Mutual Jurisdiction may come back to haunt you.

At a session Friday afternoon at Domainer Mardi Gras I made the case that moving your domain names offshore may not be a good idea, both from a protection standpoint and logistics. Earlier in the day John Berryhill gave another possible reason to keep your domains on shore that I wasn’t aware of.

In response to a UDRP, a respondent can file a lawsuit to block the transfer of his or her domain name in the event of an unfavorable decision. According to the UDRP rules, the lawsuit must be in Mutual Jurisdiction, defined as:

a court jurisdiction at the location of either (a) the principal office of the Registrar (provided the domain-name holder has submitted in its Registration Agreement to that jurisdiction for court adjudication of disputes concerning or arising from the use of the domain name) or (b) the domain-name holder’s address as shown for the registration of the domain name in Registrar’s Whois database at the time the complaint is submitted to the Provider.

The hitch is that the complainant gets to choose which one. So if you are in the United States and you register your domains at a German registrar, you may have to go through the expense and hassle of filing a lawsuit over there. Of course this is a reason for people outside the United States to consider using a local registrar in their country, too.

Google uses widgets.com as example domain name.

Google is releasing a new policy for Adwords advertisers that will allow them to only use one second level domain per ad group. Instead of using DomainNameWire.com and DNW.com in the same ad group, I’d only be able to use one of these.

If you read through its examples, Google manages to throw in Rick Schwartz’s domain name Widgets.com:

For example, an ad group containing the following group of display URLs would comply with this policy because all URLs contain the same top-level domain, “example.com”:

* www.example.com
* www.example.widgets.com

Of course, before it had any meaning on the internet, the term widgets merely was a replacement for “things” or “units”, and was commonly used in accounting. But the last example, example.widgets.com, uses the domain name.

As for Example.com, the main star of Google’s example, it is reserved by IANA for use in documentation.

There are some other domains that manage to get lots of “example” mentions like this. How many times have people tested registration systems using something@test.com?

My picks for the Aftermarket.com auction were right 82% of the time.

I used a stunningly complex methodology to pick the winners in yesterday’s Aftermarket.com auction at Domainer Mardi Gras: I made a gut call on whether or not someone would bid on the name. Yep, that’s it. No complex algorithms. No looking up advertiser or traffic counts. Just making a call.

I was right 82% of the time. I underestimated the number of domains that would sell. I predicted 57%; I calculate a 69% sell-through rate. Aftermarket.com is clearly setting the bar for sell-through rates in auctions. This feeds on itself; if a domain is in an Aftermarket.com auction then you can be fairly sure it’s a worthy domain at the price.

Here are the domains that sold that I missed:

CandyCane.com – $10,000 – I’m still shaking my head on this one. The plural makes absolute sense, but the singular doesn’t mean much to me. Oh well.

Jobless.com – $14,000 – not only did it sell, but it had 4 bids. I’ve always thought of it as unemployed, not jobless, but clearly this domain is counter cyclical

AirlineRewards.com – I’ve very happy this one sold. I bought it at auction a couple years ago, sold it to Craig Rowe of WhyPark last year, and then he turned around and sold it. Both of us sold it for more than we bought it, which just goes to show the market is still strong for lower priced domains.

Voodoo.com – OK, I just didn’t think someone would pull out 300 Gs at the auction. Well done. Kudos to DomainConsultant for having the guts to put this one in the auction.

ExerciseGuide.com
Suntanning.com
Dreamy.com

Here are the domains I thought would sell that didn’t:

RentalVillas.com
CashforSites.com

I’m sure Aftermarket.com is patting itself on the back for this auction. Between another solid sell-through rate and the Voodoo.com sale, it surely met expectations. Keep in mind that this auction had only 51 domains, compared to 200 or more at most domain auctions.

Big news coming Tuesday.

A domain name company acquisition will be announced on Tuesday. Check back then for the news.

Here’s a roundup of yesterday’s events at Domainer Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

First, a couple more observations:

Someone forgot to put in crosswalks in New Orleans…

If inflation gets out of control, I’m hedging my bet with cheap plastic beads. These things are a valuable currency…

Yesterday was the first full day of Domainer Mardi Gras. A number of people woke up a bit late (say, noon), but still the sessions had 50-75 people in them. I gave a summary of some of the 2009 Domain Name Wire survey results during lunch, and then spoke on a panel about going offshore (and why you should think twice before doing so) in the afternoon.

Around 5 pm people started heading over to one of two balconies Parked.com rented. There was dinner, an open bar, and – oh yeah – beads. Lots and lots of beads. If you want to envision a fun picture, think of your favorite domain lawyers, policy makers, and domainers tossing over a thousand beads to a drunk crowd below. Ron Jackson took lots of pictures. Apparently he had a hard time catching just the right picture, as he took pictures of the crowd for at least an hour

This morning most people met up at Court of Two Sisters for brunch.

A look at some of the results from the 2009 Domain Name Wire survey.

Today during lunch at Domainer Mardi Gras I presented some of the results from the 4th annual Domain Name Wire Survey. The results I shared were mostly related to risk management and security (the focus of the conference). More results will be released on Domain Name Wire in coming weeks.

You can view the presentation here (pdf).

To summarize:

Registrars: the most important things people consider when choosing a registrar are 1) security and 2) price.

Domain parking: although 45% of people thought a year ago their domain parking earnings would go up in 2008, only 16% of people actually reported higher results. 45% of people reported their earnings declined.

Domain sales values: About a third of people think domain values will go up in 2009, with similar percentages think they’ll stay the same or go down.

ICANN Satisfaction: The percentage of people that say ICANN is doing a good job has decreased from about 33% in 2006 to less than 15% in 2009.

New TLDs: Only 20% of people surveyed are in favor with ICANN going forward with its current plan to introduce new TLDs.

Top news story of 2008: Domain parking turmoil

Biggest issue for 2009: Overall economy

Read full details here.