Archive for the 'domain' Category

Estibot!

admin Popularity: 42% [?] May 16th, 2008

The most useful domain name evaluation tool on the internet today - Estibot!

If you are looking for a tool that really stands on its own when it comes to evaluating domain names - do yourself a favor and visit Estibot.

The developer has really put himself in the shoes of domain name searchers and built a package that captures many features of other tools, but does it all from one location. In recent months more features have been added and you can choose your level of participation based on membership level - including a free version.

I have use the free version as a reference point for many domain name purchases and/or research projects. Valuing domain names is a hard process to automate but the Estibot equation has been tweaked against domain sales (at least the publicly available sale information), and does a great job at getting close enough to be more than useful. I would not base purchases solely on the Estibot valuation, however it’s a great starting position to quickly weed out any absolute “dogs” (You know what I mean! Those names that you register or purchase after a bottle of wine or a dozen beers).

The keyword information is must have detail if you are serious about capitalizing on well structured keyword rich domain names. Finding good keyword dense domain names for registration fee is becoming so hard that you could waste literally days trying to sort through one niche in order to come up with an available “brand rich” name. Those days are gone if you subscribe to the Estibot pro level membership.

Anyway, I like the tool so much it deserved its own post. Read the estibot blog to get the whole story. Its a great read and inspiring in many ways.

Congratulations to the developer - may your success be equivalent to the many people you have helped.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Related Articles

DomainToolsBlog “Network Solutions steals domain ideas; confirmed!

admin Popularity: 96% [?] January 9th, 2008

DomainTools Article regarding Network Solutions Jay Westerdal wrote an interesting article on his blog today regarding the Network Solutions fiasco. The title speaks volumes about how many in the domain name industry are feeling tonight. It is titled “Network Solutions steals domain ideas: Confirmed!”

The article is well written and has a personal verification of his findings to back up the blog. I was particularly interested in many of the comments, some of which related to other registrars who have a similar approach.

Historically many people have suspected registrars of inventing their own rules, however until today there has been almost zero tangible evidence (most information was from ex employees of registrars, and frankly that makes them appear bias regardless of how honest their story - until now of course).

I suspect we will see a barrage of denials and ducking for cover when the dust settles.

The picture on Jay’s blog is an absolute classic - it was so good it was worth sharing a new post with you.

Popularity: 96% [?]

Related Articles

Domain name registrations - Front running accusations

admin Popularity: 81% [?] January 9th, 2008

Network Solutions Responds to Front Running Accusations

Network Solutions, one of the leading domain name registrars, has published a response regarding recent accusations that the company is “front running” domain name registrations. Read the response by Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions.

This is pretty big news and hot off the press. Whether you own one domain name or many, the implications of what Network Solutions are doing is quite profound - notwithstanding the technology is pretty amazing that performs this task.

In a nutshell and if you are confused about “Front Running” let me offer a very brief explanation: Front running in the domain name business refers to registrars who use customer searches on a particular available name to then “hold” that search on their servers for a period of up to 4 days.

In other words, should you not register the name there and then, when you return to check the availability of the name you will only be able to purchase it exclusively from Network Solutions.

As a test, think up any jumbled up name you can imagine that has absolutely zero appeal to anyone, and search it’s availability via Network Solutions. When it shows available, wait a couple of minutes and then type the same name into your browser, hit refresh a few times and before you know it, up will pop the Network Solutions splash page, giving you the privilege of registering the name with Network Solutions.

To confirm that you can not register with anyone else - go over to another registrar and type the same name into the domain name search bar and see what you get - so far in 24 hours of testing, every dot com name entered has been taken up by Network Solutions.

It is likely the company will get such a huge backlash from other registrars and domain name buyers, the practice will be pulled at any time. Still, it is a sign of some amazing programming and technology, and undeniable proof of what many domain name owners have suspected for some time, that the large registrars do have the power and technology to look at what you are searching for and register names accordingly.

