Yahoo picks up .tel domain name.

An arbitrator with National Arbitration Forum has awarded Yahoo! the Yahoo.tel domain name. Yahoo was the first major tech company to file arbitration for a .tel domain when it filed its case back in August.

The respondent in the case did not file an official response. Instead, he challenged the authority of UDRP proceedings in Spain.

Through correspondence dated September 23, 2009, the Attorney of Respondent submitted a written communication to the National Arbitration Forum, by means of which said party emphatically insisted that this Panel lacks of competence to rule the present case, pursuant to internal provisions of the procedural Law of the Kingdom of Spain.

Regardless of the foregoing assertion, Respondent is hereby reminded that it expressly consented to be bound to the jurisdiction of the UDRP when it executed the Registration Agreement with the Registrar implying this that Respondent is legally linked by the ARSYS INTERNET SL d/b/a NICLINE.COM registration agreement. Thus, Respondent is compelled to revise it and be properly informed of its content and implications, before making pointless contentions.

There was another procedural issue in the case: the registrar agreement was in Spanish, so technically the case filings needed to be in Spanish. However, the domain owner’s registrar delayed its response to the UDRP, resulting in the case commencing before the panel knew that the case should be in Spanish:

Upon notification of the dispute, the Registrar refused to verify the Respondent’s identity. Upon subsequent request, the Registry did verify Respondent’s identity, and the National Arbitration Forum commenced the case. Then, after the commencement of the case by the National Arbitration Forum, correspondence was received from the Registrar that stated that the language of the Registration Agreement was in Spanish.

In view of this fact, because the pertaining information was received from the Registrar only after the case was commenced, the Panel decides to continue the case with the English-language submission of the Complaint, pursuant to Rule 11 of the Policy.

Of course, Yahoo could have claimed the Yahoo.tel domain name during the .tel sunrise period for about $300, much less than the cost of arbitration. Will we see a lot of this scenario — company doesn’t get domain during sunrise but gets it through arbitration — when new top level domains roll out?

New advertising option excludes parked domain names.

The settlement of a class action lawsuit against Yahoo may result in lower pay-per-click revenue for parked domain names.

The lawsuit was brought against Yahoo for allegedly misleading advertisers as to the sites where their ads would appear:

This class action was brought in 2006 by several Yahoo! pay-per-click search advertising customers. They allege that customers contracted for targeted ad placements through two products, “Sponsored Search” and “Content Match” (and predecessor products provided by Overture Services, Inc. and GoTo.com, Inc.) and that Yahoo! breached its contract with its customers by allowing Yahoo! ads to be displayed in spyware, domain name parking sites (also known as bulk registration sites), pop-ups, pop-unders, and typosquatting sites. Plaintiffs brought claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, and unfair business practices.

As part of the settlement, Yahoo must create a new “Premium” ad placement option that will only show ads on Yahoo-owned web sites and other select parts of the content distribution network. This specifically excludes parked domain names:

“Premium Providers” means: (a) all web sites and web pages (including any microsite), software applications and other properties on the Internet that are owned or operated by Yahoo!; and, at Yahoo!’s option, (b) all parts of the Distribution Network other than: (i) domain name parking sites; (ii) bulk registration sites; (iii) “pop-up” or “pop-under” windows; (iv) typosquatting sites; (v) “sliders”; (vi)
“sidebars”; (vii) “injected ads”; or (viii) unsolicited spam email.

(See paragraph 22 of this settlement agreement)

It’s painful to see parked domain names being lumped together with spam emails.

Smart pay-per-click advertisers know how to manage the content network to get a high ROI. But lazy ones — and those that don’t have much knowledge of the network — will likely opt in to only showing their ads on Premium Providers.

A few thoughts I jotted down this weekend.

Are there really two major domain name auctions at TRAFFIC later this month? It’s only a couple weeks away, and I haven’t seen a single list of domains yet…

…How long will it be until PeopleofWalmart.com gets a UDRP?

…One of the biggest ironies in the domain name industry is that Oversee.net doesn’t own Oversee.com.

…There are two types of people in the domain industry: giving people and taking people. There are some great people in the industry who devote time and money to charity. Then there are those that keep their riches to themselves. Thank goodness there are more givers than takers.

…I got back into running recently, and that’s good for business. I do great thinking when I’m jogging.

…Yahoo’s traffic quality score changes are causing bigger waves in the domain industry than expected. Hopefully it’s just short term.

Yahoo gets patent for human editor enhancements to search results.

Yahoo was awarded U.S. patent 7,599,911 today for “Method and apparatus for search ranking using human input and automated ranking”. The patent was filed in 2002.

Essentially, this method calculates search rankings based on both automated search algorithms and human editor input. In the patent, Yahoo describes a way that previously-collected input from human editors can be mixed in, or “blended”, with what its search algorithms return, resulting in better search results.

Yahoo describes the benefits and drawbacks of human editors:

Ranking by human editors reviewing search results provides more relevant ranking than automated processes and even search users, because human editors possess better intelligence than the best software and more clearly understand distinctions in pages, and human editors focus on areas of their expertise. For example, a human editor would more easily spot a page that is irrelevant but contains terms designed to get a high ranking from an automated process. However, human editors cannot process the volume of searches typically received by a search system and cannot keep up to date the queries they do process in view of the relevant pages that are added for consideration, modified or removed. In addition, in an open-ended query system, the number of possible queries can easily be in the millions. Even if editors concentrate only on the most common queries, the results change all the time as new data becomes available, old data becomes irrelevant, new meanings are created for old terms, or new events occur. If the results are based solely on what the human editors decided on one day, they might be stale and out of date the next day.

Yahoo proposes a way that human editors can adjust results for particular search queries:

Promotions and demotions might be absolute (“Rank this document first highest.”), relative to itself (“Rank this document four positions higher than it would otherwise be.”), or relative to another document (“Rank this document higher than this other document.”). Other types of promotion/demotion might include “remove this document from consideration no matter what the automatic system suggests”, “this set of documents are to be given equal (‘tied”) rankings”, “do not rank this document higher than position P” for some integer P, or the like.

A “blender” is then applied to automated search results and the editors’ inputs, resulting in a final ranking of search results.

An example in the patent is for the search query “medical conditions related to sports”. A human editor might lower the ranking of web sites for “tennis racket” in relation to web sites about “tennis elbow”.

Read Yahoo’s Patent (pdf).

News bytes to start your Tuesday.

Here are a few domain name news items for the week:

Domain Name Wire Radio is coming. More later.

Parked/Why Park Forum. Parked.com and WhyPark have created a user forum at forum.parked.com. Parked’s Donny Simonton has always been active on message boards, so you can rest assured you’ll get direct access through this forum. Hint: register for the forum to get more content.

Got travel traffic?. If you have a good portfolio of travel domains getting xx,xxx visitors per month, shoot me a note. I have someone who wants to talk to you.

Yahoo’s updated traffic quality algorithm has gone into effect. Some domain parkers are complaining, but many of them probably only make a dollar a day, anyway. Remember: quality of traffic matters!

XsitePro thoughts. I’ve long raved about Xsite Pro. The only problem is I still can’t find anyone that creates good custom templates for it. They’re always so amateur.

SedoPro Partner Forum. Just a few weeks until Sedo rolls out the red carpet for VIP parking clients. Most enjoyable few days you’ll ever spend with fellow domainers.