Geographic Domain Names

Facts About .Sydney on Its First Birthday

The .Sydney geographic domain name extension turned one today. To date, over 9,000 .Sydney domain names have been registered, and according to nTLDStats.com, there are over 8,200 active .Sydney domain names in the zonefile. The City of Sydney Australia operates the WhatsOn.Sydney website, and there are restaurants, hotels, and other local businesses that use other .Sydney domain names.

According to a press release marking the first anniversary, “Sydneysiders can enjoy special birthday offers for a limited time courtesy of domain name retailers Crazy Domains, Melbourne IT and Netregistry.” People interested in seeing the special offers can visit Get.Sydney to register .Sydney domain names.

In celebration of the one year anniversary of .Sydney, I was sent some of the following facts and figures about .Sydney domain names. I would have preferred that the registry send me to .Sydney to see the extension in action, but for now, we can check this out:

Boston Globe Sells .Boston to Minds+Machines

The Boston Globe published an article about its sale of the .Boston domain extension. Minds + Machines acquired the majority of the Boston Globe’s rights to operate the extension for an undisclosed sum. According to the article, the Boston Globe “will retain a small ownership stake in ‘.boston,’ and the company will receive undisclosed future revenues.

Based on my interpretation of the article, it doesn’t seem like The Boston Globe management was too keen on operating .Boston. Here are a couple of outtakes from Hiawatha Bray’s article:

UDRP filed on Milano.com domain name (Updated)

I was looking through the recent UDRP filings at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and I saw one for the Milano.com domain name. The UDRP is WIPO Case D2015-2263, and the complainant is a company called Grupo Milano, S.A. de C.V.

The Milano.com domain name has a creation date of May 22, 1997, according to DomainTools. The domain name is parked, and I see advertising links related to the city of Milan, Italy.

According to DomainTools’ Whois history tool, in

.Miami Domains Banner at Dolphins Game Part of Larger Effort

.Miami Domain names at GoDaddy

GoDaddy and the .Miami domain registry have been teaming up to market .Miami domain names using a variety of channels. One attention grabbing tactic was seen by thousands who attended the Miami Dolphins NFL game this past Sunday.

As you can see from the photos above and below, a small airplane flew around Sun Life Stadium in Miami, Florida with a banner advertising .Miami domain names available at GoDaddy for “40% off.” The banner was part of a larger marketing effort being undertaken by Minds & Machines, the operators of the .Miami domain extension, and GoDaddy.

Since .Miami launched

Orlando.com Launched by Expedia

The Orlando Sentinel published an article this morning about the launch (well, re-launch) of Orlando.com. Expedia owns the website, and the registrant is listed as Hotels.com in the Whois database.

According to the article, “The site combines tips on a specific geographic location with the ability to book a hotel room, rather than one site for each hotel company, or an umbrella site like Expedia.” The article also notes that “it represents a movement toward travel destination marketing.”

It looks like Hotels.com has owned Orlando.com for quite some time. DomainTools Whois History tool shows that Hotels.com was listed as the domain name registrant since at least 2003. In addition, Screenshots.com shows that there have been previous iterations of the Orlando.com website. I am not entirely sure how this new website differs from the old versions, but you could check out Archive.org to see what changes were made.

One interesting thing I found was sort of by accident when

7 Figure Denver.com Purchase: “It’s Paid Off”

Deborah Kearns of RIS Media published an article about Peter Niederman and his Kentwood Real Estate brokerage. As you may recall, Kentwood Real Estate acquired Denver.com in 2012 for an undisclosed seven figure purchase price. The domain name was sold by Boulevards, a company that owns many large city .com domain names.

Judging by Peter’s comments in the RIS Media article, it seems that things are going well for Kentwood and Denver.com. In the article, Peter recalled that some people thought he was “crazy” for spending seven figures on the domain name, but the purchase has “paid off” for him and his company.

I reached out to Peter to ask about the article, and he let me know

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