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GoDaddy gets patent for ‘Portfolio-based domain name recommendations’

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

Patent suggests ways a registrar can decide which domains to display to customers.

Diagram from GoDaddy patent for name spinning

Part of a diagram from GoDaddy’s latest patent related to domain name suggestions.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued patent #10,387,959 to GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) today.

The patent (pdf) for “Portfolio-based domain name recommendations” provides ways a domain name registrar can select which domain name suggestions to make to a customer.

There are many examples covered in the patent. One is to limit the number of times a domain suggestion is shown to a customer. For example, after showing it five times, the registrar may decide the customer isn’t interested and remove it from future suggestions.

Another embodiment is to show domains that are related to other ones in the customer’s portfolio based on how long the domains have been in the portfolio. GoDaddy discloses that it has found customers are more likely to register domains related to “middle-aged” domains in their portfolio as opposed to domains that have been registered a short amount of time or a very long amount of time.

Although it does not disclose what constitutes middle-aged, it gives an example of marking domain registered more than five years as old and less than one year as new.

The application includes other embodiments related to domain and SEO value.

Dynadot jumps into top 10

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

Dynadot jumps into the top ten registrars for new .com registrations.

Image of man running up column chart with words "Top 10 Registrars"

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers April 2019.

An anomaly this month is Dynadot, which jumped into the top ten for monthly .com registrations. This pushed NameSilo out of the top ten. I think this has to do with pricing; while NameSilo’s .com sale ended at the end of Q1, Dynadot has continued with discounted pricing. It’s charging $6.99 right now for new .com registrations.

While this means NameSilo is absent from the monthly board this month, it should soon appear on the top ten overall. It has crossed two million .com domains under management but this isn’t reflected in the ICANN numbers, which only go through April.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations:

1. GoDaddy.com* 970,751 (NYSE: GDDY) (1,045,199 in March)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 324,617 (294,415)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 191,620 (206,170)
4. NameCheap Inc. 152,606 (160,737)
5. Alibaba (HiChina) 130,946 (126,659)
6. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 125,059 (138,627)
7. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 119,976 (135,927)
8. Dynadot 104,837
9. Web.com++  88,873 (83,600)
10. Chengdu West 82,351

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of April 2019.

1. GoDaddy* 50,940,640 (50,831,723 in March)
2. Tucows**  12,484,323 (12,552,098)
3. Endurance+ 7,026,808 (7,065,847)
4. Web.com++ 6,713,881 (6,717,360)
5. Alibaba 6,288,135 (6,226,249)
6. United Internet^ 5,609,664 (5,630,889)
7. Namecheap 4,745,085 (4,694,598)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,814,331 (3,500,398)
9. Google 2,434,742 (2,361,414)
10. GMO 2,026,751 (2,007,437)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and 123 Reg
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

GoDaddy reports earnings, domain revenue up nearly 10% from last year

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Domain revenue continues upward charge at GoDaddy.

GoDaddy logoThe big news out of GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) on its Q2 earnings release wasn’t the numbers. It was Scott Wagner stepping down as CEO. He is leaving for health reasons and will be replaced by Aman Bhutani, previously President of Brand Expedia Group.

On the numbers side of things, revenue in Q2 2019 was $737.2 million, up 13.1% year-over-year. Total bookings hit $846.1 million, up 12.2%. The customer base increased by 1.0 million customers.

Domains revenue was $334.4 million, up 9.7% year over year. GoDaddy pulled in $319.6 million from domains in Q1 of this year, so it had a good quarter-over-quarter lift.

Revenue in the company’s hosting/web presence business grew 14% year-over-year and business applications revenue was up 20%.

Scott Wagner leaving GoDaddy for health reasons, new CEO from Expedia named

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Wagner will be replaced by Expedia veteran Aman Bhutani.

Aman Bhutani, new CEO of GoDaddy

Aman Bhutani

Scott Wagner is stepping down as CEO of GoDaddy for unspecified health reasons, the company announced today.

Wagner has been involved with GoDaddy since KKR invested in the company in 2011. He served as interim CEO for a bit in 2012-2013 until Blake Irving was hired, and then held President/COO and CEO roles since then.

He will be succeeded by Aman Bhutani, who has spent the last nine years at Expedia Group. His most recent role there was President of Brand Expedia group.

Bhutani currently lives in Seattle, where Expedia is located. GoDaddy has an office in the Seattle area that was started under Blake Irving’s tenure.

Tips for the new GoDaddy Domain Manager

by — Domain Registrars 15 Comments

Sorry, the old domain manager is gone. Here are some tips for using the new domain manager.

GoDaddy customers have had access to the company’s “new” domain manager for quite some time now. But this past week the company removed access to its old account manager, forcing customers to use the latest dashboard.

So customers that still relied on the old view are now stuck using the new one. Like anything, change is hard. Here are a few tips to make it easier to manage your domains with the new dashboard.

Bulk search

Much like the old interface, the new interface lets you pull up multiple domain names at a time to perform tasks on them. The way you select the domains is very different in the new one, however.

To bulk search your portfolio, paste a list of domains in the search bar. Either leave one space between each domain or paste a text list of domains, one per line. This will show the selected domains only. Note: do not put commas between domains.

Bulk search feature on GoDaddy, showing multiple domains entered into the search box

Edit columns

Each domain is listed with pertinent data. You can select which columns you want to view by clicking on “Edit Columns”. One nice option here is “create date,” which shows when the domain was first registered based on Whois.

Other helpful columns include nameservers (quickly see if a domain is pointing to the wrong place), ownership date (shows when you acquired the domain) and renewal price (especially handy if you own a lot of different TLDs).

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