Seven Mile

Which tld should bite the dust?

http://www.domainersgazette.com/the-dot-what-tld-deathmatch/ 

***FS*** Domainer’s Gazette runs a refreshing poll ..  Should serve as excellent guidance to newbies.

Parking Transparency 

Whizzbang sets out a roadmap for Standards and Transparency for parking companies.

***FS*** I think true transparency is a pipedream absent some kind of leverage on the upstreams.  Nothing begets nothing tho,  so kudos to MG for writing.http://www.whizzbangsblog.com/content/view/333/1/

Elliot Silver interviews Jeremy Padawer.

***FS*** Jeremy is a legacy domainer I remember Chernoff mentioning the guy in the “way early” days ..  today Padawer has a very full time job in the toy industry, and also is quite serious about domain names. He’s been investing in geo names over the last six months. memphis.org, scottsdale.org, rye.com, abilene.org, tempe.org, and others. Josh says: Jeremy is sometimes very funny and outrageous. http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2007/12/03/5-with-jeremy-padawer/

Madison Avenue’s Fear Of Domain Names.

By Stephen Douglas. “The truth of it is that Madison Avenue doesn’t want domains to compete with their abilities as an ad agency and undercut their client’s ad budget. pure and simple.” http://www.successclick.com/madison-avenues-fear-of-domain-names_2007_12_02/

***FS***  I personally think it’s less fear and more ambivalence or lack of understanding..  Most individual names get very little upfront traffic.  We live in an immediate gratification society.. One name 100 visits a day, nothing to get excited about ..  One name plus 12 months building to 10,000 visits a day..  that’s exciting, but it’s also uncertain and far off. Hence,  nothing to get fired-up about on Madison Ave.

Why some early stage startups fail.

***FS***  Valuable lessons here .. Written by someone at UnionSquareVentures.com. Excerpt: “”So it’s pretty clear to me that most venture backed investments don’t fail because the business plan was flawed. In my experience at least 2/3 of all business plans we back are flawed. Most venture backed investments fail because the venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered. That scale/burn rate becomes the cancer that kills the business…. Regardless of whether you have taken venture capital or not, capital efficiency and bootstrapping are critical values. You must keep your burn rate low until you can show without a shadow of a doubt that you have a business model that works, can be operated profitably and is ready to be scaled. Then and only then should you step on the gas.”" http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why_early_stage.html 

.NL Dutch Sedo Auction results.

Prices in Euros:
veiling.nl   ? 46.000
gezondheidszorg.nl   ? 16.500
luik.be   ? 3.500
kerstdagen.nl ? 3.250
hotelgids.nl ? 2.250
(not sure what currency that symbol is.) http://www.domainnews.com/aftermarket/2007120100/sedo-dutch-domain-auction-first-results/

Typo patrol

Someone is doing some pretty comprehensive research in the typo realm. http://www.domaindetectives.net/

Geo Leverage

Stu Maloff uses Geo targetted domains to help build his basketball camp business.  e.g. NewYorkBasketball.com http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2007/dailyposts/12-01-07.htm 

Sport.biz goes for $14,000.

http://insidedomaining.blogspot.com/2007/12/sportbiz-trades-for-10000-euro.html  Josh says: In my opinion, the value of certain strong or very strong single keyword domain names in some of the less popular extensions will continue to rise in value in the long run. One of the obvious reasons is that these kinds of words in .com are simply entirely out of reach for the vast majority of domain investors and people planning to build websites. Some will say that one should go for a two word .com with Sport or Sports in it.  Makes sense.  Some will say that the one word major keyword in a less popular extension is more important to their branding approach.  Makes sense. Personally, i’m not a fan of the way .biz looks or the meaning it has.  Sports.biz would have been much stronger than Sport.biz.The new owner of this domain should also get SportBiz.com, if they haven’t already.

***FS***  I much prefer names like these..  sportsworld.com sportsweb.com ..  certain think names plus ‘world’, ‘web’, ‘net’, ‘biz’ have a generic value and resonance simply because they make sense as generics but have a brandable quality about them. Would rather own those as a .com than own a further afield ext.

Microsoft buys Webfives:

Excerpt: “”The move comes just days after Microsoft took part in a panel discussion on the types of companies it would look to acquire. Managing Director Mark Wolfram had indicated that the Entertainment and Devices area might be ripe for an acquisition.”" http://www.news.com/beyond-binary/8301-13860_3-9827802-56.html?tag=nefd.top

QR Codes. (Quick Response)

QR codes were originally developed by Tokyo-based Denso Wave Inc. and are common in Japan. When published in print form - on billboards, transit ads, vehicles or other media - consumers can then take pictures of the images and have them converted to links, phone numbers or other advertising messages. “The basic function is to eliminate typing and allow you to take a code off paper media and any media that’s printable and transfer it to an electronic form,” said Greg Hayden, chief technology officer for Toronto-based Luna, which is in talks with Canadian carriers - which it will not name - in hopes of making the technology available to Canadian businesses. http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/Departmental-and-End-User-Computing/de822e9f-d9c7-49d1-97d2-be7f4d946767.html If i understand this correctly, one could use a symbol or image for one’s domain name, and this could be converted into the actual URL, when a cell phone or PDA user takes a photo of it.  If true, some very interesting possibilities could transpire around this!  This is whatcha call a good idea.

Six Apart sells Live Journal to Sup, a Russian media company.

Be careful how you treat your content contributers. http://valleywag.com/tech/livejournal/six-apart-exiles-its-troublesome-child-to-russia-329031.php

WIPO coming to Canada?

*** From October 17, 2007
http://www.domainnews.com/general/2007113022/the-wipo-is-coming-to-canada/#more-1828
http://www.slyck.com/story1601_Canada_to_Strengthen_Intellectual_Property_Throne_Speech

***FS***  .ca registrants take warning.. WIPO proceedings in general favor the complainant. In no other business do you loose the rights to your property for running afoul of a civil reglation..  it’s par for the course in the domain biz…  for now. 

Sahar gets it on with cars.

http://www.conceptualist.com/2007/12/01/weekend-getway-with-south-florida-toys/

***FS***  Nice to see you enjoying life bro..  It’s short

Tia Gives Some Tips/Tools

http://www.tiawood.com/news/internet-news/free-411-and-other-handy-google-experiments-for-doma.html

***FS***  Some neat tools and assorted domaining good-stuff  ..  Thanks Tia!~

  In the Washington Post no less:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112801679.html?hpid=moreheadlines

As reported a few weeks ago this is a very thorough action targeting certain practices and practitioners.

Quote: “”The complaint names three registrars as defendants — BelgiumDomains, CapitolDomains, and DomainDoorman — as well as what Dell claims are nearly a dozen Caribbean shell companies that allegedly served as the entities registering the domains. “”

The rumor is that several of these registrars would buy obvious trademark domains that get traffic..  Keep them active and resolving to paid-search parking pages powered by Google .. and then dump them on day 5, only to repurchase them at another one of their registrars for another five days..  Like a piston engine, churning through obvious “problem names” never paying for them and pawning of the brand intent traffic.

More: “”According to one example cited in Dell’s lawsuit, on May 25, 2007, DomainDoorman registered “dellfinacncialservices.com.” On May 30, the registrar deleted the domain from its stable of Web site names. Minutes later, that same Web site name was snatched up by BelgiumDomains, which then dropped the name on June 4. That same day, dellfinacncialservices.com was grabbed by CapitolDomains, which in turn relinquished it on June 9, the same day that site was re-registered again by DomainDoorman.  The complaint further charges that the registrars created and controlled a series of shell corporations in the Bahamas to act as the entities registering the domains, including Caribbean Online International, Domain Drop S.A., Domibot, Highlands International Investment, Keyword Marketing Inc., Maison Tropicale, Marketing Total S.A, Click Cons Ltd., Wan-Fu China Ltd. and Web Advertising Corp.”"

“Thank God” they chose the Bahamas and not the Caymans..  I’ve got enough confusion problems in my neighborhood.  The bummer reading this list of co’s like “Highlands International Investment” is that all these co’s actually hold good generic domain names as well.  In fact Highlands related co’s were held out as the 2nd largest holder of domain names back in 2001..  These guys own a lot of really good stuff. 

  I’m surprised a suit this thorough didn’t name Google as a co-defendant..  Then again,  maybe it’s not that surprising because Google offers a well liked product, has a lot more money; and a search partnership with Dell that allows Dell to share in the profit when its users engage in “right of the dot” typosquatting on Dell keyboards.  It’s funny because one day Dell could find itself on the defendant’s side of the courtroom defending unfair competition charges relating to shared typosquatting profits on keyboard fat-finger search partnerships.

The single biggest thing that struck me reading this story and lawsuit, is how the domain holder is such a patsy in this.. like a mule in the drug trade. 

I remember hearing about conversations at the Puerto Rico ICANN meetings relating to domain tasting.  Attorney’s for corporate clients like Dell were pleading with ICANN to “do something” about domain tasting. Rather than engage in a constructive dialog about the tasting problem and creating a timetable to stop it, ICANN basically stonewalled these lawyers.. “We’ll do a PDP to study the problems” .. (code for we’ll ignore the problem for two years) … What a pity.  Let’s hope these registrar’s above don’t fail due to this lawsuit, leaving millions of retail registrants in a Registerfly-style lerch because of ICANN’s shortsighted ambivalence.

  Why would ICANN ignore an obvious problem?  Everybody profits on this:  Versisign makes millions on this defendant’s portfolio of typosquatting names (on his  kept registrations) and assured renewals on good names from the “churning”..  they don’t want ICANN to change the rules.  ICANN gets considerable fees on each of the millions of kept registrations too, so it turns a blind-eye, promising to “study the tasting problem” (basically ignoring it), Google makes millions and millions more fencing the so called “stolen traffic”..  especially frustrating because the plaintiff is permitted to steal that same type of traffic with impunity in keyboard redirect applications which send same traffic to the same “fence”; Google.

And the cybersquatter, makes money too.. but he or she takes all the risk!  What a deal! 

If any good comes from this action it will be that the chain above gets people to re-examine and discuss.. to rethink the tasting issue and wholesale inequity of typo error-search takeovers ..  ICANN’s hands are not clean in this,  neither are Verisigns. Google’s hands simply can’t be considered clean and I view the Plaintiff as a thief punishing another thief…  Should the alleged ne’er-do-well registrant take the fall alone?  Let’s see what the courts say and what the river brings.

Godaddy

Go Daddy asks how to improve their signature auctions:  Elliot puts his mind to work and posts up a three point plan. http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2007/11/27/godaddy-tell-us-how-to-improve-signature-auctions/
 

Domain Speculation Pointers.

http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2007/11/26/domain-speculation-pointers/

***FS*** Elliot goes into depth.  Focus of this article is brand spanking new registrations. I thought all good names were already taken? :)  Everything but new vernacular is gon gone gone. Then again..  reading the 1950’s era popular Mechanics at a family member’s house shows how much language changes..  and how much it stay’s the same.  Fad’s come and go, trends stay with us and big generic words/phrases will be with us forever.  It’s your job Mr. Domainer to understand the difference. That’s where the money comes from.
 

Total Names Registered

There are more than 96 million “active” domain names on
the Net. http://www.domainnews.com/general/2007112714/domain-counts-and-ip-statistics/

***FS***  all but 5-7% are total crap or only have value to a sole distinctive entity.  That’s why domains are scarce.  Rubber hits the road here
 

Domain Gospel

Sahar points to Domink Mueller evangelizing to non domainers about domain names.  http://www.conceptualist.com/2007/11/26/economic-101-the-domain-version/

***FS*** Sometimes when I evangelize the space it can be self serving in the sense that the more folks who know about the space the more it helps my portfolio..  But if you look at it honestly..  pumping the space doesn’t help individual names that much..  There is something instinctively rewarding about being altruistic, helping another person, giving back and making a friend.
 

Diamonds Domains are Forever

Sahar compares the marketing of diamonds to the potential marketing of domains. http://www.conceptualist.com/2007/11/26/a-domain-or/

***FS***  This is a great analogy..  grading of domains is subtle.. little one character diffeences can amount to millions of dollars in price swings per name, just like diamonds.  Difference is that we don’t ‘need’ diamonds so much..  A bad economy and we’re going lower quality stones or CZ..  Own some of the 5-7 million domains that mean anything whatsoever and it’s a totally different ballgame.  We “need” those.
 

Sell!!

Affiliate.us gets 120,000 Euro bid at sedo auction. Has met it’s reserve. Zimbabwe.com at 130,000.  Has met it’s reserve. http://domainnamewire.com/2007/11/26/affiliateus-gets-eur-120000-bid/

***FS*** Be interesting to see if the Affiliate.us bidder is legit. Sell all day long at that dollar.  Zimbabwe.com is fair value.. IMO  ..  might still have some headroom but not for wildcat returns.

I Thought I bought This Name

Holiday domains.  SaintNick.com up for auction on Nov 29/07. http://www.domainnamenews.com/domain-sales/tis-the-season-to-buy-a-holiday-domain-name/1314

***FS***  Really!.. verno?
 

Country Code Domains

.BB redelegated to Barbados gov. Had been under management with the local office of Cable and Wireless. http://www.domainnews.com/icann/2007112622/icann-voted-to-redelegate-bb-to-the-government-of-barbados/

***FS***  Two consecutive characters might be easier to type, but they look funny and doesn’t sound right for the Country…  I live in Cayman where the Country code is .KY and so many people confuse us with Kentucky USA.  I think if country codes sounded like the Country (.CAY .BAR) they would sell way better, more people would use them.

China Rising

ICANN release 6 week IDNwili Report of user stats. Includes % share of use based on language. Highest is Chinese at 40.76 % share. http://blog.icann.org/?p=239

***FS*** A billion Chinese can’t be wrong

Do Evil.

Google stock share hits 666, and Sahar has some fun. http://www.conceptualist.com/2007/11/26/do-evil/

***FS***  Saw this yesterday..  had lots of fun with it..  What are the odds that it closes at exactly that to the penny anyway?  Would have been even weirder with 66 cents.
 

G-Storage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119612660573504716.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

***FS***  Throw enough stuff at the wall and something’s bound to stick.
 

‘Real’ Human People

Dotster offers live SEO consultations with “real” humans. http://www.domaininformer.com/news/news/071127Dotster.html

***FS***  Aaron Wall should offer “Extreme-VIP”  SEO  phone consultations at $20 a minute  ..  nice sideline
 

Cartoonist pokes Facebook.

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004355.html

***FS***  This is just funny.  Sometimes when the masses are ‘unsure’ or ‘listless’, those masses can be easily led astray..  true in life..  true for Facebook.

 http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071124/auctions_booming.html

This story about the auction space is interesting for several reasons..

Firstly it shows me that the purchase of Snapnames.com wasn’t so bad (in spite of loosing large domain name auction inventory supplier Network Solutions). Oversee could turn lemons into lemonade by modifying Snapnames proven auction platform to work for all sorts of products and services.. aside from domains.

The interesting thing I noticed in the story linked above was this folksy but poignant quote about locating online auctions: “”General consumers, they go to sites like eBay,” Steiner said. “But they might go to Google. Google’s the great equalizer. If an auction site is savvy and has a listing optimized for Google, people can find them.”"

 Your site doesn’t necessarily have to be optimized..  Google will find you anyway.  But the fact that regular folks are discovering how Google’s algorithmic search can serve them is ‘telling’ to say the least..  Reading that quote reminded of the day an elevator supplier acquaintance of mine discovered bidding for the keyword “elevator parts” on Overture back in 2003..  His business went ‘crazy’ afterward.  He thought paid-search was the single biggest game changer in 20 years of the elevator industry..  It tripled his business.

Google is doing the same thing..  Allowing those with kooky domain names like zillow.com and trulia.com to get traffic from generic keyword searches like “real estate”  ..  all because those sites have built a cool mousetrap or product.  Forget about organizing the world’s information, Google locates the cool mousetraps and serves them to us on demand.

Better to have the generic domain names is what I have always said.. Google can only display a fixed number of results on the initial page.  Most people never skip to page 2 or 3 in Google for commercial searches and Lord help you if you anger the Google Gods.  It could take your lights out.  Own ElevatorParts.com and my friend is assured to get some trickle of traffic, regardless what Google does to him. 

But Google has made many domain names irrelevant.  When I began in this business, plural domain names like georgiacardealers.com, or htmlcolorcharts.com were useful for garnering type in traffic.  Today those URL’s usefulness have been replaced by Google.com.  There is no denying the footprint that Google has left on our naming system or the great equalization effect it is bringing to search and navigation. There is an almost apathetic view from all entrepreneurial corners of search..  Nobody wants to commit the time or resources to create an alternative to the perfect product that is Google. So Google keeps taking more and more search share.  Credit Suisse hypothesizes that they will eventually take 100% of the search market.  I believe them.

