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National Car Rental loses case over domain name.

Roy Messer, perhaps most famous for selling Vodka.com for $3M, has successfully defended the domain name NationalRentaCar.com through UDRP.

The majority of the panel found that the domain name was confusingly similar to Vanguard Trademark Holdings’ trademark “National Car Rental”, but that the domain name was not registered in bad faith for several reasons. Among them, Messer provided a sworn declaration under penalty of law stating that the domain was not registered with the trademark in mind. The panel also found no evidence to the complainant’s inference that Messer’s company registered the domain with the trademark in mind.

What makes this case particularly interesting is the timeline. Messer registered the domain name in 2000. In 2003 the complainant sent a cease and desist letter to Messer. He responded, and didn’t hear back until 2004 when the complainant sent the exact same letter. He hadn’t heard from them since then until receiving the UDRP. The majority of the panel wrote:

In reaching this decision this Panel accepts that the doctrine of laches does not apply in the UDRP, but in the present case there appears to be some merit in Respondent’s argument that if Complainant were confident in its allegation of bad faith registration of the domain name it would not have delayed so long in bringing this Complaint.

Panelist The Honourable Neil Anthony Brown QC included additional commentary about the long delay, writing:

Standing by and allowing Respondent to use the domain name in the allegedly improper manner during these lengthy periods of time, without any explanation for how the delays came about, leaves Complainant open to the conclusion that it did not believe the claim and also that it had waived its complaint and induced or allowed Respondent to continue with its use of the domain name in that manner.

Attorney Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com represented Messer.

According to Compete.com, the domain name receives over 4,000 uniques each month.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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At the Domain Roundtable conference in Washington, D.C. last month, I noticed a lot of new faces with the Sedo team. As I started talking to them, I realized what was going on. Sedo had hired a number of people experienced selling to businesses. The company was making a focused effort selling to end users, and was hiring the right people to do it. These new employees are not domain industry veterans; they’re B-2-B salespeople.

As part of its push for end user sales, Sedo recently launched monthly themed promotions that it will promote to end users. The current one is for real estate, and future themes include gambling and pharmacy. These themes allow the company to aggregate good domain names and focus marketing to one vertical.

“We’re always trying to reach end users,” said Kathy Nielson, Director of North American Brokerage & Acquisitions at Sedo. “With auctions and themed verticals on a monthly basis it ties it all together. It makes our clients happy, but marketing-wise it’s so much easier to target one vertical and get end users to come to the table and buy domains.”

It has proven successful already. Prior to the current effort, Sedo has marketed a father’s day theme and to the adult industry. The adult industry push included ads in trade publications.

“Our end user sales have just skyrocketed this summer,” said Nielson. “It’s fun to see some of these companies coming in [and buying domains].”

The monthly themes feature fixed price domain names. Sedo (and its competitors) have found that domains with prices or price expectations are much more likely to sell than those without prices. Nielson explains that when buyers come in and see no price indication, the negotiations take longer and are less likely to result in a sale.

Sedo seems to be making all the right moves to sell domains to end users, and the results are starting to prove it.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Related posts:

1. Selling Domains 101: Part 5, End User Sales
2. Median End User Domain Name Sales Price $1200
3. Sedo Fixes Auction User Interface

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NameMedia has a sky-high week thanks to SkyHarbor.com.

NameMedia, which operates BuyDomains.com and Afternic, sold over $600,000 in domain names over the past week. The standout sale was SkyHarbor.com at $35,000. SkyHarbor.com has yet to change hands, but a possible buyer is the Phoenix airport, called Sky Harbor.

Other notable .com domain sales include:

militarylawyers.com $7,500.00
trademarkets.com $6,400.00
adhelper.com $6,400.00
recipex.com $5,800.00
piketon.com $5,188.00
worldtech.com $5,000.00
guitarrista.com $5,000.00
groundcoffee.com $4,500.00
eduall.com $3,900.00
petsavvy.com $3,788.00
vetit.com $3,588.00
idlv.com $3,500.00
centralwholesale.com $3,500.00
westonranch.com $3,388.00
Nafx.com $3,300.00
sharethespirit.com $3,088.00
therelationshipguide.com $2,888.00
foryourheart.com $2,888.00
puremedical.com $2,800.00
peruvianfood.com $2,800.00
interest-rates.com $2,800.00
macroeconomy.com $2,700.00
eappointments.com $2,695.00

The company also sold MCAT.info for $4,250. MCAT is the acronym for the test people take to get into medical school. Other non-.com sales include:

vein.net $3,500.00
1mail.net $2,959.00
emailarchiving.net $2,788.00
gargano.org $2,691.00
tronix.net $2,588.00
frogdesign.net $2,588.00
collegeonline.org $2,525.00
getaways.net $2,500.00
sauce.org $2,088.00
beachhouses.net $2,000.00
recurve.net $2,000.00
biblical.org $2,000.00

Note that Biblical.com sold for $17,000 at NameJet this past week.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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New Steve Carell movie uses .me domain name in promotions.

Domain Name Wire reader Chris Robbins took his kids to the movies over the weekend and saw a preview for the computer animated movie “Despicable Me”. The movie features the voice of Steve Carell and hits movie theaters next summer.

But what caught Robbins’ eye wasn’t the movie itself, it was the domain name Universal Studios is using to promote it: Despicable.me. This is certainly a boost for the branded country code domain name of Montenegro.

I’ve categorized this article as “We Get It”. Normally I wouldn’t say someone that uses a branded country code domain name for promotion gets it, but this case is special. Why? Universal Studios also registered DespicableMe.com, which forwards to Despicable.me.

