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How Registries and Registrars can show urgency for registering domains

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

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:

HomeAway demand

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.

Chad Folkening gets patent for “Platform for building virtual entities using equity systems”

by — Services 1 Comment

Patent covers aspects of Contrib system for domain names.

A diagram from Folkening’s patent.

Chad Folkening was on the Domain Name Wire Podcast discussing Contrib last month. At a high level, it’s a system for developing domain names by engaging contributors.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted patent number 9,787,760 to Folkening for “Platform for building virtual entities using equity systems”.

The patent describes many aspects of the system, including the contribution of domain names to the system, valuation of domain names, issuing equity to contributors of both domain names and the development process (which Folkening plans to do via a cryptocurrency), and applying contributions across multiple domain names.

There are some interesting aspects of this ambitious idea. You can read the patent here (pdf).

Afilias gets patent related to community top level domains

by — Services 0 Comments

Patent describes way to verify registrant information to create trust and community.

An explanatory graphic from Afilias’ patent.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent 9,747,378 (pdf) to Afilias this week for “Linked web presence pages associated with a top level domain”.

I was a bit confused about what the patent covered and if the technology behind it had been implemented, so I reached out to Afilias for an explanation. Its explanation is a better description of the patent than I could come up with:

US Patent 9747378 stemmed from work by Afilias on a way to support the ability of community oriented TLDs to help the registrants gain exposure and interaction. Specifically, the patent addresses two important aspects of community building. The first is to add credibility that a particular registrant and domain name is a bonafide participant in the community.

It does this by cross checking various public sources of data against the registrant’s information and verifying the match. A proper match elevates the profile of a registrant and their domain name and gives other members of the community more confidence in dealing with them.The second is to enable the registrant to self-add functionality to their web presence by enabling things like: accepting donations, offering chat service, posting a twitter feed, allowing comments, and providing customer service.

Afilias says the concept is a result of Afilias’ support of various community-oriented TLDs, although none have specifically deployed the capability at this time.

Verisign files name spinning patent application

by — Services 2 Comments

Application for name spinning patent published today.

.Com domain name registry Verisign has filed a patent application (pdf) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that covers various aspects of generating domain name alternatives, aka name spinning.

The application was filed in December 2015 and just published today.

Abstract: Provided are methods, devices, and computer-readable media for accessing a domain name; determining, via the processor, at least two words in the domain name; determining at least one alternative word for at least one word in the domain name; determining whether the at least one alternative word is contextually relevant; and generating at least one alternative domain name based on a determination that the at least one alternative word is contextually relevant.

While the application explains a couple different ways of finding the alternative domains, I’m sure many in the domain name business would argue that the crux of the idea has been in practice by multiple parties for over a decade.

Verisign gets patent for evaluating typeability of domain names

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

Patent describes ways to score domain names based on how easy it is to type them on different keyboards.

verisign typing patent

Verisign’s patent describes a way to figure out how challenging it is to type a domain name on different keyboard types.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 9,195,316 to Verisign for “Evaluating typeability of domain names.”

The patent describes a way of taking different inputs, namely the layout/type of keyboard, and then figuring out how easy it is to type a particular domain name.

For example, a domain name might be easy to type due to where the letters are on a standard QWERTY laptop keyboard. Typeability might be different on an iPhone keyboard and Blackberry.

Typeability scores could be useful information for domain name registrants, especially as the web moves to mobile phones. Beyond the context of the domain name I’m considering, and its length, how easily can someone type it on an iPhone?