Where does it stop?

Wishing you a very prosperous 2008. Thanks for reading.

Network Solutions and DotSauce.com ArticleEdit: Further reading available at DotSauce.com - even a reply by a Network Solutions emplyee

USA Today picks up Network Solutions Accusations USA Today picked up the story that is gaining momentum across the domain name world. The heading reads “Network Solutions snarfing your ideas? Snarfing? What the hell does snarfing mean you ask? I have no idea, but I did find a link to a listing in Wikipedia for those that can read German.

I visited a few domain trading forums today to see what was being said. There seems to be a wide range of responses as you would expect. Everything from bemusement to shock and horror.

For now, if you are going to register what you consider is a good name that sits in front of a good idea, do yourself a favor and make sure you register it before you lose it. Personally, I’ve been using either domainsbot or bustaname for searches. They are quick and informative, and as far as I can tell, do not try and snip your name from under your finger tips. Occasionally names will say free and in fact they are registered - but from experience this has led me to double check the whois information and generally those names have either been expired and in redemption period or about to be deleted.

Popularity: 81% [?]

Related Articles

GoDaddy Cash Parking Makes Little Money

admin Popularity: 41% [?] November 1st, 2007

GoDaddy Cash ParkingDo you want to make some money with your idle domains while you wait to develop the site into a huge success? Cash Parking is one way to monetize your portfolio of domains.

GoDaddy Cash Parking is one place to put your domain portfolio, but the real question is, is it going to be a good return on your investment (that would be the $3.00 a month you have to pay for the service) in the long run? If you are wondering how much cash you can make with the GoDaddy Cash Parking service, let me give you my $.12 below, literally.

I love the graphic and stats GoDaddy uses to show how much cash you can make with your GoDaddy Cash Parking account over the other un-named options available. If you have 100 domains, and you get 45,000 impressions, that makes for 6,750 click through’s, with an average CPC (cost per click) of $.12, that gives you $7.92 per domain, or $792.16, and this is per month.

Read More….. Continue Here »»»»

Popularity: 41% [?]

Related Articles

A Fast Google Indexing Domain Test

admin Popularity: 30% [?] October 3rd, 2007

WOW, that was quick super fast. Well, there is the answer to my test to see how long it would take Google to index my new site, completely new url and domain name for this blog. It took less than 6 hours. Now being in the business we are in, I totally understand that indexing it totally different than a Google pagerank or Alexa ranking (which I would expect to show no data yet) of course, but you have to admit that was pretty fast.

The total time elapse from registering the new domain name to indexing was less than 12 hours total. In fact, the cashed page that Google has is one that was taken before I added my theme to the site, and that was the first thing I did. The three screen shots posted below are taken of the indexing that Google did at 17:50 on October 2nd, 2007.

Read More….. Continue Here »»»»

Popularity: 30% [?]

Related Articles

Test Search Engine Indexing

admin Popularity: 19% [?] October 2nd, 2007

ChipSEO.com on GoogleI decided to move my blog and all its contents and everything that goes along with it to a new domain, now http://www.chipseo.com, to give it a better match of content to search structure for our company (Island Zephyr). Now, we can do a good market test to see how long it takes for Google and Yahoo to index our site and start pulling in all new traffic.

Starting over again was a big gamble but in the end I think it will pay off with better results. In the mean time, this will be a good test to see how long it will take for the search engines to index this url site and start to get steady traffic again. I have actually been blogging for many years, so don’t let the short dates of content on this site confuse you. Our company is dedicated to providing good reliable information for those who sell online and are interested in using multiple sales channels to sell their products or services.

I will post the results soon and let you know what steps I took to get the new url into the search engines. For this test I am really just using common sense SEO work and a few links. I have setup so many domains, urls, and shopping cart systems but have never actually looked at the time it took to get the pages indexed. We will see now.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Related Articles

Close
E-mail It