Home Blog Page 1330

Idearc Making Play for “Super” Domain Names?

Elliot Silver
-
14

Idearc SupermediaIt appears like the marketing and Internet Yellow Pages company formerly known as Idearc, and now known as SuperMedia, may have recently made a strong play for “Super” domain names.

In this week’s sales report on DNJournal, it was reported that SuperElectricians.com, SuperMechanics.com and SuperPainters.com each sold for $10,000 apiece. All three of these are currently registered in the name of Sedo’s Escrow account, presumably awaiting transfer.

This morning, Eric Borgos of Impulse Communications announced (in a comment on my blog) that his company recently sold several Super domain names. The names his company sold were SuperMortgages.com for $7,500, SuperFlorists.com for $3,000, SuperMoving.com for $7,500, and SuperPrinting.com for $4,000. All of these domain names are registered to Idearc  Media, which is now known as SuperMedia.

The company also owns SuperExterminators.com and SuperCarRepair.com. In addition, SuperPlumbing.com looks to be at Sedo Escrow as well. There may be others, but I only checked a handful of names I thought would make sense for them to own.

Does this mean that “Super” names have more value now than before? Probably not. I wouldn’t advise going out to buy these names unless you can get great prices. It’s more than likely the company already went after the domain names they wanted, and if you buy them with the hopes of flipping them, you might be stuck.

Barack Obama on Twitter: Using Libya ccTLD for URL Shortener

Elliot Silver
-
8

Barack Obama on Twitter

I am not someone who is interested in politics or discussing politics. In fact, I strongly dislike political conversations with polarizing topics – it’s just not my thing. That being said, I came across President Obama’s Twitter page this afternoon and saw something that I think is pretty ironic.

Just about all of the URLs that are linked to from the President’s page use Bitly to shorten the URL. Although Bitly owns Bitly.com, it primarily uses Bit.LY for its shortened URLs, and .LY is the ccTLD for the country of Libya. For instance, http://bit.ly/bROnKn, http://www.bit.ly/9-l, and http://bit.ly/a-r were all recently used on President Obama’s Twitter page.

As you are may be aware, the country of Libya, along with Cuba and Syria was described by John Bolton as “Beyond the Axis of Evil.”   The government of Libya isn’t exactly on the friendliest of terms with the US government, so it’s somewhat humorous in an ironic way that the President’s Twitter staff would choose to use Bitly to shorten URLs.

From what I understand, it’s fairly simple to create a URL shortener on any domain name. There are plenty of short .US domain names that would make the perfect URL shortener for our President. Just some food for thought.

What Domain Names Have You Sold Recently?

Elliot Silver
-
55

I wrote a popular post a couple of days ago asking people what recent domain acquisitions they made, and that post has received 71 comments as of this afternoon. Steve Morsa followed it up with an email suggesting another post asking readers to post some of their recent sales.

At first, I was a bit hesitant to post this because I keep just about all of my sales and sales prices private. However, I don’t mind revealing some of my recent sales, albeit without sales prices.

  • Danvers.com
  • GolfBooks.com
  • BoroughPark.com
  • ParkSlope.com
  • GunCollection.com
  • RittenhouseSquare.com
  • UniqueInk.com
  • iCookbook.com
  • DeepWrinkleTreatments.com
  • ChristmasLawnOrnaments.com

If you’d like to post some of your recent sales with or without sales prices, feel free to do so. It’s an interesting look at what the aftermarket is doing.

Vegas.com Backed by County for .Vegas gTLD While City Backs Other Entity

Elliot Silver
-
1

Vegas.comAccording to an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal, the operators of the famous Vegas.com website won a key endorsement from Nevada’s Clark County board of commissioners to run the .Vegas gTLD if and when ICANN approves the introduction of these domain name.

The county vote was unanimous, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that Vegas.com’s operators will actually be able to manage the .Vegas suffix. The city of Las Vegas previously endorsed Dot Vegas, Inc., another organization that would like to run the .Vegas gTLD. I personally find it a bit odd that another entity won considering the strength of the Vegas.com brand outside of Las Vegas… but what do I know.

Of course, the big winner in this will be ICANN. I presume both entities are going to have to pay ICANN a LOT of money to apply for the gTLD, and then ICANN can decide whether Clark County or the City of Las Vegas has the greater right to select an organization to manage the registry. This is another big issue that ICANN will need to sort through before they make their decision.

With millions of dollars at stake, all of the minor issues will certainly become major. Since the Clark County commissioners have been told the .Vegas gTLD “eventually could generate millions of dollars in fees for the county,” they probably won’t take a rejection lightly and litigation could follow. I guess it’s a good thing that ICANN is charging so much for applications – the legal fees could become enormous (imagine if the State of New York wants a .NewYork while New York City wants .NYC).

No matter whether Vegas.com gets awarded the .Vegas suffix or not (if/when ICANN approves their introduction), they will still be the winners when people type in things like hotels.Vegas.com and vacation.Vegas.com

SEO Play Using WhyPark

Elliot Silver
-
9

I’m not sure if others are doing this, although I am sure there are plenty of people who are. I registered several long tail keyword domain names related to one of my websites. In lieu of spending time building a mini site, I used WhyPark to rapidly deploy several websites.

On each of the websites, I added a couple of links – one to the main page on my website and another to a sub-page that the visitor to the site would be interested in finding. The longer tail keywords aren’t all that competitive, and my hope is that I will essentially have two websites in the top of the results page.

I will do a bit of link building for each of these mini websites, and I will not link to them from my blog or other related website, where the cross-linking could possibly be tracked and a relationship detected.

I don’t know if it’s going to add “link juice” to my primary site, but the long tail domain names would be valuable in an of themselves, and it’s much easier for me than building individual sites.

Also similarly related, I am close to selling a domain name that I put to sale using WhyPark just a few weeks ago. A real estate agent from California contacted me and we are working out a deal.

What Domains Have You Bought Recently?

Elliot Silver
-
186

It’s always fun to share new acquisitions and new registrations. Below are some newly acquired domain names I have made in the last couple of weeks, both in the aftermarket and newly registered names. Feel free to share yours in the comment section.

  • MovieCollectibles.com
  • Grandmom.com
  • ActingCoach.com
  • StrayAnimals.com
  • BoroughPark.com (sold)
  • GolfBooks.com (sold)
  • RittenhouseSquare.com (sold)
  • BulldogBlog.com (sold)
  • CatFuneral.com (newly registered)
  • DogFuneral.com (newly registered)
  • LugeSleds.com (newly registered)
  • WashingtonDogWalker.com (newly registered)
  • TableTennisSets.com (newly registered)
1...1,3291,3301,331...1,573Page 1,330 of 1,573