Foursquare Hackathon Winner May Wish To Upgrade Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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5

Foursquare held its “Hackathon” in mid-September, and there were 500 developers from around the world competing. The goal was to build the best app using the Foursquare API.

According to the Foursquare blog, the winner was an entry called “Plan Your Next Trip,” which uses the Foursquare API “to generate a personalized two-day itinerary for your next travel destination.” Benjamin Netter of Paris was the developer of the app, and although there wasn’t a monetary prize, he did win a dinner with Naveen Selvadurai. co-founder of Foursquare.

To check out the Plan Your Next Trip app, you need to visit the heavily hyphenated  My-Next-Trip.com. This isn’t exactly consumer friendly. However, Mr. Netter has a couple of options he might consider if he’s able to monetize his app.

He could purchase PlanYourNextTrip.com from BuyDomains, which is for sale for $1,088. Alternatively, he could try to purchase MyNextTrip.com from Mike Berkens’ Worldwide Media. The domain name is not currently priced, but Mr. Berkens does respond to email inquiries.

Congratulations to Mr. Netter on winning the Hackathon. Perhaps he will upgrade his domain name to make it more marketable.

Tip to See How Your Site Ranks in Google

Elliot Silver
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11

For those of you who develop websites, you know that the Google ranking can be a key to success. Being in the top three results for your target keywords is critical to the success (and monetization) of your website.  Although I generally use Aaron Wall’s (free) Rank Checker Tool for multiple keyword search rankings, there’s an even easier and quicker way to find a site’s ranking.

Obviously doing the search yourself will be much faster, especially when you’re only searching for a few key terms. The problem with this method is that Google tracks your searches and websites you visit (in Chrome), and it’s more likely they will rank your favorite websites higher than others. For instance, DogWalker.com may rank higher for me on some searches than for someone else simply because I visit the site so often.

This is almost too easy of a tip to share, but I use it and figure that I might as well share it with others. When you search Google using an incognito browser in Chrome or the Private Browsing window in Safari, your search won’t be impacted by previous searches or visits. You can get a very good idea where most people will see your site when they search.

Yes, this is a very simple tip, but it’s something that can be helpful to you when you quickly want to see where your website (or someone else’s website) ranks.

Need Something Done? Get An Executive’s Email Address via Whois

Elliot Silver
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12

The other day, I was putting something together and it scratched because the fit of the brackets were too tight. I looked up the product on the website where we bought it, and I saw that someone recently posted a review with the same comment.

Instead of going through customer service to complain about the problem, I did what every smart domain investor should do when having issues with a product or service: I did a Whois search, found an executive’s email address, and got in touch via email to let him know about the issue. Less than 2 hours later, the issue was in the process of being resolved.

When a company is started, the founder is often the primary registrant of the domain name, unless privacy is used. As companies grow, many will change the registrant information to a domain administrator, but some will keep the CMO or CEO as the registrant. For those who initially had the CEO’s email address listed, I can find it using the Whois history tool.

I am not a big fan of waiting for customer service to respond or dealing with people who don’t really care much about customer service. CEOs and other executives have more skin in the game and are often far more willing to go above and beyond to satisfy a customer’s requests or complaints. Sending an email to a company CEO or executive is a good way to get an issue resolved quickly.

This is also a very good way to make new contacts with executives. You can use a Whois lookup to email an executive to praise the company or make a suggestion.

Value of a Domain Appraisal

Elliot Silver
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8

On Labor Day, I wrote a blog post offering a free domain appraisal for anyone that was interested in getting one. As you might imagine from the number of replies, I was overwhelmed fairly quickly.  Of course, my apologies to those who didn’t get a response due to time contraints.

Although I don’t believe domain appraisals are completely worthless, I don’t think they hold much value, other than being more of a guideline. I am a domain investor and I certainly don’t value domain names at the same levels end users might, unless I am going to be the end user. As the saying goes, a domain name is worth what someone will pay for it.

I don’t have experience or expertise in such a wide variety of businesses that I could give accurate insight to niche domain names. The same can likely be said about the companies that sell domain appraisals. They may be able to give an analysis of market conditions and how similar names sold, but with domain names being a unique entity, even comps aren’t all that accurate.

Some people are willing to spend more money on a domain name because a particular name gives them more authority. Others will spend more because they know the domain name will drive more business to them. There are many reasons why people pay more or less for a domain name, and every situation and domain name is different, making it impossible to give a precise valuation.

After I posted my offer, a couple business colleagues told me I shouldn’t have done it because it would be a no win situation. People tend to think their domain names are worth more than they will ever receive for them (count me in that same boat). Realistically though, a domain name is hard to put a value on, unless you are buying it for a reason and can put a value on what the domain name will bring to your business.

EMDs Aren’t Everything: Ask Rick Santorum

Elliot Silver
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12

Despite owning the exact match domain, Rick Santorum not #1 in Google

As much as I’d like to believe that exact match domain names (EMDs) can be very important for a company to own because of their search engine advantages, they certainly aren’t the be all end all. Case in point, US presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

Smartly, Mr. Santorum owns the exact match domain name, RickSantorum.com. His campaign operates the website, and it does pretty well in Google. Unfortunately for Mr. Santorum, it seems that even the exact match domain name won’t get him the #1 result, as Politico has pointed out today.

Do a search on Google for “Rick Santorum” or simply “Santorum,” and you’ll see a site SpreadingSantorum.com as the #1 result. The meta description pretty much tells you that someone is working hard to get the top result ahead of Mr. Santorum’s website: “Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum.”

This is an example of why some companies, especially those that are proficient with SEO, aren’t all that interested in descriptive / exact match domain names. I still believe exact match domain names are great for branding and help convey authority, but they aren’t everything and can still be beaten by SEO.

Should Comment Trolls Be Banned?

Elliot Silver
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65

I am not saying that I am going to move forward with banning anyone based on the results of this poll, but I am curious to know your opinion on the topic.

There are a number of people that try to spam every single article I write, and I know other bloggers face the same issue. Sometimes the spam is in the form of embedded links commenters add instead of posting their real name, while other times people try to drive attention to their own domain names and/or websites.

By far, the most annoying type of comment for me is when someone with a polarizing opinion attempts to change the topic of a discussion. I call these people “comment trolls” because they seem to troll around domain blogs looking for a place to post their commentary in an effort to change the direction of the discussion. If it’s frustrating for me, I can only imagine it’s frustrating for others.

Aside from being annoying, I am sure it’s alienating some people from commenting, and I would hate for that to happen on an ongoing basis.

Generally speaking, I don’t let link spammers post comments, unless the comment clearly is not just an attempt to get link (although every comment link is “nofollow.”). However, I have been reluctant to ban people who aren’t abusive, as I want people to feel free to express their opinions and I want readers to know that I am posting all comments, whether they agree with me or not.

I want to be fair to all, and I want to know if you think that people who seem to abuse the comment section should be banned from commenting. Please vote below and share your opinion.


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