A newly-granted patent is on to something.
More and more websites are adding features to show demand for products to spur you into buying quickly. Consider this listing on HomeAway and how it creates a sense of urgency to book now:
GoDaddy has a similar idea, and I think Verisign could implement a nice variation of it and provide it as a service through its registrar channel.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark office granted patent #9,904,944 (pdf) to GoDaddy today. The patent is for collecting and displaying search metrics to people when they search for a domain name.
For example, if someone searches for an available domain example.com, the results page might say, “Hurry, this domain name has been searched 53 times in the past month”. Or “Domains including the keyword ‘example’ have been searched 1,247 times in the past month”. Or “There’s a 75% chance this domain will be registered in the next 48 hours”.
This is a clever idea to push people to act on their ideas right away. There’s one problem, though. People are paranoid about registrars tracking their searches. You can read lots of stories from people who swear that a domain registrar sold their search data to someone else who subsequently registered the domain before they got a chance. Even though registrars do indeed track searches (but don’t sell them), displaying search data might remind customers of this.
I think a better approach would be to show how many domains including the keyword have been registered in the past X days. Verisign collects this data and makes it available through DomainScope. Verisign could make this available to registrars to use in search results.
For example, if someone searched for a domain name that included the keyword Crypto, the search result could say “Hurry, 1,438 domain names including crypto have been registered in the past week!”
GoDaddy could to the same thing, but smaller registrars don’t have as big of a dataset.
GoDaddy filed the patent in 2013 and I don’t recall seeing the idea ever come to fruition.
Acro says
“People are paranoid about registrars tracking their searches.”
This is not paranoia, is called “AI” by domain registrars that apply for these patents.
The registrant’s domain is now called a “unit” – another indication of how aggressively they pursue sales numbers.
In the end, it all comes down to how much data you want to share with the rest of the world. If you value privacy, you have options: don’t use domain registrars that monetize your every move.
Jane Doe says
Not paranoia if true.
Though when you look up a domain, come back the next day and not only is it registered by someone else, but registered via the same service you did the search…and it consistently happens…you start to wonder
Dom says
to check the availability first look up a domain idea via Whois (prefer ICANN), never via registrar or reseller.
domainvpJoe says
I think that displaying visits actually detracts from their overall “valuation” model. GD is appraising some very poor domains at $1500+, when a visitor sees that 2 people have visited a domain they will think that it’s not in demand (bad) and will leave it alone. On the other side, GD shows that 45 people visited the domain int he last month, and they potential buyer will wonder why nobody has pulled the trigger and purchased the domain yet.
It’s the psychology of the ‘last apple’ in the grocery store. Nobody ever takes the last apple that hundreds of people have seemingly passed up.
The appraisal on the page is enough to motivate a buyer, stats are a detraction for that. Unless they make up their stats like they make up their valuation, and what a liability that will be come if they take that approach.
IMO of course 🙂
Ray says
There is no reason patents like these should be granted. It’s not technology they invented, just made the smallest modification.