DomainKing About Best & Worst Name Extension

Just read a really interesting interview with Domain King Rick Schwartz on the Frager Factor blog, in which Rick was very candid and offered great advice. as always. For example, in the interview, Rick said: “.net is the worst extension on the planet. It’s an orphan……. I think .org is the number 2 extension (behind .com) in the universe…….. and it has its own identity.”

We could not agree more with Rick’s remarks about .com (#1 of course by far in most categories) and .org (by far #2 overall), with .org sometimes as good or even better vs .com, at least in a few categories, i.e. health & wellness), with the normally poor choice .net domain name extension far behind.

Fairly recently we have noticed an obvious and strong trend with potential domain hand registrations in a few categories of interest to me that .com and .org domains are almost always already taken. However, the other popular domain name extensions, such as .net .info .biz and .us for example, are often unregistered and available for new registrations.

Dot-com is most always the #1 domain extension (with our personal second choice being dot-org) and there are other extensions including country-codes such as dot-us as alternatives to .com and .org in value and importance. It is important to note how frequently .com and .org are already taken (especially in several important categories).

Assuming the-domain is available for-sale or new registration, a domain which has a .com or .org extension usually will receive far-and-away the most natural and typein traffic and is typically the most valuable as a result of natural traffic going mostly to .org and .com. As an educated guess, we estimate dot-com and dot-org domain names and websites get at least 95% of all typein traffic vs all the other tld’s.

A big reason .com and .org are so valuable is the billions of dollars of marketing and branding money which has gone into the extensions over many years, including vast numbers of ongoing media and TV commercials.

There are also other major reasons dot-com and dot-org are by far the best possible top level domain extensions. For example, when a web-surfer goes online looking for a product, service, business or name they will typically be thinking about dot-com or dot-org as part of the keyword term and type the keyword name plus .com or .org into their internet-browser, but rarely other extensions (exceptions being certain popular country codes, like Germany and its popular dot-de for example).

With that said, search engines do not necessarily play favorites so any extension with a targeted keyword name and a keyword targeted site, with relevant content, incoming links and search optimization done can achieve a high search-engine ranking.

Nevertheless, .org and .com enjoy a huge advantage over the others in that they can easily get natural and typein traffic by virtue of having targeted keyword quality, plus the com/org tld extension and thus do not need to rely almost completely and exclusively on SEO work as the others do.

Any reviews or comments you have about domain names and their extensions would be most appreciated, which feedback we could also add to our site since we are looking for domaining personal feedback to expand the blog. You can visit our Internet Entrepreneur website by clicking-on the domain-king picture below. Thank you.

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Dallas Cowboys Alleged Domain Price Stupidity

Part of the problem with domain name disputes and domain complaints is the fact so many companies are unwilling to spend a fair amount of money buying already registered domains to protect their valuable brands.

A more or less perfect example is how the Dallas Cowboys representatives made a bid of only $275 (really $275 and not a misprint) for the great Cowboys.com domain name at an auction when other auction bids were in the general area of 200k or higher.

However, strangely the Cowboys allegedly grossly misunderstood the auction price level (in spite of the fact a series of auction bids had worked their way up to more than $200,000., while they were present in-person at the venue) but somehow were oddly thinking a bid of just $275 would buy that great domain. Isn’t that amazing! They say the truth is stranger than fiction. A story like that is so far fetched it could not be made-up!

There is a TV show about the World’s Dumbest and the Dallas Cowboys reps at the domain auction (who I heard it said at least one was a Cowboys attorney) should definitely be on that show based on the alleged auction bidding events.

The proposed world’s dumbest appearance would include the upper management where for just 275k (which should be insignificant to an assumed billion dollar plus business) they later cancelled their absurd $275 bid after being informed the bid should have been $275,000.

This incredible true story about some of the alleged dumbest people on the planet is very hard to believe but this did in fact happen a few years ago.

Are Yahoo Traffic Quality Scores Nonsensical?

Yahoo! is a major advertising feed provider for a few well known domain name parking firms. Domains which are not active websites are usually parked so the domain-name owner gets an opportunity to earn revenue from pay-per-click ads which appear on the pages which are parked.

One of the larger and best domain parking firms is Parked.com, who reports by way of a graphical line chart viewable on the clients dashboard page showing their web-page visitor traffic quality scoring.

Even since the Yahoo feed traffic scores were openly disclosed we have always thought the scores made little sense and seemed nonsensical since the scores fluctuate a lot even though the parked domains and their visitor traffic stays basically the same.

