I was looking at nTLDStats.com this morning, and I noticed what appears to be the first decline in the number of new gTLD domain name registrations. I looked through the chart since the website began tracking the number of domain registrations, and it appears that March 25 – 26, 2015 showed the first
Daniel Negari is the entrepreneur behind the .XYZ and .College domain registries. This morning, I learned that he also owns additional new gTLD registries.
The Telegraph published an article about the new gTLD domain extensions, and Daniel Negari’s business was written about fairly extensively. I found two pieces of information particularly interesting. From the article:
“Not all of the bidders are technology giants with deep pockets. Entrepreneur Daniel Negari launched a start-up in the US based around his purchase of dot-xyz and dot-college. The former has already made him $6.4m.
He has “several” others that he’s bought from the original winners on the open market that are yet to be announced.”
There has been quite a bit of speculation about
A few people have mentioned a Google update that could be problematic for domain investors, and I want to share a few ways I think it could be harmful to domain investors.
On March 16th, Google announced “An update on doorway pages” via its official blog. Please read the entire blog post to see what is coming, but here is the main jist of the update:
“Over time, we’ve seen sites try to maximize their “search footprint” without adding clear, unique value. These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof. To improve the quality of search results for our users, we’ll soon launch a ranking adjustment to better address these types of pages. Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change.”
This could be problematic for
I wrote about the the Walmart.Horse website story earlier this week, and I want to share another amusing .Horse website that popped up recently on Reddit.
Have a look at McDonalds.Horse when you have a chance. The website colors are red and yellow like the McDonald’s hamburger chain color scheme. The homepage has a photo of a statue of Ronald McDonald riding a horse (apparently the photo is from a McDonald’s in Amarillo, Texas, although I am not 100% certain of that).
So as to not cause confusion, there is a note at the bottom of the website that states that it is an “Art project, not to be confused with the restaurant chain that is also called “McDonald’s”.”
McDonalds.Horse was registered on March 11, which is a couple of weeks after Walmart.Horse was registered. It looks like the domain name registrant is based in Canada.
I wonder how many more .Horse domain names we’ll see registered and used in this manner. Hopefully McDonalds (the restaurant chain) takes this in stride (pun intended) and doesn’t go the legal route.
One of the biggest domain name stories of the last week involves the Walmart.Horse domain name and landing page. The short version of the story is that a person registered the Walmart.Horse domain name, and a company representing Walmart sent a cease and desist letter to the owner. The owner responded to the C&D, and here we are.
There has been quite a bit of press coverage of this story, and I think the buzz is good for the registry operator, Minds+Machines. Some of the news outlets that published articles about Walmart.Horse include:
I don’t think Minds + Machines could
The big new gTLD story today was that Google reportedly paid a hair over $25 million to win the rights to operate the .App new gTLD extension (via DNW and TheDomains). There was 13 applicants for the .App extension, and Google prevailed over companies like Amazon, Radix, Donuts, and several others with deep pockets.
I would imagine Google has a lot of faith in .App domain names. Its .How extension has only sold 2,367 .How domain names to date (according to nTLDStats.com), and I presume Google is confident there will be more interest in .App domain names. I would guess that will be the case since I see more utility with .App domain names.
Since domain investors tend to buy domain names in the more popular extensions, I am curious if you plan to buy any .App domain names. Personally, I have no plans to buy any, but I suppose that could change if I see a good opportunity.
Please vote in the poll below and share your thoughts in the comment section if you’d like to expound:
