SnapNames increases prices… to $950?

by Terrell on February 16, 2011

Recently, I saw that SnapNames was increasing their minimum fee on deleted names from $59 to $69.  I can understand this decision to keep up with NameJet.

Much to my surprise I logged on to SnapNames today and came across OrangeRoofing.com, a recently expired domain that was scheduled for a pre-release auction.  Unlike the usual $119 for Register.com pre-release names, this domain had a minimum offer of  $950!

A $950 expiring domain at SnapNames

And below is the Whois record.

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.CO domains from a SEO perspective

by Terrell on July 30, 2010

I came across a recent article at Domain Name Wire that cited  a PCPro.co.uk article announcing that Google will rank .co as international domain if the content is globally targeted, as opposed to just ranking them for Colombia.

The article states:

While the .co domain is still assigned to Colombia at the moment, a Google spokesperson said that would soon change. “We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.”

I really don’t see this as a big deal nor an extra benefit  to buying .co domains as international targeting is common.  Here are a few other Google searches returning country code domains outside of the native country:

  • “url shortener” returns bit.ly as the #1 ranking (Liberia)
  • “despicable me movie” returns despicable.me as the #1 ranking (Montenegro)
  • “justin” returns popular live video streaming site Justin.tv (Tuvalu)
  • “matt” returns WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg’s blog (Trinidad and Tobago)
  • “free internet radio” returns Last.fm (Federated States of Micronesia)

Now the real bonus would be if Google were to give .co domains the exact match bonus internationally as is done with .com, .net, and .org.  I don’t see that happening anytime soon though.

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Domain Names mentioned in Hot Tub Time Machine movie

July 27, 2010

Being a work-at-home entrepreneur with a 2-year old running around doesn’t allow for much free time.  Usually that free time is spent outside, but with us approaching 100 degrees here in Texas, we are stuck inside many evenings. Well this weekend, we had an expiring Amazon On Demand coupon and decided to rent Hot Tub [...]

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Groupon uses trademark to acquire Groupon.com

July 26, 2010

The startup interview blog Mixergy recently had a clip from an interview with the group coupon service Groupon and how Groupon acquired the Groupon.com domain. The U.S. based company started out operating on a subdomain but decided they wanted to purchase Groupon.com from the owner, a U.K.-based individual.   Their initial contact with the domain owner [...]

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Quick Domain Tools lookups with Google Chrome

July 21, 2010

I’m a big fan of Domain Tools for researching domain name information including whois history, name server history, related names, and just about anything else you can imagine.  Often times, I’ll simply type out the full address whois.domaintools.com/example.com rather than actually going to the domain name and clicking a toolbar add-on.  I navigate directly because [...]

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How to leverage your unused domain names to boost website traffic

January 26, 2010

Do you have more domain names than you do websites? If you answered “Yes” and are just leaving those extra domain names showing your registrar’s Coming Soon page full of ads, you are leaving money on the table. I’ve found forwarding domains to be a great way of bringing additional visitors to my sites and [...]

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Interview on entrepreneurship for MO.com

January 25, 2010

I was recently interviewed by Brian Null for a segment entitled “What’s Your MO?” on his new entrepreneurship blog at MO.com. Brian has a successful track record in entrepreneurship having sold OfficeSupply.com, GolfCourses.com, and Saws.com among others so I’m excited to see what he does with MO.com. I really like Brian’s slogan “a casual hangout [...]

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