Comments on tech articles about domains show how ignorance makes us all look bad.

Whenever I come across a domain article on CNET and its peers I am amazed by some of the comments made by John Q Public. The comments show that the readers don’t understand the domain name system and industry, so they assume the worst — and are typically incorrect.

Just today I read an article from eWeek titled “Whois Hijacking My Domain Research?” The article was about the possibility that domain searches on CNET were being intercepted and registered by a third party. This may be true and the author provides some good backup. (Most previous accusations of such behavior have been by people simply dissapointed that a domain they queried was registered a month later. Sorry, you have to be faster than that.)

But my comments here aren’t about the article. They’re about the reader comments appended to the article. Here’s one:

…Alwats Suspected some-one was watching the queries. Google seems to be buying a lot of names under alias now that they bought the registor and get the names cheap. Their purchases are based on search engine queries. They now own over 100k names that they flog ads on.

While it’s possible Google is snatching these domains, my guess is this person is landing on domains owned by investors. This person sees the Google parking ads and assumes Google owns the pages. He then searches Whois and is confused by the various registrants, so he assumes Google is registering the domains under an alias.

…the domain name wouldn’t be valuable to anyone else except for me…now that someone mentioned network solutions, I think someone should target them. the domain I was trying to register earlier was originally listed with them … it was on expired status waiting on the prior owner to re-register during the “grace” period. I was watching their website every day waiting on the domain to be released intending on registering it with domainsite.com. Hmmm … then it gets “bought” within a couple of hours?

This one is obvious. This person doesn’t realize that domains get registered within seconds of dropping, or likely a direct transfer in this case. I find the reader’s comment “the domain name wouldn’t be valuable to anyone except for me” particularly ignorant. If it didn’t have value to anyone but you, why would it have been registered by someone else in the first place?

Time and time again I see comments like these. What can our industry do about it? We can post “corrective” comments on these articles. Or we can just let people live in their ignorant world. But at the end of the day, too much ignorance can hurt the industry.

EURid, which manages the .eu country code, has suspended 74,000 registrations.

When Bob Parsons and others criticized EURid for its handling of .eu registrations, most people thought no action would be taken. But EURid has taken action, although not because some of the registrants were actually US companies.

EURid announced it suspended 74,000 registrations made by three registrars because the domains weren’t registered by the registrar’s customers. Instead, the registrars (which all appear to be the same company) stockpiled the domains without a customer request. According to a lawsuit filed by EURid, the three registrars were a front for 400 US-based registrars.

“As a registrar, you should have an end user ask you to register a domain name for you before you can register it,” EURid’s Patrik Linden explained to ZDNet UK on Monday.

A major irony to all of this? The owners of the three registars web sites, including ovidiolimited.com, are hiding their true identity using GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy service. I wonder if GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons went behind Domains by Proxy’s firewall to find out the true owners of these registrars as part of his original research on the subject?

Forget domain appraisals. You can get domain name sales comps online.

Trying to settle on a price for the value of a domain you are buying or selling? You can do a multiple based on traffic, but that’s not always the best approach. You can search through the archives at DNJournal to find comparable sales, but that’s not easy. You can get an appraisal, but few people place stock in appraisals.

Enter DNSalePrice.com, a search engine for comparable domain name sales. I first met Richard Wixom, creator of DNSalePrice.com, during Domain Roundtable in Seattle last April. Richard is a techie who’s fairly new to the domain name market. One of the first things he noticed is how the industry doesn’t have a good database of domain sales to use as comparables in domain name transactions. He created DNSalePrice.com to rectify that.

When you first visit DNSalePrice.com you will be amazed by its simplicity. A simple, non-graphical interface with search parameters. Just enter a keyword and the system goes to work.

