eBay domain name auction attracting lots of bids.

It’s unusual for a good domain name to be auctioned on eBay, but an auction for PaintballGuns.com has topped $20,000 with just three days to go.

There is a reserve on the domain name and no indication from the seller about what it is, which means the auction could be for naught. But the reserve has already been lowered once, and could be lowered again to strike a deal.

So how much is this domain name worth? Fortunately we have a pretty good comp in PaintballGun.com (the singular version). It has sold with a reported price three — yes, three — times in the past 5 years. First it sold at Pool in 2004 for $21,830. Then it sold for $15,000 at Sedo in 2007. Finally, this past December it sold for $10,299 on NameJet.

But the plural version of this domain name is worth much more than the singular (just like Camera.com and Cameras.com or Toy.com and Toys.com. Which would you prefer to have?). And the domain makes over $10 a day in parking revenue, according to the seller’s eBay ad.

The current owner appears to have purchased the domain name from iREIT late last year. A quick flip? We’ll find out Monday.

Second guessing and postulating isn’t just for football.

Yesterday I read a guest post at Domain Name News titled “Armchair SEOs Play with Toys.com“. It was a good article about Toys.com losing its Google ranking, and how it’s easy to sit back and say “Toys ‘R’ Us” screwed up”. It’s easy to say that from the outside looking in, but we really don’t know the circumstances.

It got me thinking about a lot of domainers out there that I’d describe as “armchair domainers”. They’re the ones on forums telling people they sold their domains too cheap or they’re asking too much. They criticize every move made by another domainer, but what have they done with their own domains?

I’m guilty of this sometimes, too.

A recent case of armchair domaining comeuppance was when Faculty Lounge “bought” toys.com for $1.25M. A lot of people on forums said either it was worth much more or it sold for too much. Few of those people ever thought their comments would be tested. And let’s face it, none of these people had the money to buy the domain themselves. But when the auction was rerun and ended at $5.1M, a lot of people had to eat their words.

Will .tel be good for search? I have my doubts.

Checking in at forums and on comments at Domain Name Wire, it’s clear that a lot of people think .tel domain names could be a search engine gold mine. The premise is that the data on .tel domains is very structured, and Google can easily index it. Thus, if you get a good keyword.tel you can get traffic and include links to other web sites.

This is true. But people expecting Wikipedia-like saturation and rankings are missing a couple key points:

1. Google ranks your site in part by the number of links pointing to the domain. How many links do you think will point to any given .tel domain? There’s not much to link to. Compare that to a site like Wikipedia (or even Domain Name Wire). People link to its content all day.

2. Wikipedia has good content. Lots of rich, good, informative content. Most .tel domains will have perhaps 100 words.

But let’s assume for a second that you manage to get a .tel high in Google. The idea is that you can then send traffic to other sites listed on your .tel profile. Take a look at an example web site listing in .tel:

If I received a lot of traffic at my .tel domain, people will likely click on the links there. But they won’t pass on the kind of link love I’d like. The “anchor text” is just the domain name. I’d much rather have it read something like “Domain Name Wire”.

But all is not lost. I see one way .tel domain names could be used effectively in search, assuming search engines like the domain: personal rankings. Most people have few Google hits when someone searches for their name. It would make sense that your own .tel would rank fairly high. Online reputation management services could use these domains as another way to get “friendly” results near the top of search engines.

One other idea: Telnic strikes a deal with Google or Yahoo to include .tel domains at the top of the page for an exact keyword match.

A quick guide to getting your .tel domain name online.

If you read Domain Name Wire frequently then you already know my opinion about .tel. But I know some people are getting into this, so I thought it would be worthwhile to register a .tel and share my experience.

I registered my last name, allemann.tel, at Moniker for $14.95. The registration process was a little different from other domains. I had to provide whois info for my .tel domain, and had a choice to keep it private.

After completing my registration I received a standard Moniker receipt and nothing else. Apparently each registrar is supposed to tell you how to set up your .tel. I logged back into my Moniker account, searched for allemann.tel, and saw this message at the very bottom of the page:

Note: To manage your .TEL name(s), please login at https://telhosting.moniker.com with your Moniker credentials. Your username is “MONIKER” plus your account id. (For example: Account 1000 at Moniker will login with “MONIKER1000″ username and your current Moniker password.)

I logged into the .tel system and it was fairly intuitive to “fill out” the profile. I only got stuck in a couple places. First was the phone number field. You have to enter your phone number in a specific format that includes the country code. Few people in the U.S. know what the U.S. country code is: 00. Telnic should include a link to a country code lookup or use the U.S. as an example.

Second, when completing your keyword and additional information, the save function isn’t as you’d expect. Here’s what it looks like:

Usually when you see a multi-tabbed pop up box like this, you can fill out more than one tab and click save once. That’s not the case here. You have to hit save on each tab, otherwise only the last tab you’re on will be saved and published.

Once you complete your .tel page it will go live within 15 minutes.

I ran into one other issue you should be aware of. After making several updates I noticed they didn’t appear on the live domain. I e-mailed Telnic about it, and they sent back a screenshot of what they saw on my page. It was different from what I could see. I cleared my cache and tried a different browser with the same result. Then it hit me: I’m making changes in the DNS, and DNS changes can take a while to propagate. It’s like changing the nameservers on a traditional domain and having to wait a little while before the site resolves to the new nameservers.

Now that I understand the .tel structure more I have formulated an opinion about the potential for search engine benefits of .tel domains. I’ll write about that in a later post.

ElizabethTaylor.com in dispute (again).

Actress Elizabeth Taylor wants the domain name ElizabethTaylor.com and she (or her company) has filed a domain dispute with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name.

But this isn’t the first time Taylor has tried to get the domain. In June of 2005 she filed for arbitration to get the domain name and lost. Part of the respondent’s defense was that the name Elizabeth Taylor is common. The panel actually decided Taylor didn’t have trademark rights to “Elizabeth Taylor”. But then in October 2005 she filed a claim again. The domain owner decided to hand over the domain name according to the panel’s decision.

But that’s where things get weird. DomainTools’ last archived whois record for the domain in 2005 was December 30, and it still shows the respondent still owned the domain. There are no archived records in 2006, then in 2007 the domain’s ownership changed to:

eNom Inc., Registrar
Defaulted Registrant (legal@enom.com)

So either the domain didn’t get transferred to Taylor as it was supposed to, or Taylor got the domain and let it expire.

In 2008 the whois record changed to eNom’s privacy protection until the latest challenge was filed. The current owner is listed as StandardBearerEnterprisesLimited.

The domain name has been parked on various domain parking services over the years, and the existing page clearly shows ads related to the actress and her products. While she’s at it, she should take a look at LizTaylor.com.