In the past (again with about the same quality traffic) our score has ranged from a very low 1 and all the way up to a consistent 9 or 10, with 10 being the highest possible score, and has held as a 9 or 10 for  long time periods. Here is our most recent quality score report according to Yahoo! which covers the last nine quality score iterations:

2.5 – 3.0 – 0 – 0 – 6.0 – 1.0 – 1.0 – 5.5 – 7.0

In our opinion, it appears to be virtually impossible for such wild fluctuations to take place. In fact, the visitor quality scores almost appear like random numbers, keeping in mind the parked domains and their combined traffic are basically the same for the entire reporting period. What do you think?

Warren Buffet recommends Index Equity Funds

One more web site (a small site so far) is now online. However, we need more relevant site content for http://indexequityfunds.com/ – We are looking for index funds, annuity, investing, options and stock trading personal feedback to expand the IndexEquityFunds.com web site. If you or someone you know can make some good and relevant content (which does not need to be professionally written) we can add to the site (with credit to the author and a link -if wanted). Your assistance will be appreciated.

Index Equity Funds are an excellent way to invest for the long-term. Warren Buffet talked about index equity funds on a recent Today Show interview with Matt Lauer. We have that segment of the “Today Show” interview located at our indexequityfund.com web site, found about 1/3 of the way down the main-page. You can visit our new website by going to Index Equity Funds now, or clicking-on the image below. Thank you.

Non-US Address Results in WIPO Loss Protection!

The FirstQuote.com WIPO Case Decision (domain kept) and its significant issues & deciding factors:

In our view, the most significant aspect of this case and perhaps in every other case ever presented to WIPO is this statement extracted from the case below: Moreover, the Respondent is based in Hong Kong, SAR of China, while protection of the Complainant’s 1STQUOTE-Marks and the Complainant’s business are limited to the United States of America.

That certainly is an incredibly powerful reason to have your domains registered at a non-USA address!

More… the respondent denies the complainant’s contentions. Respondent alleges that the phrase “First Quote” is the featured tagline for thousands of insurance, financial and legal websites and can be heard in numerous ads from agencies asking to “come in today for your first quote”. Upon the Respondent’s allegations, the disputed domain name is comprised of a generic term, which may be used in hundreds of ways, and the Complainant is attempting to leverage the domain name from its owner by using the UDRP forum to reverse hijack the domain.

The Respondent further states that there are 10 active trademarks for FIRST QUOTE in the US, that there is no proof that the Complainant is the sole owner of and creator of the phrase “first quote” and that the disputed domain name was first registered on January 15, 1997, 6 years prior to the Complainant’s claim of “first use” of the 1STQUOTE-trademarks and even before the Complainant was established, which also shows that the phrase had already been popular before complainant tried to claim it.

The Respondent further argues that he never intended to act in bad faith. Furthermore, according to the Respondent’s allegations, the Complainant has no website, brand, domain name, or anything else associated with “first quote” (rather than 1STQUOTE), and the Complainant does not even own the domain name <1stquote.com>. The Respondent also requests the Complainant should be fined for Reverse Domain Hijacking.

With regard to the Respondent’s bad faith registration and use, the Complainant contends that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name with actual or at least constructive notice of the Complainant’s 1STQUOTE-Marks and was using the disputed domain name in bad faith primarily to intentionally attract for financial gain Internet users to the Respondent’s web site by misleading and confusing Internet users who are searching for the Complainant’s website but, merely, misspell or mistype the brand name of the Complainant’s 1STQUOTE on-line application processing service. Respondent has denied these assertions and provided evidence of substantial third parties’ use of the term “first quote”, including the provision of services similar to those of the Complainant.

It seems to be more likely than not to this Panel, the Respondent acquired the disputed domain name, as he contends because of its meaning and because of the substantial third party use of the underlying words, and not with a view to the Complainant and its 1STQUOTE-Marks. The Complainant’s 1STQUOTE-Marks are not used identically in the disputed domain name but with a different spelling, and they enjoy less than average distinction, if any distinction at all, as they are made up of two generic words which are commonly used together.

Moreover, the Respondent is based in Hong Kong, SAR of China, while protection of the Complainant’s 1STQUOTE-Marks and the Complainant’s business are limited to the United States of America.As a result, on the balance of evidence, the Complainant has failed in this Panel’s assessment to prove that the disputed domain name was registered in bad faith, i.e. with the Complainant in mind.

We would appreciate any comments you have about trademarks and WIPO cases – which feedback we could also add to our web site since we are actively looking for personal feedback about trademark issues to expand the web site, which site you can visit by going to Internet Intellectual Property now, or clicking-on the image below. Thank you.

