Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

What domains P&G and others bought

by — Domain Sales 3 Comments

Procter & Gamble, a pharmaceutical company and a Chinese tour company all bought domains last week.

graphic of briefcase full of money related to end user domain name sales

The household products behemoth Procter & Gamble bought a new exact match domain for its extensive portfolio at Sedo last week. Other buyers include a pharma company that paid $25,000 for RAPT.com.

Here’s the list of Sedo end user sales from the past week. You can view previous lists like this here.

Rapt.com $25,000 – FLX Bio is a pharmaceutical company that develops orally-administered drugs for cancer and other inflammatory diseases. It is forwarding the domain to its main website and I can’t find anything on it about RAPT. Microsoft appears to be the seller.

SilkRoadTravel.com $11,500 – A tour operator in West China.

Vigantol.com $9,900 – Procter & Gamble. Vigantol is a form of Vitamin D3. This was a SedoMLS sale.

A-Rent.com $5,500 – Under development for a Chicago-based company specializing in renting electrical testing equipment.

TheContext.com $3,600 – Not yet developed but this was purchased by Contextual Reports, LLC, a firm in Palo Alto.

MoneyIs.com $3,366 – New website for Real Estate mogul Andrew Cordle where he shares wealth advice via video content.

BestSecret.ro €3,000 – Forwards to BestSecret.com, a “Member’s only” online high-end clothing shopping club.

Mashup.in $2,800 – Not yet developed but this domain was purchased by Half Ticket, an Indian online clothes retailer.

ShopMate.de €2,400 – SPARWELT GmbH has a product called ShopMate. When someone purchases from a partner e-commerce company, they get a promotion for another partner company.

Ehpad-Invest.net €2,000 – Forwards to Ehpad-Invest.com, a French investment service provider.

Google registers Driverless Car .app domains

by — Uncategorized 6 Comments

The timing of these two domain registrations suggests momentum with driverless taxis.

Photo of a Waymo Google driverless car.

Me next to a Google/Wayme Driverless test car in Austin.

Google just registered a couple of driverless car domain names in the .app extension, showing progress on its driverless car activities and the future of driverless taxis.

The company registered Driverless.app and DriverlessCar.app this week. Neither domain resolves to a website at the time of this story.

While Google owns the .app top level domain, names in .app are open for registration by anyone.

The company’s Waymo unit launched the Waymo One app last year for users of its driverless taxi fleet in Phoenix. I find it interesting that it just registered the driverless .app domains now. Does it signal a wider rollout or progress on its driverless car program?

The .Com memorability factor

by — Uncategorized 14 Comments

Study shows that people remember domain names as having .com on the end.

One of the problems with using a top level domain name other than .com is memorability. While it might stand out to people as new or unique, many people will remember your domain name as a .com.

This is especially the case when people can’t see it, such as hearing a radio commercial for a website. But it’s even a factor when people do see the domain name, and that’s clear in a clever study performed by Kyle Byers of GrowthBadger.

Kyle surveyed 1,500 people and didn’t tell them the study was about domain names. He asked them how trustworthy a site was and the only information he gave them was a domain name. It ended in .com or one of seven other domain name extensions.

Overall, the ones that ended in .com had the highest trustworthiness score.

But the most intriguing thing to me was quantifying recall. After asking about the website, Kyle threw in a bunch of other questions to create some time between reviewing the domain and a final question: what was the domain name they saw on the first screen?

People were more likely to remember the domain if it was a .com. And if they misremembered the domain extension? They almost always misremembered it as .com:

Graph showing people who misremember domain names and which top level domain they choose

If they misremember the TLD, most remember it as .com. Graphic courtesy GrowthBadger.

This doesn’t surprise me but quantifies the effect.

Kyle has an interesting takeaway that domain investors will like:

The domain he tested was MattressRankings.TLD. The .com is on the aftermarket for about $4,000; the others can be hand registered. Kyle asks, isn’t it worth paying extra for the aftermarket domain in light of the findings?

5 features to power up your Gmail

by — Services 0 Comments

These features make email management easier.

Gmail is the hub for managing my business and the browser tab I spend the most time in. But Gmail is only as powerful as you make it. Here are 5 features I use that make Gmail more effective.

Snooze

A cluttered inbox is an unusable inbox. Snooze makes it easy to prioritize emails. If I don’t have the information required to respond to an email or know that I won’t be able to address it until a certain date, I snooze the email until then. This takes it out of the inbox until the snooze date/time.

Gmail snooze feature illlustration

Scheduled Send

There are a handful of emails I need to send every week or once a month. It’s easier to batch these and send them at later dates. Gmail’s scheduling feature makes this possible.

A couple of ways I use this feature are:

  • Create invoices in a batch and then schedule them to email on the dates they are supposed to be sent.
  • I have to send a script to my wife once a week for part of her podcast. I usually forget until she’s already recording and asks me for it. With scheduling I can set the email up to send on Monday morning of the week it needs to be sent.

To use scheduling, click the up arrow next to Send in any email to see your options.

Gmail scheduled send feature screenshot

Canned Responses

While these are called Canned Responses, think of them as canned emails. They can be used as templates for emails you send frequently. Here’s a tutorial.

Canned responses from Gmail Labs

Smart Compose

Smart Compose is a controversial feature. I didn’t like it at first but adjusted to it within a few days. Basically, as you type is suggests the end of your sentence. If you like the suggestion you just hit the space bar to autocomplete it. Here’s an example:

Gmail smart compose example

Again, it takes a while to get used to this. But it definitely speeds up your email response time.

Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication will help keep your account safe. You can use an app-based authenticator, but a physical security key is faster and more secure. See how to set this up here.

Addicting.com owner shows up to defend domain name

by — Policy & Law 6 Comments

Addicting.com owner challenges in rem action.

Screenshot of AddictingGames.com. The company is suing the owner of Addicting.com

Addicting Games screenshot

The owner of the domain name Addicting.com showed up to defend its domain name in a lawsuit.

Addicting Games, Inc., led by Bill Karamouzis (podcast), filed an in rem lawsuit against the domain name in January claiming cybersquatting.

Federal Investment Group, LLC (FIG), led by Krikor Bedrossian, has now filed with the court (pdf) to dismiss the case or move the jurisdiction.

FIG is  Nevada corporation.

According to the motion, Bill Karamouzis met with Krikor Bedrossian at a TRAFFIC conference in 2011, and the two discussed the domain name. Bedrossian questions why in rem is proper given that Karamouzi allegedly knew who owned the domain name.

The motion also states that the domain has had common ownership since 1999. This predates Addicting Games’ trademark, which would mean the domain was not registered in bad faith to target the mark.

An affidavit (pdf) from lawyer Paul Keating is included in the filing. The affidavit includes supporting documentation about the ownership of the domain.