Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff
Namazi to take over Akram Atallah’s role.
Cyrus Namazi. Photo from LinkedIn profile.
Namazi has been filling in as ICANN searched for a replacement, so now he’s officially the replacement (just with a different title). He will report to ICANN President and CEO Göran Marby.
The GDD was created in 2013 as ICANN geared up for new top level domain names.
Namazi joined ICANN in 2013. He has served as the Vice President of the group’s Domain Name Services & Industry Engagement activities.
New Cayman Islands law forces Uniregistry to change Whois policy.
Domain name registrar Uniregistry is making the publication of Whois data opt-in for registrants.
The move is in response to a new Cayman Islands Data Protection Law. Think of it as the Cayman Islands’ version of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Many of Uniregistry’s clients are domain name investors who want their information disclosed in Whois and they will be able to opt-in to doing this.
Technically, ICANN requires all registrars to provide a way for their customers to opt-in to have their information published in Whois but few have enabled this capability.
For domains with masked Whois records, Uniregistry will provide a form for people to contact the domain owner.
Most (but not all) other big domain name registrars began masking Whois data carte blanche after GDPR went into effect in May even though the law doesn’t cover non-EU citizen/resident data.
Organization files cybersquatting complaint under UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization.
Nelson Mandela Foundation Trust has filed a cybersquatting complaint against the domain name Mandela.org.
The organization was established in 1999 when Nelson Mandela stepped down as President of South Africa. It was created for Mandela to do charitable work such as building schools, HIV/AIDS work and research. It now also handles the legacy of Mandela.
It uses the domain name NelsonMandela.org.
A Brazilian man owns Mandela.org. Prior to that, the domain name was owned by domain name investment company Internet REIT.
For a long time Mandela.org has resolved to a scarcely populated website that says it is under construction.
A German telecom company, tire distributor, and a Mexican paint brand bought domains last week.
This week’s top end user sale has an unknown buyer, but we will surely find out their identity soon. In addition to .com many ccTLDs made their way to the list: .de, .co, .ch and .it
Here are some end user sales from Sedo last week. You can view previous lists like this here.
DuoBank.com £30,000 – The Whois changed from someone in Korea to Scalar IT, a CDW company. I assume that’s outsourced IT for the buyer. When I search ‘duo bank’ I get a result for an investment firm that uses DuoBank.com.br.
Berel.com $8,200 – A Mexican paint brand and manufacturer.
Heuro.com €4,800 – Forwards to Heuro.ca, a Canadian resource and treatment program provider for those suffering from a brain injury.
Toniton.com $4,300 – Brand protection company Brimondo bought this domain name, ostensibly for a client.
CashOnly.com $4,000 – The domain name forwards to StaffOnly.com, which says “We help startups turn ideas into compelling products.”
Cannaflower.com $3,888 – Forwards to BerkshireCBD.com, a wholesale distributor of hemp flower plants.
MyBoardingHouse.de €3,750 – Forwards to MyBoardinghouse.net, a German apartment rental listing site.
Hiring.co $3,553 – Great keyword domain in development as a job listing site for the New York City area. Currently, they’re only showcasing security jobs but it’s hard to tell if that will be their sole focus.
3imedia.com $3,500 – Forwards to 3imedia.de/de/ – a German Telecom Firm that now owns the .Com of their domain.
Doc-Doc.com $3,300 – A Spanish language online portal and app of professional doctors available by chat, video consultations and home visits.
Kirchenaustritt.ch €2,990 – Forwards to mgqrmryww.cyon.link, which appears to be a template in development. It translates to roughly “leaving the church” in German.
Fritzreifen.com $2,500- Forwards to Fritzreifen.de, which has a literal translation of “Fritz tires” and is a German distributor of motorcycle and various types of commercial vehicle tires.
CorsoTrading.it €2,100 – MoSEO SrlS is an Italian web developer and SEO company. Its address is Corso Roselli, so this might be a domain for one of its clients or a project it is building.
GoDaddy execs comment on WordPress and the domain aftermarket.
GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) released Q4 2018 and full-year earnings yesterday and held its investor conference call.
Two things in the call stood out to me.
First, the company discussed continued progress on GoCentral and its growth in managed WordPress.
GoCentral is GoDaddy’s homegrown website builder. It’s designed to be extremely easy for any type of business to start a website. I’ve tested the product and it’s definitely an easy way for a restaurant, mechanic, or any of hundreds of other types of businesses to create a web presence quickly and without the help of a developer.
On the call, GoDaddy CEO Scott Wagner noted, “Our Managed WordPress offering automates the entire process of starting and maintaining a secure WordPress website, which saves our customers literally hours of work, frustration and distraction.”
Later, in response to an analyst’s question, he said (quoted from SeekingAlpha transcript):
The biggest issues with WordPress, if you are working and using on it, are plug-in maintenance and overall security and just the level of time and attention that it takes to actually run that. Look, our managed platform, managed WordPress platform, totally automates and simplifies that process and we are making it easier and easier and easier. And so the feature improvement is both security layer, but more importantly, on app plug-in and theme updates to just make it super easy for performance and reliability. So I think you are seeing it not just for pros, but also for pros handing sites like that off to individuals or small businesses that are managing it for themselves.
I think that starting a WordPress website is something in which GoDaddy really shines. It uses onboarding wizards similar to GoCentral to get you started quickly. I’ve used WordPress since 2005 and, despite all the improvements in the platform, still find it hard to spin up a site with a good design. It’s much, much easier with GoDaddy.
Wagner noted that GoDaddy is now the largest host of paid WordPress instances.
One future opportunity for GoDaddy is to help companies make the leap from GoCentral to managed WordPress. GoCentral is a good product and will meet many companies’ needs. Over time, though, they might want to get the flexibility of WordPress. It would be very powerful to have a one-click migration from CoCentral to managed WordPress.
Dreamhost is doing this to a degree with its Remixer product. Remixer is a much simpler website builder, though.
The other thing on the call that caught my attention was CFO Ray Winborne’s comment on the domain aftermarket:
For the first quarter, we expect revenue of $705 million to $715 million, representing 11% to 13% growth versus the first quarter of 2018, as we began to lap the gains from changes in merchandising of aftermarket domain sales in early 2018.
This reconfirms that GoDaddy saw a marked improvement to aftermarket domain sales when it changed how it presented premium domains in domain search results. At NamesCon this year, GoDaddy GM Paul Nicks said conversions increased 30% with this change. It apparently had a material impact on GoDaddy’s revenue. I think there’s other low-hanging fruit here that GoDaddy can tap in 2019.