Chinese CC Domain Registrations Decline by 39%

Noticed on the newly redesigned igoldrush.com web site registrations of Chinese country code (.CN) domain names has declined a very high 39%. That is not too surprising in view of the loss of domain registrars who were once selling .cn names (before recent strict Chinese government domain restrictions were put imto effect), plus some other issues.

We owned ony one dot-cn domain, a name which we owned for many years. However, what with the comparatively high yearly renewal fees and its low traffic the Chnese domain- name was not worth renewing again this year.

I always wondered why Chinese people would actually type-in an English word followed by the .cn extension? I believe English use by the public is not nearly as common in China vs Europe and many other nations of the world. Can anyone confirm that with some statistics or opinons?

Do Websites & Traffic Add Major Value to Prices?

There has been discussion on domain-name forums and blogs about developed websites adding significant value to domain names, and also making the domains easier to sell plus sell for a higher price. Agree to a degree, a developed web site with traffic is of high overall value. However, with that said, based on hands-on experience, I can say end-users rarely if ever care about the traffic your domain or its website gets, and in fact don’t ask for any statistics. Even if you offer them your stats, they don’t want to see it.

In view if the above I am unfortunately somewhat dubious about a developed website (with good traffic and typeins too) being more appealing to end-user buyers and the price they will pay for the domain, at least much beyond intrinsic value. Potential end-user buyers may actually be a bit negative about an existing web site and as a result its pre-branding.

Please note that my comments do not indicate I am negative about developed websites, or do not greatly value traffic. The exact opposite is true, since I have a number of developed sites which I am very happy with, most of which get good search-engine traffic, enjoy the benefits of high SEO rankings, plus receive natural typeins (from Internet users like President Barack Obama, pictured below, likely looking at a health website)…

Is It Still Possible to Register Domains with Value?

Is it possible to freshly register domain names of value (which may not necessarily make you rich) but have some value, and can make you at least a bit of money?

Rarely a week passes where we do not stumble upon at least a few unreg’d names which I am sure would get natural traffic plus search traffic too. We can’t possibly register them all (there are simply too many good ones) but when we do register the available domains there are often typein visitors to the temporary webpage right away.

Anyone else run across good targeted keyword unregistered domains lately?

Yahoo! buys Me.Me domain but is it smart of them?

Yahoo has just announced they have purchased the Me.me domain for a Twitter-Like Microblogging Site. Yahoo is apparently still going full-force with its Twitter competitor, Yahoo Meme. Yahoo has now bought up the clever domain name, Me.me, from the .ME domain registry, which is based in the country of Montenegro. No word on how much Yahoo paid for me.me domain name.

Yahoo calls the purchase “an essential component of our online branding strategy.” The buy suggests Yahoo is readying a wider roll-out of the service, which has not been advertised widely. On Meme, users may write short entries and add photos or videos to their pages, which are called “memes;” users can “follow” other memes and track entries from those pages via a dashboard.

The domain Me.me in our opinion is a dumb domain name and indicates how Yahoo! is alleged to be far from sharp or smart. Another example of Yahoo’s lack of success is the multi-year beta-testing of the Yahoo Publishing Network and its sudden closing at end of April.

To further demonstrate how allegedly dumb YPN was last year YPN called and emailed us to take down our access to their keyword ad targeting tool. They refused to say why other than saying they did not like the way we were using it. That was onviously BS since we used the tool exactly as intended to target ads about the subject of the site and domain and never wrongly deviated from its correct use.

YPN allegedly really did not have sufficient ad inventory in some important categories we were targeting so they allegedly did not truly desire the ad tool to be used correctly by us since that in-effect prevented them from running non-targeted ads. We believe they had inventory of non-important keyword ads such as dating, games and cell phones, etc., for example, but alleged low inventory in hgher paying categories such as financials, credit, trading and health for example, for which we were using the ad tool successfully (as they had in fact intended) until they took it away from us.

How GoDaddy Captured a 50% Market Share

I just read about how GoDaddy recently achieved a 50% domain market share, which internet people are saying is an amazing accomplishment. I am far from being surprised about that.

My reasons to expect their great success are (A) GoDaddy.com has a strong combination of excellent marketing skills, (B) very large ad budget, including substantial money for high price Super Bowl ads, (C) very diverse and extensive offering of additional products and services for sale, (D) including various web hosting products/services, and something you may not think much about but important to small domain buyers and small business owners is their overall (E) good 24X7 support with short on-hold wait times, often no hold time, all combined with a (F) powerful upselling program.