For example, I just sold eDropShippers.com on Afternic for $970. Search for “dropship” on DNSalesPrice.com and you’ll get these comparable sales:

DropShipCity.com, 1/05, eBay $305
NetDropShippers.com, 12/05, Afternic $1,250

The site returns more results, but these were the two most relevant. I’d place eDropShippers.com close to NetDropShippers.com in terms of value, so $970 is about right from a comparative perspective.

Now lets look at another keyword. Let’s say you have your eyes on acquiring a book-related domain name for a new online store. Before DNSalePrice.com if you wanted to find comparable sales you had to look through the archives at Afternic, DNJournal, or through a web search. Now you can just search for “books” and you’ll get 5 pages of sales data. Among the data:

BookShop.com, 5/06, Sedo $47,500
NonFictionBooks.com, 5/06, Moniker/Traffic $5,200
BookShops.com, 1/06, Sedo $10,000

Investing in domains about mortgages?

Mortgaged.com sold for $12,313
MortgageInterest.com sold for $32,750
MortgageMate.com sold for $3,688
Mortgages.ws sold for $1,275
MortgageLenders.org sold for $635
HomesMortgage.com sold for $2,642
HomeMortgageRefinances.com sold for $7,500

Without this site it would have taken me over an hour just to pull those comps. It took me under a minute.

I’m a big fan of domains with “cash” as a keyword, as they typically pull in a good cost-per-click. Here are some comps for domains including “cash”:

CashChoice.com sold for $3,500
CashNotes.com sold for $4,600
CashAuctions.com sold for $6,155
CashBackCreditCards.com sold for $11,000
CashCorp.com sold for $1,500
CashPassport.com sold for $4,500

Again, all of that information and more was available at my fingertips using DNSalesPrice.com. And it’s free.

This site will be huge help to those trying to sell domains. If you feel a buyer doesn’t understand the value of your domain, just give him a few comparables. Actual sales data is hard to refute.

DNSalesPrice.com currently has $155M in sales data and is growing daily. Richard has a number of cool features in the works, so look for neat site enhancements later this year.

Conference in Spain kicks off the evening of July 25.

The United States hosts its share of domain name conferences each year, but meetings outside of the US are rare. Sedo hosted a UK meeting a while back and TRAFFIC plans to expand overseas. But European domainers can travel to Barcelona, Spain for a conference next week.

The event will run July 25-July 27 and is presented by Afternic, Oversee.net (DomainSponsor), EuroDNS, and Renova Ltd. Some fo the topics to be covered:

-.mobi – why you should invest
-could .asia become the Asian .com?
-Domain aftermarket trends

The conference will conclude with a boat cruise on the Mediterranean Sea. It looks like this conference will focus on having fun and getting to know other European domainers.

Details are available here.

Web site offers consumer reviews of domain registrars.

Everyone has their horror story. The registrar that suddenly changed the DNS on their domains. The registrar that loses their domain in the system so it can’t be edited. The registrar that won’t unlock their domains.

Here’s a cool site to read about other users’ experiences with over 20 registrars: domainsbot.com/rate-registrar.aspx. Users rate registrars on four aspects including ease, price, services, and offerings. So far no registrars have more than 20 reviews, but I think the ratings are fairly accurate.

For example, 1&1 Internet has a good rating on price (they offer $5.99 registration), but poor ratings on ease and services (it’s hard to transfer domains out and manage domains since 1&1 is ultimately a webhost, not a domain service). Network Solutions and RegisterFly are rated rather poor across the board, which jives with most users’ experiences.

Anyone can rate registrars, but you must register for a free account. All reviews are held for moderation before being posted. This should help prevent ballot stuffing by registrars.

I have a couple thoughts for improving the site:

1. Clarify “services” vs. “offerings”. The way I read it, there’s no rating for customer service, but perhaps that’s what “services” is supposed to be.

2. Remove registrars that are mostly brokerages, such as Afternic and Sedo. Most of the reviews about these companies are actually about their brokerage services, so it skews results. At a minimum they should be moved to a new category called “rate a brokerage”.