Apple begins forwarding iPad3.com to its web site — and it’s tracking it, too
Thursday, July 12th, 2012
Apple smartly measures traffic to recently recovered domain name.
Late last month Apple filed a cybersquatting complaint over the domain name iPad3.com. Shortly after filing the complaint the owner of the domain acquiesced, giving the domain to Apple’s lawyers Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.
For a while after the transfer to Apple’s lawyers the domain didn’t resolve at all. Now it forwards to the iPad page on Apple. Here’s the full URL I’m forwarded to when I enter the web address:
https://www.apple.com/ipad/?cid=oas-us-domains-ipad3.com
Notice the tracking code after the question mark? That means Apple is tracking the traffic it gets from this domain. It also means the company can determine what visitors who type in iPad3.com ultimately do at the site. Do they buy an iPad?
This information will help Apple in future domain name enforcement activity.
Tracking visitors from a recovered domain is surprisingly advanced for most companies. It’s amazing how few companies end up forwarding recovered domains to their own web site, let alone the right “part” of the web site. (Here, the iPad page instead of just Apple.com.) Heck, a good percentage of them end up letting recovered domains expire.
How does one track a forwarded domain name? Is that done through the registrar?
You track it in your log files when the redirect is done.
Apple is not doing a very good job of tracking as it should be tracked via a wildcard DNS of “*.ipad3.com” instead of just ipad3.com and http://www.ipad3.com as it is now.