We’ll probably do some searches at MSN, Verizon, Charter or Earthlink resulting from typing an inactive website or from fat-fingering .dom and .xom extensions in our browser’s address bar, but I could easily see nearly all voluntary searches at a “Search Engine” conducted via Google’s engine.  Their product is just so good. Navigation will still have it’s place and we will see type-in traffic marginalized by nefarious apps and the browsers themselves.  But ultimately sincere traffic looking for specific domain names will come through,  regardless of whether there is content or not. 

Content is actually irrelevant in securing type-in traffic visitors. The existence and robust nature of error-traffic proves that statement.  People think they know where they’re going and they don’t like being told that you feel nothing is there..  especially when something “is” there. The Internet is at least partly about freedom and exploration.  Like taking a Sunday drive..  We don’t always know where we’re going and we don’t always want to bring a map.

Where this leaves domain registrants is in 1 of 3 places..  We’ll either create marketplaces to sell our domain names, perhaps extending our profit by financing names for third parties or leasing with a right to purchase — selling hope to those looking to be found “within” Google, we’ll sell our unique type-in traffic “to” Google’s keyword marketplace, or we’ll use new tools to create thousands of websites with the hope that those sites will be found “by” Google. That “within-by-to” relationship will continue as far as I can see..  Like an infinite number of reflections generated by two mirrors facing each other. 

The only search related wildcards I can envision are a wikimedia search engine.  Content created by you..  coupled with a unique traffic source such as error search or domain names.  I’m imagining Verizon serving relevant Wikipedia info to all those 404 errors.. You’d have to find a way to compensate Verizon for the traffic..  Perhaps subscription based paid-search.. People won’t pay for a search if they can get it free at Google tho – but Google could charge for it’s search engine and many people would pay for it. Lots of angles on this.  I’m going to break here.

Will noodle on it and try to write a part 2 .. Whizzbang is doing Part 2’s and 3’s of domain posts with great aplomb..  maybe a sequel will stick here 

 This sh** is not going un-noticed,..

“Senators Push for ‘Serious Scrutiny’ of GoogleClick Deal by FTC”
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/11/20/senators-push-for-serious-scrutiny-of-googleclick-deal-by-ftc/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

and…

Not your everyday UDRP Case. (winner for the good guys)

http://www.dnforum.com/f26/sold-dropped-then-udrp-buyer-2-thread-251832.html#post1305753

***FS***  This is good stuff…  I guess the more the light shines on the importance of online media and paid-search,  the more sensible minds come around to thinking about balance and equity relating to consumer and registrant rights.

1. Teen Millionaire (whateverlife.com)
   http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/52250/teen-millionaire

    2.  Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company
   http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2007/nov/16prt.html

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/11/reinclusion-request-into-google/

  As the owner of tens of thousands of blacklisted domains,  this is very useful information. 

That said, I have a theory that if you build something useful enough or just have good enough domains, people will try to find you outside of the Google search framework. Not displaying black-listed URLs which search users call for by name in the Google Search box, actually harms the Google product because those users eventually leave Google and type-in the domain in their address-bar  ..  It sends a subconscious message to the person using the engine that Google couldn’t or wouldn’t turn back the results they called for. It makes their search appliance appear less useful. 

Obviously Google isn’t trying to create a bad product. They’re just trying to control the navigation platform for the better of its users and Google. But quality domain names are not like spam pages..  Users view them as a destination in their own right. Rule number one in the service business is “Give the people what they want”  ..  Interpreting what people want when they type a URL is not the answer..  Users want the domain name.  Taken by itself you could say “whatever” to the blocking and blacklisting of type-in domains…  But when you consider that black-hat seo guys are getting much better at slipping spam-pages past the goalie and you couple that experience with searching for specific domains which are just blocked, then you’ve got a search appliance that is starting to list to one side.  It doesn’t give users what they want.  The engineers are trying to outsmart their users to the detriment of the product.

I think Google is vulnerable on several fronts at the moment.  Like when you catch a bad cold from somebody..  you’re sick/contagious, but the symptoms aren’t visible to others yet.

   Charley writes:

“”An Open Letter to Google

I’m frustrated with Google.

Google, I’ve had enough.

I’ve been a customer since the beginning, when you sold search ads on an impression basis. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars with you. Sure, I don’t spend as much as some of the big companies, but you were kind enough to send an electronic picture frame to me last year to thank me for my business.

But I’ve had enough with the “black box” algorithms in your advertising program. Advertising with Google should be transparent, but it’s far from it.

I realize you had to tweak Adwords to prevent people from gaming the system. But how you calculate relevancy and minimum bids is frustrating. Customers don’t like frustration.

http://domainnamewire.com/2007/11/19/an-open-letter-to-google/“”

http://blog.snipperoo.com/2007/11/death-of-the-do.html

  Summary:  A guy who could have bought billions of dollars worth of domain real estate by applying his foresight (but didn’t) now declares “domain names dead” and hypothesizes that we will abandon domain names in favor of Rube Goldberg inspired Universal Search Locators (USLs) which will take over as the foundational elements of the web.. 

While I could actually see some variant of this trying to marginalize domains in the next 50 years,  in the end I think the obstacles are so many and the challenges so daunting that nothing could actually “do away” with the usefulness of domain names.  Consider:

—You would need to have Google agree on a global standard with Microsoft, Yahoo, Sina, Baidu and all other competing search services so that the experience of USL’s is uniform. You wouldn’t want to type Snipperoo at Baidu and get to Widgettown instead.

 —Even if you got everybody to agree on a standard you wouldn’t have mail because email runs on domain names.  This chap would surely argue that we could all abandon our email in favor of search engine messengers.. but those would have to run on a globally universal standard too.

— After clearing the initial hurdles above, you’d just have to convince every existing site owner to adopt your new platform and abandon their trillions on global collective branding in domains (think of every business card, bus bench, billboard, TV commercial, directory you’d have to change)

— You’d have to persuade governments of the world to cast away their national heritage embodied in (CCtlds)

— You’d have to convince Verisign to roll over and play dead.. or just buy them.. ditto with PIR (.org) and Affilias..

— Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari would have to give up their browsers because we wouldn’t need them.

It’s funny to read posts like this because search engines actually search for domain names.. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Without a name there is nothing to search for  

In fact it would be easier to just buy all the available domain names from large name holders around the world..  a few billion would roll up 60% of the most visited sites on the net.

Quote: “”The idea here is that as your content is broken up and thown out into the four corners of the web, that is where you come to reside. You no longer have a central address, you only exist where you end up. If you are good, you end up in some very powerful places. If you are bad - well, we all know what happens on the web if you are bad.”"

Those “Places” will need to have a unique location of course..  There is no such thing as a “place” without a unique location..  and on the Internet you need a Domain name to have a unique location – unless you want to start typing-in IP numbers that is.

This guy needs to lay of the over the counter cold medication.  Sahar calls bullshit too..  Next.

Yahoo and Google plan to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services into social networks.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/inbox-20-yahoo-and-google-to-turn-e-mail-into-a-social-network/index.html?ex=1352696400&en=b7f0d6a896f23bec&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Josh sends link and says:  For most people, email is important.  For many people, it is vital/mission critical.  I’m a strong proponent of people getting their own email address under their own domain name.  Gives you alot of control and potential more secure email.  And yes, there is a trend away from using mail.  I guess, at 42, i’m a bit of a dinosaur.

***FS*** Email is the language of business and commerce.  Nobody selling products or services directs you to their Facebook or Twitter Messenger.  Nobody sane anyway..

Adil writes:

“”Hey Frank,Check this out.

  Google has now restricted the clickable area on the Adsense Ad boxes for websites. Apparently you are no longer able to click anywhere on the Ad box. You must click on either the text or url of the ad in order to be taken to the destination of that ad. This will definitely affect the CTR. (Ofcourse on the bright side of the coin the traffic from domain will become more and more valuable and clearer to the advertisers in terms of conversion) “”

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-13-n42.html

***FS*** You’re right..  this is good for direct navigation type in traffic from domain names..  because domain parking traffic is actually much more sincere..  the visitors click because they are targeted and want the products offered..  I think Google probably went to far in allowing that other stuff to be clickable in the first place..  Thanks for providing the useful graphic. The big looser here is clickfraud which is ultimately good for anyone selling paid search.

..Part time masseuse at Google becomes multi millionaire because of the stock options given to her.  1,000 Google employees have stock options worth 5 million or more.

http://www.news.com/Google-options-make-masseuse-a-multimillionaire/2100-1030_3-6217998.html?tag=nefd.top

   ***FS*** You and everybody else Sally.. I mean Bonnie..  Too many millionaires..  The “millionaire” is becomeing the new hundred-thousand-dollionaire.

