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After significant public admonishment from the Internet community, Go Daddy has publicly declared it is opposed to SOPA as it is currently written. I think the scorn was deserved, but I am glad to see GoDaddy has changed its stance on the issue. The company’s press release is below.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) — Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation — but we can clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this.   Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech.

“As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy,” said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

“Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future,” Jones said.

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About Go Daddy
Go Daddy is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration plans, as well as website design and hosting packages.   Go Daddy has a  broad  array  of  cloud-based products and services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce website hosting, blog software, search engine optimization utilities, email marketing tools, website design services, website security software and online storage solutions. Go Daddy has more than 51 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers more than one domain name every second of every day. GoDaddy.com is the largest worldwide mass-market hosting provider by annual revenue according to Tier1 Research (Mass-Market Hosting Report-Winter 2011) and is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. Go Daddy registered more than one-third of all new domain names created In 2010 for the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.  

I heard about Voodoo through the grapevine, and I decided to give it a try a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t heard, Voodoo is a new parking company that utilizes a Google feed. I don’t do much parking and it’s pretty early in this trial, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Revenue on my domain names seems to be significantly higher than when I was parking at a company that used a Yahoo feed. I earn under $100/month with PPC, so I am not even going to bother sharing the revenue % growth because it’s not statistically significant, but I am earning more money with my domain names.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there seem to be far more actual clicks with Voodoo than previously. There aren’t nearly as many searches, and that seems to mean more revenue. One name of mine has had 32 visits and 55 clicks in the last 4 days. I don’t remember seeing a CTR that high with my names before.

I know a lot of people have moved names over to Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic parking company. According to Daily Changes, Internet Traffic now has just over a million domain names on its DNS (1,026,898 total). Voodoo has 158,949 domain names on its DNS.

Voodoo seems to be a new parking provider you may want to check out.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen quite a few television spots for 1&1 on different channels and at various hours, which likely means the company is spending a lot of money on advertising.  I had heard of 1&1 before, but I don’t know a whole lot about the company, aside from knowing about it’s domain registration division.

The Pennsylvania-based company is a domain registrar and web hosting company, although it seems to be promoting it’s website building tools for small businesses. I suppose once a business builds a website, it’s more likely they will become long term customers. There’s certainly more money in web hosting than in domain registrations.

I did some research to see how 1&1 ranks in terms of number of domain registrations, but I didn’t see the company listed on  WebHosting.info’s top registrar list. Research led me to the 1&1 FAQ page that stated, “Schlund + Partner registers domain names for 1&1 Internet.” WebHosting.info ranks Schlund + Partner as the 5th largest domain registrar in the world, with just under 5.2 million registrations, although I don’t know if they exclusively work with 1&1 (Schlund.de forwards to 1und1.de though.

A bit more research showed me that 1&1 is related to Sedo. Both companies are owned by a German company named United Internet AG. You can see the affiliation on  Sedo’s website  and also on  1&1’s history page. United Internet AG also operates Mail.com. You can read about United Internet’s other brands on its  corporate website.

One thing I was disappointed about given the relationship between 1&1 and Sedo was what seems to be a lack of a relationship between the two companies when searching for domain names at 1&1. When I performed a domain search using a domain name I own and have listed for sale at Sedo, there was nothing that indicated that I could visit Sedo to make an offer for the domain name. Perhaps 1&1 caters only to companies that will quickly buy unregistered domain names instead of having to wait out a negotiation process.

I am sure they’ve considered this, and it would be interesting to know why these sister companies aren’t working together in a more obvious way.

Travel Shark, the company previously known as SwiftRank, has made 80 additional city Hotels.com domain name and website acquisitions, and the list of  acquired  domain names is simply awesome. Included in the purchase are BeijingHotels.com, SingaporeHotels.com, BangkokHotels.com and KualaLumpurHotels.com.  The acquisition price was not released, but I would be willing to bet that it was seven figures.

Travelshark CEO, Sue Heilbronner  provided some insight into this  acquisition. “We made this investment in these domains in support of the new consumer products TravelShark is building to enhance the quality and usability of our hyper-local content.  We know consumers will find high-quality sites more and have more confidence in those sites based on the strength of these excellent domains.  So this is a long-term decision that crosses our entire strategic plan.”

When it was known as SwiftRank, the travel company made other significant domain name acquisitions. It purchased SydneyHotels.com from Rick Schwartz for a reported $100,000, and it also purchased domain names from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. Most of its acquisition prices are private, but the company has shown a willingness to pay significant sums of money for domain names that fit into its business model.

At present, the company currently operates many websites in markets across the world. Instead of relying on one primary website like most travel companies, it builds smaller portals focusing on niche markets. For instance, it operates LasVegasHotels.com,  BostonHotels.com, JerusalemHotels.com, CapetownHotels.com, VancouverHotels.com, and many more in regions throughout the world.

The next time you’re looking for  Las Vegas Hotels, Beijing Hotels, or  Kuala Lumpur Hotels, you should check out Travel Shark’s websites to book your trip.

More information about the company’s most recent acquisitions can be found in the press release issued today.

There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today that I think anyone who parks domain names should read. Apparently, it appears that it’s possible for a parking company to send out auto response emails for domain names that are parked, and those emails may contain spammy links in them.

Here’s an excerpt from the article discussing how this was set up:

“An Associated Press reporter accidentally sent a message to a “verizonwireless.co” address instead of the proper “.com” and got this response, ostensibly from his contact “tom”:

“I am out of office right now on a my (sic) dream vacation and will get back to you when I return. If you don’t hear from me, my assistant should contact you shortly. You should check this site to see how I scored the best travel deal for my trip.”

That’s followed by a link to a site that advertises luxury resorts. Presumably, the owner of verizonwireless.co makes money when someone clicks through to any of the resort sites.”

I sent a test email to info @ one of my parked domain names at Parked.com and I did not receive any type of response (no delivery failure notice either), so it appears that this is not something Parked.com is doing. I don’t do much parking elsewhere, so I can’t say if others are or aren’t doing this.

I recommend that you check out the WSJ article when you have a chance.

While logging into my account the other day at Enom, I noticed that they had an option to enable “Account Validation.” This is an extra layer of security that asks you questions just about every time you log in to your account, to verify that you are the account holder.

When you enable Account Validation, you’re taken to a screen where you must choose four questions to answer out of a large group of questions. There are choices about your first pet, first car, teachers, schools favorite vacation spot…etc. You must select and then answer four of the questions, which will be used to validate your credentials on future log in attempts.

After this is enabled, when you log in, it will randomly display two questions to answer. You can choose an option to not display the questions on future log ins, although I check the box every time and I still get asked the questions. Perhaps it’s a cookie setting on my computer that is causing this.

One thing I like is that the answers don’t auto populate when I begin typing, which would seemingly give away the answers. When I log in to my Paypal account without my security key, it asks me two questions, and as soon as I type the first correct letter, my full answer appears. With Enom, this doesn’t happen, making it more secure.

I recommend adding Account Validation to your account.

I recommend that you enable Account Validation at Enom when you have a chance.