Legendary domainer’s patent-pending system could fend off ISP redirects.
On April 24, 2006, domain name portfolio owner Frank Schilling filed a patent application for “Generic top-level domain re-routing system” with the help of attorney John Berryhill. This patent, if granted, could end up being very important to the domain name industry.
Patent application 20060265516 describes a system for redirecting typos of domain names, such as a typo of the .com portion or the actual name:
…Because mis-typed TLDs in Internet domain names will not resolve to a valid address, valuable web site visitors and e-mail messages are lost. Additionally, mis-typed TLDs are not present in network root services to respond to queries for non-existent TLD’s. Hence, it is desirable to provide an address resolution mechanism to reduce root server address resolution traffic and to provide increased user convenience. According to one embodiment of the invention, the root zone file is augmented to include DNS records corresponding to common mis-typed versions of the correctly-typed TLDs contained in the root zone. The DNS data for each mis-typed TLD is configured to be identical with the DNS data for the corresponding correctly-typed TLD. When a query is received for an mis-typed TLD, the root server will respond by providing the IP address for the intended correctly typed TLD. As a result, the resolution process will then be referred to the intended name server for the intended TLD, and subsequent queries to the root server will be reduced as a consequence of caching the authoritative response for the mis-typed TLD. In alternative embodiments, supplemental DNS data for mis-typed domains may be provided upstream from the root server, in the form of an augmented cache at an intermediate DNS server, or on the user’s computer.
If this sounds familiar, it may be because a number of ISPs and computer manufacturers have systems similar to what the patent describes. These systems, such as those used by Time Warner and Gateway, capture typo traffic and send it to their own pages full of ads (instead of to the intended destination).
The net affect is taking traffic that was intended for domain and web site owners and diverting it to the ISPs.
To the untrained eye, it appears that Schilling’s patent could be used to squash this practice. I’m not sure of the intentions of this patent filing, but Schilling and Berryhill are smart people with a vision for the future, so this is a plausible reason for the filing.
“To the untrained eye, it appears that Schilling’s patent could be used to squash this practice.”
Or, as is often the case with patents, to profit from the practice….
Antony
So, when I type “something.ccm” will I go to something.com or something.cm ??
Same goes for .cn and .cm, and I’m sure there are others.
@ Yanni – I suspect that if a country code exists for the typo then it wouldn’t work. But keep in mind this is just a patent application, it’s not like it has/will be implemented.
@Andrew – Yea, I was simply trying to point out that it probably won’t be awarded.
But like you mentioned, JB is really on top of his game. Maybe he knows something we don’t 😉
He knows that the price of fuel for his Lear has doubled and the traffic/clicks/revenue from his 200,000+ domains has diminished and so he’s evolving to a new business model. Prehaps the reason his blog has gone quiet for 08.
Frank Schilling + John Berryhill (X + Y = $$$) = “Domainers Who Know Something”
Just expect if it benefits Frank, it’s going to benefit domainers.
I think that is overly optimistic! Usually patents only benefit the patent holder.
@ Antoinette – yes and no. If Frank’s pending patent keeps companies from stealing traffic, then it could benefit everyone.
I’m not a patent lawyer, but I hope someone at the patent offices knows something about DNS and domain names to reject this puppy. Right from the start it is misleading with saying that traffic and emails are “lost”. They are not lost as the browser returns and error messsage and failed email messages are generally returned to the sender if the address does not exist.
This move by Frank surprises and disappoints me. I hope there is some useful reason to make this move, but on the surface it almost seems like he is trying to put Keven Ham and many others out of their typo-harvesting business.
The patent seems to say it should be providing what it “assumes” the user typed in and take them to that site. While typos are a pain, I think you open the door for abuse and even more mistakes when you start correcting what someone typed in. Furthermore, you start limiting what is allowed as valid for the future and put another layer of complexity and possible security risk to what we have now.
Brian
May 15th, 2008 | 6:53 am
He knows that the price of fuel for his Lear has doubled and the traffic/clicks/revenue from his 200,000+ domains has diminished and so he’s evolving to a new business model. Prehaps the reason his blog has gone quiet for 08.
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Brian has made a very valid statement/observation.
The days of amassing domains and creating click banks hoping to make millions “parking” them is fast coming to an end. Parking is a parasitic business practice and the marketplace will eventually price accordingly. The marketplace has already proven 2 or 3 sites with good content can make many multiples of the revenue compared to several thousand parked domains in a click bank.
There’s a reason Google now relegates click bank IPs to the bottom of the search heap. Advertisers want conversion. If you ain’t got content people want, you ain’t got anything.
If single word domains were such “category killers”, then search.com would be ahead of yahoo or google. Or books.com would be bigger than Amazon. There’s way too much hype in this business. Domain name market is in a bubble, just like the Nasdaq was in 2000 and the housing market was in 2005. As the general economy slows down, I expect domain prices in the resale/auction market to take a nose-dive. Those paying 100K for thisdomainiswaytoolongtobeanygood.com are about to come back to reality when they find no buyers for the flip.
Thanks for your support qwerty. Frank’s running costs for his Lear have gone up since I wrote that.
Seems like there’s plenty of life left in the parking market, views and clicks this month are higher than any other month this year.
I agree there’s plenty of suckers buying overhyped and overpriced domains though.
I like the sound of that domain……