I just bought a new Giro ski helmet the other day. Giro is a helmet company owned by sports equipment conglomerate Easton-Bell Sports. As I often do when shopping for a product, I researched who owned key category domain names related to my purchase.
I was impressed when I saw that Easton-Bell Sports owned SkiingHelmets.com and SnowboardingHelmets.com. These category defining names should either be used to funnel direct navigation traffic to the company’s main site, or smaller portals can be built, using the site as either SEO plays or to drive traffic to the main site.
When I visited both sites to see what the company was doing with them, I was disappointed. Not only are they undeveloped, but the Network Solutions landing page even has “Giro” related links. They are essentially paying for visitors to click their own ads!
In looking at the historical thumbnails provided by Domain Tools, it appears that there was a site before or possibly a forward to the main site. It appears that Network Solutions is now the primary beneficiary during this high season.
It’s a good strategy for a company to acquire keyword domain names, but it’s poor execution when those domain names aren’t being used.
Even worse when a domain name company does it. Network Solutions was guilty of doing this with DomainNames.com awhile back. I blogged about it at the time:
http://availabledomainnames.com/2008/network-solutions-has-no-use-for-domainnamescom/
-Bill
Nice for NetSol, dumb move for Easton-Bell Sports
I used to have a Bell Motorcycle helmet years ago, great helmets and they’re not cheap (sounds better than Bell Helmet)
I’m surprised that they don’t own BellHelmets.com as that’s a popular term that people are searching for.
Its even crazier that NONE of the big manufacturers like Arai, Shoei, AGV…and on and on have’nt bought MotorcycleHelmets.com from MHB yet – THEY’RE ALL CRAZY
What better way is there to catch a bigger slice of the Pie 🙂
@nameclerk
Hilarious re: Netsol and DomainNames.com.
I just looked at the site, and it looks like Netsol is developing it now. $6.99 domains – perhaps Netsol is using the site as the bargain arm of their company?
Funny you should blog this, I just wrote a story yesterday on part of the the Afternic list and what was at those sites for those names. A lot of wasted opportunity.
favoritedomains.com/news/top-afternic-name-sales-research/1057/