Dotster, one of the registrars that sparked early price wars for domain names, is moving into new offices because of its growth. According to a press release, Dotster now manages about 3 million domain names. That’s about a third as much as leader GoDaddy.

Dotster reports that it tripled its domain registration business in 2005, but does not provide figures on what the basis is. I know that Dotster has gotten aggressive with pricing, especially for people registering large numbers of domains. They are offering transfer prices of $6.00 for .coms, which is “at cost”, and renewal/registration rates of $8.95 for some customers. This is probably a major reason for Dotster’s growth.

I still remember my first registration with Dotster, when $15 was an absolute bargain. My purchase receipt number was something like #26!

Back in May I wrote about a court decision involving the domain Fallwell.com (see Falwell domain fight could have implications for free speech on internet). In May a court decided that Rev. Falwell should get the rights to the domain that the current owner was using to critize Falwell’s views.

Good news: an appeals court has reversed the lower court’s ruling on grounds that the domain wouldn’t be confused for Rev. Falwell’s actual site. You can read more about this at CNET.

Have you noticed that your PPC parked domains haven’t been performing as well as usual? Several services have recently been hit by denial-of-service (DOS) attacks. Such attacks occur when many computers are enlisted to send an overwhelming amount of traffic to a server in order to disable it. Sedo was hit over the weekend, and they are compensating people for the lost traffic. According to a statement from Sedo “the attack began on Saturday afternoon (8/20) but due to the tireless efforts of Sedo’s technical team over the weekend, by 3pm (CET) Sunday we had part of the parking system back online – all domains parked with URL forwarding – and by 10:30pm (CET) Sunday the entire system was up and running again.”

Gold Key also reported problems with their feed provider at times in the last few weeks, but stopped short of characterizing their problems as a DOS attack. A newer service, Parkingsite, seems to have been hit hardest of all. At this time it appear that DomainSponsor was spared, or at least that their servers weathered any attack. More information should be available in the September issue of Domain Parking News.

New TLDs continue to sell well on the aftermarket, and this week three .info domains sold for at least $1,000, according to DNJournal. Sedo sold Prospectus.info for €1,500 and Beagle.info for $1,550. Mercury.info sold for $1,000 in a private transaction. Other high .info sales this year include Best.info for £12,000, Musical.info for €10,440, Maschinenbau.info for €5,950, and Broker.info for $5,000. .Info domains will never get the type-in traffic that .coms get, but they are great for keyword targeting in search engines.

.Com still rules the day. The Photographer.com sale announced a few weeks ago for $133,000 was finalized last week. Sedo sold Latest.com for €30,000 and PokerHouse.com for $31,500. StatePolice.com changed hands for $25,000 in a private transaction.

See all of the latest domain sales data at DNJournal.

Where are all of the posts?

I’ve been really sick for the past 5 days, and even had to cancel a trip to New York. Bummer. But I’m getting better, and the domain name news will start flowing again…