 …And,  said customers are shocked to learn that many of their sales were coming from the names they wanted to block..

http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/adwords-content-exclusion-beta-a-first-look/

Sahar gets right to the point with his screencap showing Domain ads with low CTR’s, but very high conversions.

http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=671

  Longshot?
http://gigaom.com/2007/11/11/sprint-google/

http://domainnamewire.com/2007/11/09/google-slap-hits-developed-domains/

Josh says: “”Best not to rely on search engines for viewers.  Not saying you shouldn’t try and get good rankings, but don’t rely on it.  Rely on creating very compelling content and services.  And [buy] domains with targetted organic type in traffic, if you can afford them”"

***FS*** Absolutely correct bro.

 Google folks cashing out and moving on.  The thing is ..  it’s many of those folks that made Google so valuable in the first place.  As lots of the earliest and smartest move toward the exits, the company will be different.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/11/05/billionaires-google-options-tech-cx_wt_1106googlaires.html

http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=652

Mark Simon talks about serious concerns expressed by those who are paying for clicks… Google clicks.

   Quote: “”Finally, there are the publishers [domainers]. Many report that even as their traffic and click-through rates have steadily increased in the past six months, their Adsense revenue has plateaued and even declined. You can’t exactly blame these guys for embracing the latest conspiracy theory to make its way around the Web, which is that Google squeezed them in the last quarter to meet Wall Street’s expectations.”"

***FS*** Testify brother… testify.

Can Google and Myspace catch Facebook? OpenSocial launched.  Set of common API’s for building social apps across the web.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/myspace_opensocial.html

***FS*** This announcement seems reactionary to me..  What is Facebook doing that makes Google think they need to announce this, in this way?..  Perhaps just a coincidence and nothing to see here but something about this release strikes me as odd. The Facebook “platform”..  thousands of developers creating “for Facebook” could be making some folks in the Googleplex nervous.

http://www.whizzbangsblog.com:80/content/view/307/1/

Quote: “”Being able to count the sales conversions and estimate the value of sales for each market vertical allows Google to be able to manipulate the traffic so that the advertiser’s conversions are just above the quality floor mentioned in a previous article on Quality.”"

***FS***  Michael is talking about the two sided shave.  It takes traffic from publishers paying them subsistence level pay rates and it doles out just enough conversions on the advertiser side to keep the advertiser coming back for more, all while getting fat profits for itself in the middle.

More: “”Google can now calculate out which domain should send which traffic at which time so that the AVERAGE quality floor is never breached. It’s fine to send traffic that is below the quality floor as long as the average conversion rate is still above the AVERAGE quality floor for a particular advertiser. “”

It has always surprised me that Google can support record revenues each quarter while publisher partners indicate flat or declining revenues. Can’t blame Google for setting the rules in their sandbox, but it could be a lonely sandbox one day if the neighborhood kids go elsewhere to play.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9807330-7.html

Quote: “Google intends to generate 50 megawatts of electricity from renewable forms for its operations by 2012.”

***FS*** Perhaps there’s some truth to the quirky saying:  “One day we’ll take our Google to the Google to get some Google for our Google”

Sahar writes:

"Here’s a domain-parking related post on Mashable I found interesting… how parked pages are perceived by non domainers: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy http://mashable.com/2007/10/24/google-page-rank/ Thanks!" "

***FS***  Sahar is correct of course..  Everything in life is a matter of perception or a gradient-optic through which you view things. Create a domain name and point it to your registrar’s placeholder page and the name is "unused" ..  add advertising of your own and the name is "parked"..  Heaven forbid your inactive domain with advertising gets indexed into almighty Google..  If this happens by accident or design, you’ve unwittingly created the sinister sounding "Spam page" .. Point your spam page to another website to make money from those visitors and the name becomes "inactive". At least in some peoples eyes.  Never have so many "inactive" domains made so much, for so many active entrepreneurs.

Life is full of labels and when you’re Google and your mission is the domination of Internet search, navigation and online user behavior, then it serves you well to create labels which empower you and weaken those who could challenge you.

I like Google the search utility a great deal, but I am  less than enamored with Google the marketing machine and businessman.  Google has managed to convince the world it does no wrong. It is a "happy fun ball of love" Not true of course. Google creates what business people perceive as great wrongs each day, but sells the masses on the fact that those wrongs are either not occurring or justified in the name of a greater Google.

Quote: ""…For Google’s part, the reason these sites are being slammed is because the company’s policy tells web publishers to “avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.” Do some of the effected blogs sell links to such sites? Perhaps; we’ll let these folks defend themselves and their practices. But the real story is the hypocrisy of Google enforcing this policy on third-party publishers, when within their own engine they profit immensely by selling ads to spammers and so-called “bad neighborhoods.”"

Reading this I was reminded of the gent Vern told me about who attended a recent SES show.  This gent was practically in tears that his livelihood was wiped out after his site was scrubbed from Google’s index, and he couldn’t for the life of him get an answer or explanation as to what he had done wrong. Google giveth and Google taketh away..  When Google giveth it is your best friend.. But it’s really sad to watch the "Google taketh away part" as Verno described it. People starting over..  but not knowing why or where to begin.

""Of course what Google was really doing was playing politics. Better than most, I might add. Sans the lobbyists and open debates, Google was working the people. Price controls? No, Google doesn’t control prices. Google measures quality, and adjusts pricing based on quality scores."" …  Reading this quote Danno sent from Johnon’s blog really struck me… 

As a domainer I get the majority of my traffic from "outside the Google framework". Google knows my sites exist but for the most part they work to actively deny visitors typing the domains I own (at Google) from ever finding my website in their search results.  I exist on the "Free Internet", you can navigate to me in your address bar because I run a real website.  But to believe Google’s marketing machine, I reside in the "Bad neighborhoods" of the net. Why else couldn’t you find me?  Because my sites advertising made me too much money for Google’s liking?  Because I was displaying a Google competitor’s ads?

You see Google knows my websites contain advertising. They hypocritically take visitors trying to navigate to my "bad neighborhood" and show show results with different advertising or content… In their view, this ’sleight of hand’ miraculously gentrifies the Internet.

Luckily for me, Google only takes the dumbest and laziest of my visitors.  Millions of people say "screw this". Google won’t give me the site I really want so I’ll just head to my trusty address bar and leave ‘the Google’ for the site I really wanted. It’s frustrating for users, but a necessary frustration that reinforces to users that the authoritative way to locate a website is via the browser,  not ‘the Google’.

Plenty of others have been brainwashed into viewing the net the way Google wants them to. Tens of thousands of the Internet’s brightest dutifully attend SES, they leave friends, family, loved ones - They miss life’s important moments so they can serve the Google. When I look out across the floor of a show like SES, I see a group of people who have largely abandoned the Free Internet in favor of being a servant to the Google.

Remember that guy crying about his lost livelihood at SES?  Everybody attending that conference is "that guy" ..  like the car wreck you pass on your way home during rush hour..  That could have been you. Every person who ignores organic domain name traffic and embraces Google alone is basically selling themselves into a lifetime of servitude..  You are beholden to Google to get your traffic forever. God help you if they turn on you.

I guess a lot of this post is common sense with a bit of bluster.  Buy into another party’s "platform" and live and die by "their" platform. Things could be worse I suppose. You can learn the "new smart pricing tricks" in 6-9 months..  and "quality adjustments" can be mastered in another 6 months.. as you gray, dancing to the tune Google plays for you, their black-box ensures that Google’s house will always win.  Your revenue will remain flat, theirs won’t. You will feel like an entrepreneur, but in the end, "you" work for "them".

Well good luck to you my SEO friends. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be on the Free Internet..  Buying generic names like Scott Day’s DiamondsDirect.com ..  logical sounding generic domains.. I have opted out of the Google traffic generator in favor of creating sites for the 20 or 30 visitors who find their way to names like that each day.  The more sites you acquire the greater the trickle of traffic you get.  Buy enough and the trickle becomes a torrent. You can arbitrage traffic from Google (when they let you) and increasingly from other reliable traffic sources such as Microsoft, Facebook or traditional media in order to sell products, sales leads and other advertising.

When you own a generic domain name you join the Free Internet.. I encourage you to stake your own claim here and release the chains that bend your perception. Long Live the Free Internet.

Danno writes:

"Hi,

If there ever was a time in human history for a few ‘domainers’ and a few ’seo’ers/sem’ers’ that understand domains and Internet search…to come together.

Now would be the time to for a "Field of Dreams" moment… ‘build it and they will come’.

___

Dogpile Beats Google, Again Top Search Engine in Customer Satisfaction
http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2007/10/18/dogpile-beats-google-again-top-search-engine-in-customer-satisfaction/

Peace!
Dan"

***FS***  A bunch of domain registrants plumbing their traffic from countless individual names to the results page realting to the name’s subject matter within the search engine.  Type eatingdisorders.com and get to Dogpile results for "eating disorders"  ..  Not a bad idea Danno..  but if you really think about it,  we already have that in the form of Google..  GOOG gets millions of unique visits each day to their domainpark syndication channel from domains like yours and mine  ..  still this engine would be owned by the domain registrants .. a co-op..  I like the idea..  but it’s hard to align interests. Great idea Danno.

Friends from the island write:

""Hi Frank, Remember us, the Swedes?.. We surely remember you guys. I read your blog on Google today and I had to send you this dilbert…

***FS*** Thanks so much for sending this Thomas!  Very funny!!~ Owning a portfolio of type-in traffic domain names may not help you get in the Google index but it is a little like owning a "giant mirror" in case the death ray starts to point in your general direction…  Thanks again for your note and the relevant yet unsettling cartoon 

http://www.news.com/Google-quarterly-profit-swells-46-percent/2100-1030_3-6214246.html?tag=nefd.top

***FS*** Thank-you black-box, smart-pricing and "cost of services." ..  Sheesh .. 

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9800095-7.html

Quote: What do 16,000 people do at Google? "Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That’s chaotic," he says. "The new employees find it difficult to figure out how to get things done. It’s not a normal company."

***FS***  Jordan Rohan has my favorite quote which is balls-on accurate: ""They have possibly the best core business in the history of the Internet, That is supporting them as they attempt to find an Act II.""  I’ve had several historical Googlers tell me that many of the original staff have tried to land jobs with Facebook.  16000 people vs Less than 400 leaves lots of headroom for potential options and upside.

""I have friends that only use Google search box for direct navigation. Why? Because it’s faster and if they stuff up Google will fix it. This is how a lot of people use the web. Domainers need to start abusing this. I watched my mate do it last night, his comment was a. it’s faster b. I want to start at Google, that’s why it’s MY homepage. Fair enough I say.

Site’s that don’t rank for their own name are VERY RARELY banned. It is actually quite difficult to get a site banned. I know guys that do all the time. Sites that don’t rank just don’t have the links coming in from the right places.

It’s not rocket science and one good paid link (or free from your own network) can rank the domain top 10 - #1, it’s not hard hey.

So if your sites are not ranking for their names you are missing half the pie and it’s only going to get worse.

A BIG factor of the Google algo is AGE OF LINKS. The sooner you act the better. In some niches you will be left behind.

I also understand it’s WORK to the domainers, but at the same time it’s not that much extra if your systems are smart. READ: it can be automated. The ROI is there and it’s not difficult with a network of sites that are indexed or have link pop.

Food for thought anyway.""

***FS***  Well said Ben..  I’m sure we’ve all noticed friends and fam who navigate in this way.. We could all take some of your advice.

Aaron writes:

""Hi Frank,

Hope you are doing well. I am still overseas, but thought you might be interested in how Google is spell correcting some domain name and filepath spelling errors. http://www.seobook.com/google-corrects-domain-name-spelling-errors

They dont fix .nt or .xom, but they directed an seibook.com/bok query to seobook.com/blog !

seibook.com/book is a real URL, only 1 character away from that URL causes google to point to my domain while changing a character in the domain name and 3 in the filename.""

***FS*** This type of stuff can backfire for the obvious "confusion issues" you touch on Aaron. Google acting as the arbiter, deciding which site you want, based on ancillary information you give it..  Type seibook.com in the Google search box and the algo results spit back the requested seibook.com site (for me in Cayman anyway)..  Give Google more information such as the /blog filepath after the URL and Google thinks the user is looking for Aaron’s site because it knows that seibook.com/blog isn’t indexed or doesn’t exist.

I think this gradual shaping of navigation will eventually creep into address bar navigation..  That could reignite browser competition… and combined with higher registry renewal prices will cause lots of longer tail "tasting acquired" portfolios to start dying off.  Expect a lot more name deletions in 2008-2009 ..  partly based on the economy (speculative chaff jettisoned) and partly based of changes like these.

That said, this only works so far. History has shown, you can’t cage the user…  Throw up too many blockades, detours and roadblocks to user intent and people will abandon your platform. I am living proof of that statement as we get almost 100% of our traffic from around Google..  Google sends us nothing — effectively no traffic, yet all our visitors are Google users.. That’s a lot of disgruntled customers who are forced to leave Google, finding their way to our front door by avoiding the natural path (through Google).  If Google stopped the gaming their search results, allowing Domain Name searches in their search box to resolve or at least show the actual site requested, our traffic would spike significantly..  I don’t expect the cold war against direct navigation to stop anytime soon …  but a fellow can always hope.. and take comfort in the fact that Google, Microsoft and all navigation helpers can game and cajole as they wish..  People will find their way to the ‘free Internet’..  (the site they actually want) eventually.

Everytime I post on this subject it reminds me of the great quote by Gandhi:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you; then you win!"

For the longest time Search engines ignored domains..  and later some (not all) search operators laughed at the domain name navigation concept, ridiculing it as "Grandma Navigation" .. well the fact that Google runs a registrar, a domain parking program and aggressively shapes domain searches in the Google searchbox, illustrates to me that they have decided to fight (or at least try to control) some forms of domain navigation.

I look forward to the day when every domain name correctly entered into the Google search-box will reward the user with a link to the site they request.  If you love your users Google,  set them free.

Josh comments on Johnon.com/Michael Gilmour..  His thoughts posted raw and unfiltered..  except for heading, courtesy of me..  Smoke and mirrors never last tho ..  Cream always rises, truth always finds a way to show.

http://www.johnon.com/417/domainer-profits.html

""Domainer profit margins: Michael Gilmour of WhizzBangsBlog.com knows his business. He presented numbers (I love to see numbers) on Google’s traffic acuisition costs and the percentage of ad revenue shared between Google, domainers, and parking companies.

Guess what? Google¹s share has gone down (-29%), domainer¹s have basically stayed the same (-3%), and parking companies revenues have increased around 45% (since Q4 2005).

Google¹s share has gone down (-29%), domainer¹s have basically stayed the same (-3%), and parking companies revenues have increased around 45% (since Q4 2005). I think you get my point. 

My prediction:

Some very smart person or group of people is going to set up a transparent and very well run "parking" company that will disrupt the current situation in a significant way. My guess is this company will offer variances of parked pages, real mini-sites and Transparent Accounting to those who park their domains with them.

Lastly, this company will take a much lower revenue share than other parked companies, and domainers with Traffic will stampede towards them.""

***FS*** I’ll go one better..  the parking company that acts as the disruptive conduit upsetting the apple cart rev-share will be domainer centric. I have watched so many parking co’s come and go..  Many "get" this biz but many don’t..  A significant percentage of present day domain parking co’s play a combination game of "keepway", "watch the competition then react" and "I think I’ve got something really special that nobody else does..  but I’m wrong"  All those games eventually blow away amid disruptive competitive actions.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/10/03/is-google-broken.aspx

This grabber headline by Rick Aristotle Munarriz leads into a story which observes that several of Google’s partners are stumbling: MIVA, Answers…

Quote: "Google arms third-party publishers with industry-leading monetization tools, but for those publishers, it’s strictly BYOE — bring your own eyeballs…. Answers.com has been sprinkling its reference pages with Google ads since 2005... Again, the Answers.com slump isn’t a reflection on the quality of Google as a monetizing genius. The company conceded at the time that its site traffic was off by 28%, due mostly to a change in Google’s search-engine algorithms… "

So the message is, if you get your traffic from Google, don’t try to monetize there ..  If you become too successful, Google’s algorithmic search side will scrub your pages from their index.. Then they’ll rotate other relevant publishers into your position… all in the name of keeping Google’s front-door search users happy.

Quote: "So we shouldn’t assume that weakness at Google’s partners spells weakness at Big G itself."

.. As a publisher, I’ve always viewed Google as a bit of a predator in this context..  taking publishers in, convincing them to serve Google ads, and then allowing those publishers to toil for Google, working sites into their algo to serve the beast, all for increasing revenues, finally to have Google’s algorithm scrub you from the index if you become too successful at punching ad converting pages to the top..  Good publishers take on the role of sacrificial lamb to show the algo guys where the holes are and they get to ride the express elevator to the street as a reward.

As Aristotle points out.. The publishers who do best at Google are those with high quality content and no ads at all (Wikipedia) or those who deliver quality non-Google originating traffic to Google’s ad marketplace (domain names).  If Google could find a way to chew and spit those parties in the name of a better Google, it would.

Lately I’ve noticed that the results at Google are not as good as they used to be.  SEO experts have been getting better and better at breaking higher into Big G’s search results with ad-only pages. At first I thought it was just me who noticed, then I read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/01/google_spam_infiltration/

All great Search utilities have ultimately succumbed to SEO pages.. Excite, AltaVista, Webcrawler..  The crushing weight of all comers wanting into the algo.  It’s hard to stop the tide..  Google has held the beach for a long time but the tide is beginning to turn.

This is ultimately good for domain names as a higher percentage of disenfranchised Google users opt out of the search-engine framework to simply type the domain name versions of their searches into the browser address bar. Even I’ve been typing more search query style domains lately and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the higher quality of domain name pages and small websites than I saw just a few short years ago.

The evolution is palpable…  to me anyway.

Owen Writes:

"Frank, just stumbled on a curious happening.

I have the Google toolbar and do many searches a day for "keyword keyword" in quotes in the google toolbar search box.

It’s getting a little late and I found my self typing "keyword keyword" in the address bar of my Firefox browser. I noticed it but figured I’d try it and see what happens.

I typed "turn by turn directions" in the address bar and it took me to mapquest. I thought that was odd so I tried another. That took me to search results then another which also took me to search results.

Now on the fourth time I tried "photo of my house" and was taken to komar.com.

After just a few more tries, this is what I got:

"plasma tv" goes to plasmatvbuyingguide.com

"gmc truck" goes to GMC.com

"csi tv" tv.com but "csi tv show" goes to search results

"cordless phone" goes to consumersearch.com

Give it a try. Does it happen in your browser?

If so, why?

Is this just a some setting in my browser?

These results do not seem to be top advertisers but I’m guessing they advertise with Google.

So, is this significant or is this nothing?

***FS*** Owen ..  you’ve been Googled..  and not in the friendly happy sense like when a parent on the PTA "Google" who the other parents dropping off their kids at school are at the beginning of the school year.  This is Search/Navigation shaping.  Google could be shaping/limiting your view of the Internet based on your search patterns. It’s not necessarily sinister or weird..  but the more you Google,  the more their 100 year cookie records the way you search and shapes results to suit you. [recent comments show it’s toolbar related] 

It’s good and bad..  Good in the sense that you are more apt to find results that suit you..  Bad in the sense that that you will never know what you’re missing unless you clear cookies and reinvent yourself as a new cookieless persona to "cross out what you’ve become" to "start again" .

Best clear those cookies regularly.  I did..  and I feel renewed ..  less data is good

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9780150-7.html?tag=nefd.blgsI

This sounds sexy and all, but I don’t think it’s a meaningful lauch..  I use a Blackberry and an 8gb Apple iPhone..  Since getting the iPhone this past July my mobile browsing on the Bberry has fallen to zero.  The iPhone allows me to view traditional Google AFD and AFS ads.. and their Yahoo, Ask, MSFT equivalents.

The mobile phone may yet become the way most people access the Internet,  but I predict the mobile device people flock to will offer a more traditional browser and browsing experience, much like the Apple iPhone does..  not a phone (Blackberry style) browser requiring this new AFM platform.

Any CTR on this new AFM implementation is going to be negligible based on my own browsing experiences/habits.

Analyst friend writes:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/46373-google-to-acquire-the-world-s-largest-domain-name-registrar

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2177278,00.asp

These things might just be idle speculation but I thought it was interesting nonetheless

The thing that caught my eye was the quote from parsons in the first article

I gotta be honest,  I’m a slow learner.

I didn’t "get" Youtube when it first came out and I certainly didn’t "get" why anyone, or any company would pay more than a billion dollars to acquire that site in 2006 .. As pure-play domainers with what are essentially free visits that come for the keyword weight of the names we own, many of us frown on development of websites as a distraction to making paid search revenue.

Why would you build a website, sweat and toil if you can just put up a rudimentary page, give people the information they desire and move them along to another targeted website, getting paid in the process?  I’ve been doing it for half a decade and can tell you it’s a no brainer. Give the people what they want.. and if somebody is willing to pay you to give your people what they want, that’s like something out of that lottery ticket dream I had back when I was 22.

So I’m a music fan..  I like jazz (when driving with the kids it puts them to sleep), Hip-hop, R&B,  Funk, Folk, Classic Rock, but lately I prefer rock - of the alternative and contemporary persuasion.  I was recently vacationing in greater Los Angeles and listened to a lot of KROQ (K-Rock)..  I sang till I was hoarse.. and I’m not a pretty singer. KROQ mixes 1990’s alternative with Social Distortion, Incubus, Muse, Depeche Mode, System of a Down..  I love it all..  It’s great driving music and I love to drive the freeways of LA. I’m thinking about writing and publishing a coffee table book on driving in Los Angeles..  seriously..  I like it that much

Anyway.. I’m sitting here tonight recreating the KROQ play-list from my trip on Youtube..  Songs load ‘Google quick’ (I’ve got two windows open), I’m mixing songs, dovetailing one into the next..  It suddenly occurs to me that this is better than Napster.

Yes, I know Mark Cuban said it could come to a crashing end tomorrow as everybody sues Youtube..  but Google is so powerful, and the music industry so beaten down by Russian / Chinese P2P networks and the Napster/RIAA suits that went nowhere that Google’s rev share siren-call has labels often uploading the official hits themselves!  I’m listening to legal music that the label uploaded for free! .. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Cuban

From now on I’m doing the opposite of what Mark Cuban says..  Cuban says don’t buy Youtube..  Google does and wins .. Cuban Says the "Internet is Dead" ..  the Internet quietly ignores him and delivers its 50 trillionth page.. If Mark said "don’t jump off that cliff" on his blog,  I’d be tempted to go over because given Mark’s recent calls .. an airbag with champagne and Playboy bunnies surely awaits the sucker that does

This post wasn’t to slag Cuban, who is a decent entrepreneur.. Passionately wrong about his last few publicly espoused ideas..  I just am struck by how Youtube is changing America.. and the World.  Brian Depalma screening a gritty brutally honest war docu-drama about Iraq recently intimated that Youtube-like sites on the Internet are the last bastion of free-media in the US..  Most TV/News media is corporate today, controlled by shareholders, hamstrung through LBO debt and beholden to banks and bankers with agendas. Youtube is a mirror shining back on "You" it reflects our interests like a video search term suggestion tool and shines the truth if you dare to key-in the phrase you desire information on.

There’s always a domain name related bent to my posts and this post is no different.  As I searched for artist and song title on Youtube, the site often spat back the most visited video as the most relevant..  Lot’s of people watching?  It must be good!  How could a domainer skew the videos viewed by uploading a video (say with a 10 second intromercial that you sell to advertisers on a CPM basis, then plumbing one’s own traffic under a popular keyphrase (ie. ‘Foo Fighters’) to rank your Foo fighting video near the top?

Your organic domain name related traffic visitors to a site like "Musicnews.com"  (an under-utilized name), serving a PPC site with an automatically executing Youtube video under a ‘Foo Fighters’ label..  With each repeat load (coming from tens of thousands of visitors across hundreds or thousands of individual names like musicnews.com) you build credibility, all while you sell flat-rate CPM advertising within your video (remember you’re driving the traffic with your organic type-in traffic) and then serve PPC ads in a split screen format.  In six months your generic domain names have delivered thousands or tens of thousands of loads to your Youtube video making it the most watched video on Youtube (eat your heart out "Korean guitar solo guy"), all while you’ve made flat rate CPM rates on your video intromercial and click-through PPC revenue on the split screen format paid search text links (through GOOG/YHOO/MSN or direct) to boot!

A music domain name vertical with 1000 generic music names generating 10,000 unique visits a day could drive 300,000 video’s viewed a month (some of you could drive considerably more).  Then create an "email this to a friend" box or ajax/flash popup on your page and watch those viral visits multiply with each video load and each passing week. I sincerely think there is massive untapped opportunity marrying the Youtube phenomenon with the effectively disposable visits which come to generic defensible domain names.

When a visitor shows up on your doorstep for nothing more than the keyword weight or gravity of the name they typed and you happen to own that domain name, you find yourself in the fortunate position of being able to kick-start a brand, create a site and show the people what you want.. all while growing something. Those who have to buy their traffic via PPC or through Arbitrage do not share in that luxury.

A running start to get your machine going.. and a do-over if you’re wrong…   Hmmmm  There are times when being a slow learner (and a late-comer) aren’t so bad. If you’re in the domain business,  this might be one of those times

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201001806

…  Of course as a Google partner with the leading Google rev-share, Ask probably won’t be displaying Microsoft ads very often.  Microsoft’s paid search marketplace is still young and and doesn’t have as robust a bid-base yet..  If Ask operates like I think they do, it won’t display Microsoft ads unless the bid or effective (post rev-share) click-through is greater than Google’s (which probably won’t be very often).

