Looking up potential domains at eNom? The company uses that data in many ways.
[UPDATED] Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt has referred to the data from eNom and its value to the company before, but its newly filed S-1 explains the value succinctly. It uses the data not only for its content business, but also to determine which domain names to acquire for its own portfolio:
Proprietary Data. In providing registration services for over 10 million domain names, our Registrar resolves an average of over 2 billion domain name system queries per day. Our Registrar also serviced, on average, more than 3 million domain name look-ups per day from potential customers seeking to register new websites or purchase existing domains during the first six months of 2010. These queries and look-ups provide insight into what consumers may be seeking online and represent a proprietary and valuable source of relevant information for our platform’s title generation algorithms and the algorithms we use to acquire undeveloped websites for our portfolio.
[Update: this doesn’t imply at all that the company engages in “front-running”, or registering a domain you lookup prior to you being able to register it. A Demand Media spokesperson confirmed to me that “Demand Media’s eNom subsidiary does not engage in the practice of “front-running†domains”.]
The S-1 also confirms something we already know: eNom keeps a number of its customers’ expired domains for itself:
Domain names not renewed by their prior registrants that meet certain of our criteria are acquired by us to augment our portfolio of undeveloped owned and operated websites. Our access to this stream of expiring names and visibility into the organic performance of those sites is a unique source of data and creates the potential for future growth for our Content & Media service offering.
This IPO will very likely draw a lot of bad press towards eNom in the domaining world…
Post # 1 🙂
Warehousing
Whois data tracking
And this should be illegal.
I am a newbie in domain name purchases. Just started a couple months ago after reading about Kevin Ham. This article confirmed my gut feeling that registries are secretly tracking my queries and use it for its benefit.
Seems to be a conflict of interest. I think I will stick with Godaddy. Do they have a practice of buying up name that its customers are looking for too?
Old news, as they are doing this for years now (epee.com and so on…)
I have similar examples in mind concerning Tucows, Namecheap… ^^
Just don’t use registrar portal, write your own lookup script !
I kind of feel this query-tracking thing happens in many registrars including godaddy, and also the services like estibot. Some of my best hand-reg candidates were taken before I open my wallet.
This is ugly.
yep, it’s happened to me too. Get the customers to do the work for you AND keep the BEST ham for yourself. Quite the restaurant…
Pretty much every registrar does this I would imagine. Not even sure they shouldn’t. If you look it up and it’s available, get it. Otherwise that data belongs to the reg.
PS: GDaddy definitely do this too.
True story- I looked up “cheapfunerals.***” a couple years ago and it was available. Went to the bedroom to get my credit card, came back to the computer, and it was TAKEN…3 minutes.
I looked it up on godiddy.
Hi there is seems that big business follows government in deception and fraud
If the Domain Name Industry would clean up its act in general it would become more investable
and in return would yield higher earnings to sales ratio`s
it seem everything is about perception
and not reality
take google in 2006/2007 it commented that it would be unfair for verisign to give higher speeds to some vendors and not to others
now google and verisign want to partner to give google aka youtube better download speed
i think that google will and should come in for some anti trust law action soon
as how in the world can this mega Goliath
pretend it treat everyone fairly
when there are business`s out that that have to use a platform that give favours to high spenders on ppc and increases the organic in return ( allegedly) i have to say that to avoid being sued lol
all so the result of continual changes
to its algorithm always favour google as the people that loose spots have to spend to
money on ppc to try and keep there business going not much fun in this days economy
and i know companies that have had to lay people off / lost the houses because of these
changes when is business the government
let you know whats expected of you etc etc
the google economy is larger now than lots of European countries yet no one knows for sure
what the playing field is that there on let alone have any re cause against goggle when the sand shifts there is no other part in our business life were this is tolerated
i wish that they would honour there mantra
Do no evil
But the reality is when billions are involved so is evil
the Bankers and government have spent billions on promoting and sponsoring greed and corruption yes every goverment
and as we take our lead for our authority figures this is why the like of enom godaddy
and alike do business this way
beware of a false god Money because when it becomes your main focus then you become corrupted by it
just thought i would get that off my chest
ps what does everyone think about it being said google is downgrading a url weight
for ranking it seems the totally opposite
to google`s law of relevancy
or is it just another crock of shite and disinformation Cia style
Like weapons of mass destruction in iran
and was is nappam or some sort of potential chemical threat just before bush`s mid term election
as when we think stuff is happening and get afraid you always stick with the devil you know rather that have change
Is it legal ?
it does not matter .. This registar is going down…
They might keep it floating for sometime …but the end result is that it is going down …
You better move your domains .
enom.com just bought a domain I was searching (front running) that was available, but when I went to purchase it, it was NOT available. I looked it up with WHOIS, and sure enough, it was registered that same day. AVOID enom.com at all costs!!!
I bet $10 that’s not what happened.