Getting your domain names in search engines boosts chances for selling to end users.

I’ve written before about how I am using Octane360 to monetize a number of my long tail geo domains (e.g. cityAllergist.com). In addition to creating a new revenue stream on my domain names in the form of directory listing sales, there’s another benefit to creating web sites using Octane360 and similar site building systems: it helps you sell your domain names.

How often does someone contact you from your domain name “inquire about this domain” link and submit an offer on your domain? It probably happens a lot. But those visitors generally find your domain by typing it in; they had to have thought about it first.

Now, imagine you can get your domain name ranked on the first page of Google for your exact match term. Let’s choose a domain I don’t own, AustinLawyer.com. If you’re ranked for “Austin Lawyer”, you’re going to get a lot of visits. Some of those visitors will be lawyers in Austin checking on their search rankings. If they click through to your web site and see a “for sale” message, you’ve just found a prospective buyer that otherwise wouldn’t have thought to buy your domain name.

Just this week I sold one of my sites hosted on Octane to an end user. The site was perfect for him; and he said the search rankings were a big reason for his interest. I also had an easy benchmark for a price. I offered to sell it to him for a multiple of the monthly cost to purchase a directory listing on the site. It was a no-brainer for him and a fair deal for me. I have another sale pending — again, where the buyer became aware of the domain name thanks to a Google search.

Public misunderstands reasons for .cn pullout.

[Update: see comments from Go Daddy Group Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Christine Jones.] I really don’t think Go Daddy was trying to pull off a publicity stunt yesterday with its testimony before a Congressional Commission yesterday. GoDaddy announced it was no longer offering China’s .cn domain name, and clearly laid out the hassle it would have to undertake to continue offering the domain name.

But it appears most people have read this as a principled moved against human rights violations in China. A lot of news articles over the past 24 hours have suggested this, and you’ll find hundreds of tweets like this one:

Look, even if Go Daddy takes issue with human rights and privacy in China, this was initially a business decision. You can’t charge $30 for a domain name registration if you’ll also be required to collect paperwork from the customer for each domain in advance, and not complete the registration until you get approval from the registry. That doesn’t make financial sense.

I think Jeff Eckhaus of eNom summed it up well in an AP story:

…eNom Inc., wants to continue offering “.cn” Web addresses, but is worried that the changes China has ordered “could make it almost impossible to do it,” said Jeffrey Eckhaus, general manager at eNom.

Go Daddy had registered only 27,000 .cn domain names, a small number for the world’s largest domain name registry. Registering more domains with a manual process would be cost prohibitive. Also, the registrar is having to spend substantial money to go back to its existing 1,200 .cn customers and ask them for paperwork. No registrar in their right mind would put up with that.

And Go Daddy isn’t alone — many other registrars haven’t resumed offering .cn domain names.

Update: I talked to Christine Jones this afternoon. She said that, on balance, this decision was about handing sensitive personal information to the Chinese.

Even at its 29.99 registration price, Jones said Go Daddy could offer .cn domain names profitably with the administrative hassle. But it doesn’t feel comfortable providing this information to the Chinese government.

Because of the relatively high registration price for .cn domains, Jones said that a higher percentage of the existing 27,000 registrations made at Go Daddy are for developed web sites. Still, only 20% of the people they contacted telling them of the new requirements responded. This means the registrants either can’t or don’t feel comfortable providing the documents.

Jones said Go Daddy will again offer .cn domain names if China drops the new identification requirements.

Football players union gears up for possible lockout by buying domain name.

Is a lockout of National Football League players likely in 2011? NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith told ESPN that, on a scale from 1-10, the likelihood of a lockout is a 14. That sounds serious.

Perhaps to gain an upper hand, the NFL Players Association just bought the domain name NFLLockout.com. Seller Eric Gargiulo tells Domain Name Wire that he sold the domain name for $25,000 to the union.

That’s not a bad return for Gargiulo, given that he just registered the domain name last September. It’s also the best possible outcome he could have expected; the National Football League could have probably won the domain name in a domain name arbitration case.

Both NFLLockout.net and NFLLockout.org are also registered, but the owners of the domain names is using whois privacy to shield their identies.

Trade group asks ICANN not to approve .xxx TLD.

In a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, Diane Duke of the adult industry trade association Free Speech Coalition asks ICANN to reject ICM Registry’s plans for a .xxx top level domain name.

Much of the adult industry opposed .xxx after governments started getting involved. Governments suggested that perhaps they could force all adult web sites to use the .xxx top level domain, moving them away from .com. That would, of course, be detreminental to the online adult entertainment business.

Dukes claims that ICM registry doesn’t have industry support, and so any claim by the registry that it is creating this TLD on behalf of the adult entertainment community is incorrect.

The religious right and porn stars don’t usually agree on something. But this is a case where they do.

Adlink Group renamed to Sedo Holding.

Adlink Group, the parent company of domain name brokerage and parking company Sedo, is changing its name to Sedo Holding. The company will also change its stock ticker to SEDO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. [Updae: the change will go into affect after the formal stockholders meeting scheduled for May 19th.

The new name has been in the works since the company sold off its display advertising business, which was called Adlink. As part of the agreement, Adlink Group had to change its name within a fixed period of time. Sedo Holding will be the parent company of both Sedo and affiliate network Affilinet.

This is good news for the domain name industry as it will create more awareness for the Sedo brand, and domain name sales and parking in general.

Shares in the company are currently trading for about 3.70 EUR, giving the company a market cap just over 100M EUR.