Patent covers tool to identify potentially valuable unregistered domain names.
The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent to Verisign that covers analysis of traffic to non-existent domain names.
U.S. Patent number 8,504,673 (pdf) is titled “Traffic like NXDomains”. I wrote about this patent last year when it was published.
Here’s the patent abstract:
Methods and systems for analyzing network traffic related to domain names, including Non-Existent Domain names, comprise: storing network traffic data associated with DNS requests for NXDs; receiving an analysis request associated with a domain name; creating, based on the stored network traffic data, an NXD list comprising NXDs that received at least one DNS request during a specified time period; computing, based on the stored network traffic data, a similarity metric for each NXD listed in the NXD list; and providing an analysis report identifying potentially valuable NXDs based on the computed similarity metrics.
Verisign started offering a number of traffic and NXD tools to the public over the past couple years. The patent states that this tool is especially valuable to domainers, who can use the data to find unregistered domain names that might have traffic.
Louise says
Why is Verisign in my space?
Maria Soukhanova says
the dwarves fashioned the chain out of six impossible things:
The sound of a cat’s footfall
The beard of a woman
The roots of a mountain
The breath of a fish
The spittle of a bird
The traffic of a non-existent domain