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Josh Metnick: How Should Illinois.com Be Used?

Josh Metnick is an Internet entrepreneur who sold Chicago.com to the Chicago Sun-Times for an undisclosed figure. Yesterday, Josh posted a tweet with a link to a Quora page he created soliciting opinions on what to put on Illinois.com, a domain name his company owns.

At the moment, Illinois.com hosts a simple landing page announcing that “Something incredible is coming soon,” although it seems like what is coming has yet to be determined.

I think the three primary uses that make the most sense would be for

Zoosk or Zooks? Who Cares – The Company Owns Both

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Zooks

I was watching some late night television the other night when I saw a commercial for Zoosk.com… or was it Zooks.com? It’s actually Zoosk, and the company did two things I consider smart when it comes to domain names and its website.

The company recognized that some consumers confuse Zoosk and Zooks, and both domain names were purchased. It appears that they bought the Zooks.com domain name from a Harley Davidson dealership called Big Barn Harley-Davidson. Interestingly, it was registered to a company called Media Market in Idaho in between the Harley dealership and this dating website, and I previously wrote about Media Market appearing to make domain acquisitions on behalf of large companies.

The second smart move I noticed was that on the typo Zooks.com domain name, they actually have a small portal built to promote the Zoosk brand and to direct visitors to the correct website. In fact, the Zooks.com mini portal mentions, “Zooks is a common misspelling of Zoosk.”

According to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, “Zooks” gets nearly 15,000 exact match searches globally each month. By having a website on Zooks.com, the company is ranked #2 on Google for this search, just behind the correct Zoosk.com website. With the top results known to get the majority of traffic from searchers, owning this position as a result of building the mini portal instead of a 301 redirect was brilliant. The company now owns the top 3 results, and it also has sitelinks on the first.

Smart moves for Zoosk!

Did Microsoft Buy Vaccination.com?

I was doing some domain research, and I noticed that Vaccination.com is now registered to a company known as Media Market of Boise, Idaho. As of September 24, 2009, the domain name was registered to Internet REIT, but on October 20, 2009, the domain name changed hands and is now registered to Media Market.

I don’t know anything about Media Market, but I do know they were the company who registered quite a few Bing related typo domain names just before they were acquired by Microsoft. Interestingly enough, Jamie reported that Microsoft recently acquired H1N1Symptoms.com, and the domain name resolves to the Bing results page for the search phrase “h1n1symptoms.” This is great for the owner of h1n1symptoms.us, as that website currently ranks #1 for the search term.

Prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of H1N1Symptoms.com, it was registered to TenPenny Group, a company that among other things, acquires domain names on behalf of Microsoft and other large companies.

Microsoft Buys Bing Typos: Bimg.com, Bibg.com, and Others

Microsoft BingIn a shrewd move that many (probably most) companies don’t consider before launching a new product or service, Microsoft went ahead and purchased many Bing related typo domain names prior to launch. Some of the domain names now owned by Microsoft include, Bimg.com, Bibg.com, Bihg.com, and Binf.com.

All of these typo domain names were previously owned by other people and companies before Microsoft acquired them. One common link between these names is that it appears they were acquired by a company known as Media Market of Boise, Idaho between being owned by the former owner and Microsoft. You can see the Whois lookup for Bibg.com from February as an example.

One interesting domain acquisition they made was Bing.com. The reason it’s particularly interesting to me is that it was previously owned by General Mills, another Fortune 500 company.

Unfortunately, there were many Bing typos that Microsoft didn’t and/or couldn’t acquire. Among them include Bong.com, Bingo.com, Bin.com, Big.com, and Ing.com. I don’t know if the traffic increase can be linked directly with the Bing launch, but just look at the Compete scores for   Bong.com, Bung.com and Bin.com after May.

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