name or order webhosting by clicking below:

A slightly modified version of this article was published today in Fortune Magazine & CNN Money

Learn How Many are Searching for Your Domain

If you have your domain names registered at Godaddy.com you have the unique ability to discover exactly how many people are looking up your Whois information on the Godaddy site. This is very cool.

I am starting to think it may even be worthwhile to use Godaddy more simply to take advantage of this powerful feature. Knowing how many people looked up your Whois information can have major benefits, not the least of which is it can indicate how many possible buyers you might have and you can rank your domains in value based on the number of Whois searches performed.

For example, say you have a low traffic and lightly searched term but suddenly you see several Whois lookups. That can indicate there may be a buyer for your domain or website out there, possibly an end-user who will likely pay a lot more vs a typical low-balling domainer. It’s hard to understand why this very cool and great Godaddy feature has not received more publicity, or other domain registrars apparently do not offer it.

This is how you can discover the number of Whois searches performed on your domains using Godaddy: Go to the Domain Manager, mouse-over the Tools tab at top and click-on Exportable Lists. Next click on Add New Export with a drop-down list. Select All My Domains and click Next.

Now you can select the data to export. Check-off exporting both Current and Previous Period Whois Searches, and click-on Next. Then select CSV file for use by opening your Excel spreadsheet program. Probably no need to compress the data so select “none”. Give the exportable list a Name and click-on Finish. After a few minutes GoDaddy will compile the list and email it to you.

Buy a domain name or order website hosting by going to the Godaddy banner below: