India gets seven IDN ccTLDS and more good news for IDN domain name supporters.

One thing I learned on my trip to India earlier this month is that there are a lot of local languages.

This week ICANN approved delegation of seven (yes, seven) internationalized county code domain names to National Internet Exchange of India. The delegated ccTLDs include भारत (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--h2brj9c”; بھارت “Bharat”), encoded as “xn--mgbbh1a71e”; భారత్ (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--fpcrj9c3d”; ભારત (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--gecrj9c”; ਭਾਰਤ (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--s9brj9c”; இந்தியா (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--xkc2dl3a5ee0h”; and ভারত (“Bharat”), encoded as “xn--45brj9c.

Also getting the nod this week: a Korean ccTLD for Republic of Korea, Chinese and Tamil ccTLDs for Singapore, and an Arabic ccTLD for the Syrian Arab Republic.

In other good news for IDN supporters, it looks like new gTLDs may actually move forward at March’s ICANN meeting, opening up the door for internationalized “equivalents” of existing top level domain names.

New TLD supporters received good news today.

After what seemed like disappointing news last week, now things are looking up for potential new top level domain name applicants.

ICANN just released resolutions from its board meeting on January 25 and they indicate that ICANN plans to go forward with approving the applicant guidebook during the March meeting in San Francisco. The group plans to “trigger the Bylaws mandated consultation” with the Governmental Advisory Committee during the March meeting before the Friday board meeting.

That means we may see the application window for new TLDs open up in late summer and the first ones would likely to come online in 2012.

But this is a case where new TLD supporters surely won’t count their chickens before they hatch. They’ve already done a lot of counting to no avail.

Excluding a one time charge VeriSign reports nice earnings for Q4.

VeriSign reported a loss for the fourth quarter of 2010 in earnings just released.

So how can the company that prints money with the .com and .net registry lose money?

It was a one time charge related to contingent interest on a special dividend that swung the company to a loss. Ignore this one time event and VeriSign had a great quarter thanks to rising domain registrations. The company earned and adjusted EPS of $.31 when the street was expecting $.30.

Year-on-year revenues rose 13% as the .com and .net base topped 105.2 million.

As I’ve said before, it’s not VeriSign you should blame for making so much money.

See what Go Daddy has cooked up for Jillian Michaels and Danica Patrick.

Can’t wait until the Super Bowl to see what Go Daddy has in store for this year? You don’t have to; the company’s first commercial is available below.

But this isn’t the one that has most people curious. In the first half Go Daddy will run a commercial featuring its new Go Daddy.CO girl.

With the traditional shock tactic wearing a little thin after all these years, Go Daddy has cooked up some pre-game buzz by releasing photos of certain “parts” of the Go Daddy.co girl in recent weeks.

But back to the released video…

The commercial is called “The Contract” and features Go Daddy girls Jillian Michaels and Danica Patrick resisting doing something to “over the top” in the commercial. After their agent tells them it’s in their contract, you see the two women drawing attention when it appears they are topless. On Super Bowl Sunday Go Daddy will release the internet only version of the commercial where you can see what happens.

Hidden value of Trust Seal is in higher search click-throughs.

When eNom announced last summer that it would start selling VeriSign’s Trust Seal I kind of chuckled to myself.

Why would anyone pay $299 a year to display a VeriSign seal on their site? After all, you can get a full-blown SSL certificate from some providers for only $20 a year.

But the benefits are more than meets the eye.

Perhaps the biggest is increased search engine clicks. Many people who use Norton Antivirus software (Norton owns the security side of VeriSign, which is separate from the domain name registry) install a toolbar for safe surfing. When they make a search any site that uses VeriSign’s Trust Seal gets a special “Norton Secured” icon next to the result:

Anything you can do to make your listing standout from others will usually result in more clicks.

You can also put the seal on your site, which should result in higher conversions for lead capture and e-commerce sites. VeriSign also performs a daily malware scan of your site.

I don’t have any stats for you on improved click-throughs or conversions from using the seal. But VeriSign currently offers a 60 day free trial so you can see for yourself.

VeriSign’s one year pricing is $299, but eNom offers it to resellers for less.