Then again .. there is a persistent industry rumor that Microsoft is burning money, overpaying on a flat-rate basis for access to key distribution partners it wants, the idea being that a little mad money will help them grease the skids and grow an ad-marketplace with lots of distribution/reach. If MSFT has the right distribution channel then the bidders (advertisers) will follow.

There will be some great intermediate traffic-arbitrage opportunities through MSFT adcenter if that’s the case.

I had the weirdest dream last night..  weird for several reasons. Firstly, I don’t usually dream about the domain business (that I can remember) and they certainly don’t wake me from my sleep at 4AM.

In this dream I was in New York, during some kind of conference and was meeting with Rupert Murdoch about a strategic merger..  A faceless female assistant or key staff-member (who is a mutual acquaintance in said dream) had arranged to bring Rupert by my hotel suite as he made his way to some other meeting. In the office of the suite we talked about the domain name business, how domain name traffic powers part of Google, Yahoo and drives a significant portion of generic-intenet Internet traffic.. Rupe tried to get his head around the concept that many of the companies he had bought and invested in had domain name underpinnings. He was quite clever, savvy and aware of things in my dream.

As much as I wanted to take this meeting to talk shop with today’s William Randolph Hearst, Rupert had somehow heard of me (and the domain industry) and he wanted to take the meeting as well! It wasn’t a love-fest meeting though. Rupert was the classic 2002 era skeptic.. He wanted to talk about charts and projections through 2012. He seemed hurried, synopsizing the domain industry’s highlights and playing devils advocate, talking about fragmented interests and the difficulty of uniting a scatter-shot domain audience around a cohesive core or brand. It didn’t seem like I was going to sell Mr. Murdoch on the benefits of merging a large domain network with his media content core.

I had several browser windows open during our discussion and suddenly, as we were in the wrap-up phase of our conversation (Rupert had his coat over his arm and umbrella in hand) it occurred to me to resize two of the open browser windows on my laptop…

What would happen if every time somebody typed one of our potent domain names they received a single split-screen of targeted paid search advertising, married to a relevant Newscorp media content page?  Type a cooking name and get a relevant food story from today’s Newscorp newspaper…  Type Sportscores.com and get ads coupled with the sports section of Foxnews..  Type PersonalLoans.com and get a split-screen with related content from the WSJ..   Rupert’s eye’s lit up.  I explained how a mash-up of my traffic with his rotating content could turn the 30 million unique visitors we get each month into 60 or 100 million as people came back for more. Then we could ramp up our own Domain Sponsor style third-party syndication business to augment our own proprietary traffic with other domainer’s traffic; making Newscorp websites the most visited on the Internet in about 6 months.

Rupert started talking about creating his own ad marketplace and the mechanics of our proposed merger when it suddenly occurred to me that I had already signed a deal to be sold to a less strategic company for hundreds of millions of dollars less than Rupert was offering..  Then I woke up… That’s what you call a ‘high-class nightmare’ folks

I jotted down a few notes so I could remember to blog about it then went back to another dream about the playboy mansion.

It was the implementation in the Murdoch dream that still resonated the morning after. The content exists today..  the domain name networks exist today.. They are an invisible traffic source, generating hundreds of millions of unique visits a month globally.  How could Newscorp or another media content house elevate it’s Internet presence and exert control over Google by injecting itself as a domain name network owner/sub-syndicator and marrying content to each and every page load?

Lawrence Ng should have a ‘frank’ conversation with Rupert’s people

ghttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/80b57ede-36fd-11dc-9f6d-0000779fd2ac.html

Maybe they could buy Verisign give domain names away for free and auction hostname lookups instead, splitting rev-share with the govt. Buy it by the acre..  sell it by the foot. If you can’t sell the net-neutrality concept buy the opposing team and play by their rules

Josh ads:

""CNet news blogger:  Could Google kill the cell phone industry?

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9747799-7.html

…hmm, is Google gonna come out with a new smart phone that is almost free/ or free with ads?

***FS***  Hmmm  could be Josh.. Owen previously hypothesized a "Goople" alliance and the free phone could be the iPhone.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/19/click-fraud-rise-tech-internet-cx_ag_0719techclick.html?partner=alerts

Patrick McDermott sends link:

""For whatever it’s worth here’s an update on Click Fraud from Forbes- "Click Fraud Goes Viral"

Patrick""

Danno sends spicy headline and link:

""FYI…July 17

http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39167861,00.htm?r=1

Best,
Dan"""

***FS*** The way I see it Microsoft / IE have two choices.  They can clean up their act (browser) and stop gaming people’s navigational intent via BS takeovers of your/my traffic to their "Live" property (this basically goes to improving the usefulness of their browser) .. or they can gradually perish as people like you,  I, Firefox, Opera, Safari and others work against them to undermine their position.  Nobody would work against them if they were delivering a better product or running a clean show.  If they choose the latter,  I expect even more nefariousness and acts of dsesperation as they go down at an accelerated pace.  Serious serious prediction.

Raymond Hackney sends link:

""FYI not a question you might want to post
http://www.stockwatch.com/swnet/newsit/newsit_newsit.aspx?bid=U-b005965-U:GOOG-20070719&symbol=GOOG&news_region=U

GOOGLE down 24 points in after hours trading Earning out""

http://www.conceptualist.com:80/?p=301

Assista is going to be an awesome search-engine Sahar :))

""FYI…From July 12

Google faces landmark lawsuit over sponsored links:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2064672.ece

***FS*** Telephone recording:  "If you’d like to Sue Google in America press 1, in Australia press 2.."

I saw this one but didn’t think as much of it as the shrill headline.  The FTC had a similar beef with such links not being labeled "sponsored" a few years ago.  Perhaps it’s my lack of understanding Australian law,  but I think the headline is spicier than the claim..  Google will resolve this to their satisfaction.  Lots of uninformed folks looking for a fingerhold where none exists. GOOG will let them exhaust their energy, then beat them or settle.

Snoopy comments:

""Hi Frank,

Your comments before about the number of search [Google] queries for commercial term like "ceiling fans" and adult terms got me thinking. After reading it I got a list of the top 500 search queries from Wordtracker (including the number of searches for each query) and decided to crunch some numbers.

I categorized each of the 500 search terms into one of the follow categories,

-Adult generic terms
-Generic commercial product terms  (eg insurance, airline tickets,cars)
-Full url’s entered as a search (eg google.com, weather.com)
-Generic non adult terms (but not commercial products) (eg people, puppies, online games)
-Celebrity and band names (eg Madonna, Paris Hilton)
-Well known trademarks
-Other (lesser known site names etc)

Anyway here are the results,

Of the 500 terms:

141 (28.2%) were in the “Adult generic term” category
91 (18.2%) were “Well known trademarks”
90 (18.0%) were “Generic terms” (but not commercial product)
87 (17.4%) were “Celebrity and band names”
27 (5.4%) were full url’s
42 (8.4%) were in the “Other” category
15 (3.0%) were “Generic commercial product terms”

I then crunched the number based on the search query volume for each term, to look at the volume of searches in each category.

32.2% of searches were for “Adult generic” terms
22.0% of searches were for “Well known trademarks”
15.5% of searches  were for “Generic terms (but not commercial product)”
14.3% of searches  were for “Celebrity and band names”
6.7% of searches were for terms in the “Other” category
6.3% of searches were for “Full url’s”
2.9% of searches were for “Commercial product terms”

A few disclaimers:

A lot of categories aren’t absolute eg “thongs” I’ve put in the commercial product category whilst other might argue this is really an adult search term. The same applies that other way, some might argue "puppies" should be in the commercial product category.

The “other” category would likely contain some terms which should be in other categories, eg there may be some terms which I haven’t realized is actually the name of a band. Well known trademark is pretty subjective, I’ve been fairly strict and included terms such as “playstation2 game cheats”, which in reality might be defendable as domains depending on usage. 95% were more clear cut though.""

***FS*** That’s excellent data (and hasn’t changed much over the years).. The thing few discuss openly is that Google’s search results are no different than the average search engine.  People are people and they search for similar things.  I am waiting for the day that a smart analyst says: "What do people really search for at Google?" and .. "Show me the unfiltered results".  I doubt Google would. It’s pretty hairy.