I am sure GoDaddy will soon go well beyond capturing a 50% market share, with the next big level being my prediction GD will eventually capture a 75% market share and dominate the space. hmmmm…..does GoDaddy have stock we can invest in?

Websurfers are Typing-in their Search-Terms

A forum member posted about how he believes people are using the search engines less, with less searches being done in his opinion.

I don’t necessarily agree about search declining. However, web-surfers are in all likelihood realizing most every keyword phrase, product, service and search-term now resolves to an active website so as time goes by they are more inclined to typein with more and more frequency the keywords they are looking for directly into the internet browser window or entering the same term (without spaces, with domain extension) in the search box. They do that by entering the search term, most iften followed by .com extension, with .org being next in typein popularity, i.e. Word1Word2.com or Word1Word2Word3.org. etc…

Wondering About the Knowledge of Domainers?

There are a lot of mysteries with domaining such as how often expired names sell at places like Snapnames for $60 or more but no sale for $20 before expiration at forums, etc.

However, the oddity which really has me wondering about the knowledge many domainers really have is why I keep on running into health and medical related domains available in .org but already reg’d in other extensions which have far less likelihood of traffic vs dot-org?

I can say based on lots of experience the only 2 tld’s which work nicely with health names are .com and .org. In fact, depending on the name .org can sometimes do as well or even better vs .com in health/disease related names. All the others are poor with very rare typeins.

Just this afternoon I was doing research using Google’s Insights For Search and discovered a real nice 3 word health term which seems like it would get both search and typein traffic.

I figured it would be taken in dot-com and dot-org for sure and maybe even other extensions but upon checking was surprised to see it unregistered in .org but taken in .com .net .biz .info .us and even .eu so I quickly registered the dot-org.

Why is it not better known that dot-org works so well in the health, wellness and disease category? Just one of life’s many mysteries I guess.

Pros & Cons Site Development vs Parked Domain

Many domain name owners are now saying the smart money in 2010 is on website development.

It appears most everyone is saying development is best but the fact is it can be much tougher to get revenue vs a ppc parked page.

Several reasons for that including the fact Click-thru-rates (CTR) is often 4 or 5 times better on a parked page which means the developed site will need 4 or 5 time more traffic to earn the same revenue, assuming the Earnings-per-click (EPC) is about the same comparing say Adsense/YPN vs the major parking firms.

With that said, a nice advantage the developed site has is the ability for site traffic to increase (but that can easily take many months or even years), whereas the parked domain is unlikely to ever get more traffic.

I have more developed sites vs parked domains so I also believe strongly in development but the strength of the keyword name is a big factor, imo. In addition, development involves vast amounts of time and work, including the site/domain server setup, content, hosting, seo work, site maintenance and monitoring, not to mention the hosting cost and time involved and many months or years of waiting for traffic to slowly build-up over time.

Keep the following example in mind if you are developing a good keyword name which gets say 100 typein visits/mo and earns say $2.80/mo at parking (based on 20% CTR and .14c EPC). Once you make it a developed site you will start-out with approx the same 100 typein visits but more often than not your CTR will drop to roughly 4% (or even lower) which means your revenue will decline to just .56c vs $2.80 on parking.

That typical example scenario in-effect means your traffic will need to skyrocket to 500 visits/mo to equal the same $2.80/mo revenue when parked. Can you imagine the time and work involved increasing your traffic from 100/mo to 500/mo!

Domain/Website Resale Markets Are Depressed

A domain name forum menber asked about more than unusual numbers of non-forum threads and posts lately and was wodnering why that seems to be taking place? My answer is maybe it appears that way because the domain name/website resale market appears to be declining big time and since so few are successfully selling (with the notable exception of the many which somehow almost magically sell in the DNjorunal.com sale reports each week for surprising prices) forum members have little to do all day except pass time with the non-domain related posts.

An example of how hard it is to sell at forums these days I was checking yesterday and see a majority of believed dubious or marginal value names I let expire (and got zero responses on via the Forums, or thru the Whois contact information and at other venues such as my Websites) were in fact puchased by others at places such as Snapnames.com, for example, and at for high prices vs the small amounts I would have quickly taken for them (even though I rarely offer names or websites for sale). I also see BuyDomains.com ended up getting many of my cancelled names. Really odd the marginal names appear to rarely sell at forums and via for-sale-listings at auction websites for a fraction of the prices many domain sellers would have accepted. Anyone know why?

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