The nice thing about domainers and domain names is you can control your inventory based on the names you buy..  If you own enough keyword style domain names for products and services you can actually be bigger than Google, who as you pointed out only gets 2.9% of their traffic for non-trademarked products.. Most folks are just scratching the surface on this stuff.  Many larger domainers (who have been buying search engine data) have known it for years. 

Again, great data and thanks for taking the time to post.

Javier writes:

""Hi Frank

More on the subject of SEO, from another angle:

""I expect the weight on domain names to be lowered significantly (especially for competitive queries) as Google moves toward incorporation more usage data into their relevancy algorithms. This is especially true if many domainers put up low quality to average quality websites on premium domain names. Moves like creating 100,000 keyword laden sites in one massive push (as Marchex recently did) don’t bode well for the future of domain names as a signal of quality.""

http://www.seobook.com/archives/002323.shtml

I thought the same as Aaron when Marchex released their domains publicly. I may be wrong, but couldn’t see the benefit of ringing Google’s alarm like that.

Maybe Marchex know something that I don’t (I don’t overestimate my knowledge in this area) but they should also know that it is fairly easy and quick for Google to automate in SERPs the downgrade of any site associated to a certain company, or that responds to certain common features.

Yes, I can hear you saying that they have such great domains that they don’t need google because they get most direct nav. traffic, and I understand that. But should they have been more discreet, they could benefit from both sources until Google joined the dots.

Unfortunately we live in king Google’s realm…"we are not free" anymore for quite some time now.

Maybe you can comment or you are in touch with the Marchex guys and they can give their take on this?

Regards

Javier Marti
Trendirama.com""

***FS***  Great comment Javier. I think Marchex is learning that we don’t live in "King Google’s realm" after all   It doesn’t really matter what Google wants.. It matters what their users want. There comes a point in time when parked pages become so good that they are effectively a real website that was lovingly created by an individual entrepreneur. As those sites each become a mini-nucleus in their own right, ‘drawing‘ unique visitors outside of Google through the keyword weight of domain name and ‘keeping‘ some measure of return visitors coming through the content provided there; it becomes less important what Google thinks - and it does their search engine more harm than good by blocking user intent, failing to display the site the user calls for..

The Google/Marchex relationship becomes more symbiotic when fueled by arbitrage.  Marchex can leverage their own organic visitor stream to buy millions of dollars of targeted traffic from Google each month for it’s pages, arbitraging the cost of that traffic against the amount of advertising it can sell. Make no mistake .. Google "needs" the revenue from large scale high-brow arbitrage plays because that arbitrage underpins its stock price. The 4 or 5 large scale arbitrageurs on my radar collectively pay Google more than 300 million dollars a year…  there are many more I don’t know of.. Google needs that money.

High quality generic search-term style domain names are the ultimate killer search-app for that reason. You are working "outside" of the Google/search engine framework to get your traffic and revenue, with the option being entirely yours whether you want to get bigger by dipping your toes ‘into’ the Google realm to buy additional traffic.

Now imagine Wikipedia content (which is often featured in the first 3 links of a Google search query anyway) married to an organic traffic driver (a targeted domain name), coupled with arbitrage to buy incremental targeted visits who’s costs are offset against directly-sold (or syndicated) display advertising on those wiki-esq pages. The users win by finding relevant content, the Engine wins by making money selling traffic and the site operator with the potent domain controls the platform and ensures a burn down value in the high quality domain name.

If you can draw incremental visits (non domain, non-arbitrage, algorithmic search visits) from Google as Geosign has done, that’s when the potential for incendiary growth exists - but that last element is the only spot where Google can exert any real control. As you pointed out, they can take their foot of your accelerator by blocking algorithmic visits via blacklisting your site or changing algo’s.

I think it’s safer and more predictable to live outside of that algorithmic world  .. but obviously more profitable to jump in..

Just my free-flowing thoughts on this…  some of it you’ve heard before.

http://www.techanalyst.com/domains/beyond-the-googleyahoo-hegemony-the-future-of-domain-parking.html

Joe Davidson strikes a chord with this one.  He points out that the power to change the pecking order in paid search is here with us, in our hands. The pieces are all here but nobody is putting them together to extract max-value.  I’ve previously had thoughts along a similar vein.

In order to rival the Yahoos or Googles of the World you need to take a page from their play-book.. These co’s each have functionality, utility and (most importantly) reach that is admired and respected the web-over.. Once you have a nucleus of your own (a search utility, a content site, a very large bucket of domain names), other elements are drawn to you and begin to orbit (traffic redistribution/syndication/direct ad deals). Then you use that cash-flow to increase the size of your nucleus (double-down, buy something bigger, expand) .. then draw bigger redistribution fish like what Ask.com is doing with its Google pass-through syndication deal.  I would never sign onto a sub-syndication deal for my traffic but I would consider Ask.com, because they have the leading Google rev-share which they got by getting very big.

The key of course is to get BIG.  Too many co’s either cheap-out or fail to execute ..  They buy one big asset then chill and roll up smaller inconsequential pieces. Even the big like Ask.com risk getting unseated if fail to expand as quickly as their competitors. One day somebody in the will ‘go big’ and move beyond domain PPC by changing the pecking order, utilizing the leverage described above.

http://www.digg.com:80/tech_news/Map_it_with_1_800_GOOG_411_New_feature

Josh sends link..  Google is expirimenting, trying new things, looking for that something unique which will stick or evolve into something they can monetize through advertising.  This looks strictly skunkworks to me..  doesn’t seem like something that was ‘grandly planned’.

Josh says: "use your Safari browser in your iphone.  )"

Related: Guesstimate:  500,000 iphones sold this last weekend: http://www.gadgettastic.com/2007/07/01/500000-iphones-sold-this-weekend/

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013842.html

and http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/06/introducing-placement-performance.html

Widely reported and discussed on other forums today. This should be very good news for those of us who own generic domain names with high quality traffic, just as soon as they open it to Adsense for Domains.

I had a hunch that the previously released Efficient Frontiers report might have been foreshadowing to something like this. First you explain to your advertisers that domain traffic is good. Then you tell them that many of the high quality conversions they presently enjoy, actually originate from other sites on the Google syndication network.

Not quite sure what’s in it for Google yet, but it could be several things. Blocking Sendori or Yahoo attempts to gain traction in the domain channel, marshaling other domain partners from Yahoo — In the end, all possible reasons are tied to increasing Google revenues, and solidifying their position as the primary marketplace to buy (and sell) traffic.

If Google pulls back the curtain to show advertisers that the sales are actually coming from high quality domains owned by you and I, you can bet they won’t be doing that for purely benevolent reasons.

This is one to keep watching.

Sahar was the first to point out the Google Checkout party during the Ebay LIVE event, designed to bleed visitors away from Ebay.

Ebay responded by pulling its Adwords Ads from Google.. Ebay has a pretty big wallet, so that’s gotta smart.

It obviously hurt enough (image, wallet) that Google decided to cancel the party.  That’s too bad because I would have liked to attend it. 

Sahar sends link:

http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/06/let-freedom-ring.html

Google throws a party running in tandem with a larger competing Ebay convention in Boston, trying to appeal to Ebay customers and further their Google ‘checkout’ product.. This is guerrilla marketing at it’s finest (or worst) depending on your perspective. I expect a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. The challenge for conventions is keeping visitors interested, on-premises and paying to attend by offering tangible value.  A lot tougher than the domain biz. Still, there’s opportunity in them thar hills.

Thanks for the link Sahar.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/06/12/cngoogle112.xml

I am consciously starting to use different search engines and experimenting outside of Google.  I’ve been trying Ask.com (with the forest background skin), Yahoo.com and MSN.com, but not Live.com (my silent browser error search protest) ..  I still like Google’s results better, but would be lying if I told you I’m not worried about Google deliberately violating my privacy or that G’s competitors are getting better. 

I’m a frequent Google user but I don’t like all that they are doing..  Some of the people I knew there are leaving and I’m worried that the culture will inexorably shift as the next generation of Googlers picks up the reigns, more consumed with the financial upside than the substance of the company. What made Google great was the passion and drive of it’s first generation founding staff and its search algo.

Other companies are beginning to mimic the flavor of their algo and Google’s success breeds problems as the passionate people take the money and run. SEO black-hats are like barbarians at the gate unleashing the force of software and dark energy to game their results to the top, spoiling potent results. As the core people cash out and newcomers fill their shoes, how will those folks feel about growing the company if GOOG’s stock-price craters for 3 consecutive quarters? Will generation II Googler’s passion fizzle when competitors start to school them?

Those are the sorts of things I ask myself and other professional Google users will ask themselves when stories like this point out that lady Google is not as "absent of evil" as they told us she was. Time will tell; I’m hoping for the best because I like this engine.