This could be an interesting case study for .com domains. I wonder how much of the direct navigation traffic to the web site comes from .com vs. .me.

I also have to wonder if the .me registry suggested this idea to Universal Studios as a marketing gimmick.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Pair of insurance domains top Sedo’s weekly sales list.

Assurancevie.com and Assurance-vie.com, which means life insurance in French, have sold on Sedo for a combined price tag of $87,000. The domain broker also sold Texel.de this week for 39,500 EUR. But the big talk may be a smaller sale — BodyBuilding.info at $13,500. This is a very high price for a .info domain name.

Another interesting sale this week is one of the quickest flips I’ve ever seen on the same sales venue. Just two weeks ago GameTheory.com sold for $6,901. It then sold to another buyer on Sedo for $10,000 this past week.

Here’s a look at other sales at Sedo during the past week.

.COM
subnet.com 15000 USD
4aces.com 10000 USD
xs8.com 9999 USD
piecejointe.com 7500 EUR Attachment in French
energypartners.com 7500 USD
marketingcafe.com 6995 USD
assicurazioniauto.com 6000 USD
encens.com 5000 USD
blackatlas.com 5000 USD
domainhelper.com 5000 EUR

COUNTRY CODES
bcher.at 10100 EUR
golfonline.de 10000 EUR
engagement-rings.co.uk 7000 GBP
pokerwin.it 5000 EUR
11×11.de 5000 EUR
ilgratis.it 4500 EUR Free in Italian

Notice the strong sale of engagement-rings.co.uk.

OTHER
phrases.net 7700 USD
soq.net 7140 USD
loterias.org 5000 EUR Lotteries in Spanish
babyshowers.net 4000 USD

BabyShowers.net is a strong .net sale.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Related posts:

1. Sedo Sells $1.25M Domains in One Week, Top.com Tops Them All
2. .info domains continue to sell for over $1,000
3. NewYork.info sets another mark

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I’d like to make a quick post here on SEJ to congratulate my favorite Director of Media, Ann Smarty, on her birthday! Over the past year, Annie has helped a lot here at SEJ, and her role has grown from a contributor to a relentless Editor and now the full time position of Director of Media for Search & Social (the parent company of SEJ).

Ann has also grown in many different ways over the past year, especially with becoming a first time mommy!

Search Engine Journal has had one of its best years ever, and hiring Ann has been one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made. With Ann taking over a lot of the management and daily tasks at SEJ, not only has it helped with readership development, but it’s freed up my time to grow Search & Social and also plan out a newly revamped SEJ which should be launching next week.

Happy Birthday Ann! And please don’t forget my 35th birthday which is coming up on Thursday July 30th

Feel free to wish Ann a Happy Birthday via Twitter or Facebook!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Happy Birthday to Ann Smarty & Me

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Social media networking is both exciting and overwhelming. Hardly can you choose one network to monitor: on average one social media user seems to choose at least 5-6 sites he tries to frequent.

So today’s toolset offers a list of FireFox addons that make the power social networker’s job easier by combining 2 + different social media sites: choose those that support your favorites:

ShareAHolic

ShareAHolic lets you quickly submit to any imaginable social media and bookmarking service with one click of a mouse. It is accessible from the browser address bar. It also lets you see the page current social media rankings (va the context menu):

AddThis

AddThis (as well as ShareThis) is another multi-service FireFox addon connecting you to dozens of social sharing and bookmarking sites. Sadly, unlike the above one it lacks the ability to show the page current rankings:

Samfind

Samfind is a bit different from the above: it works via its own toolbar which can be customized to only include your preferred services. More features inside include:

• Search within websites using their own search engine from the Bar,
• Quickly find any website’s RSS feeds;
• Synchronize your bookmarks to access them from more than one computer.

Friendbar

FriendBar allows to see a running stream of text and photo updates from Facebook and Twitter right on the toolbar; post updates, retweet, direct messages, and replies from the toolbar itself:

• Roll over the photos to view the original
• Click on the enlarged photo (or album name) to visit the photo or albums web page
• Get an alert when a new message arrives
• Use “Lucky Site” button that opens popular sites of the day, to provide you with interesting content to Twitter about!

Yoono

Yoono (thanks MUO for the find) is a great social media tool that connects your public accounts with each other as well as your IMs (AIM, MSN, Yahoo; too bad there is no Gtalk support). The best features include:

• See related tags while browsing the web (clicking on the tags will take you to the Yoono search page and search for other websites with the same tag that you have clicked on);
• See your friends who are online now (via IMs);
• Create web notes (drag and drop text, video and images to share with your friends);
• See similar websites and fellow users who like the website that you are currently browsing.

FireStatus

FireStatus is one of the least annoying and invisible multi-service addons allowing to send status updates, notes and URL links simultaneously to multiple social networks and services, like Twitter, FaceBook and FriendFeed. It also displays updates from these services in notification popups, for a more “live” communication with your friends.

Social Media for Firefox

Social Media for Firefox is the best extension for analyzing the page social media popularity. You can configure it if you want the data to be retrieved automatically for each page you visit or manually (when clicking the tool icon). You can also remove any network if you don’t need its ratings.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

8 FireFox Addons That Unite Multiple Social Media Networks

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Last week news started heating up again about the possibility of a Yahoo & Microsoft partnership (or perhaps merger) wherein Yahoo would begin using Microsoft’s Bing search technology to power Yahoo Search, and also serve ads on Yahoo Search results and throughout the Yahoo Network which would be also powered by Microsoft AdCenter.

So Yahoo Search, which has been powered in the past by Inktomi, Altavista & Google in the past, may soon be powered by Bing.

There were reported meetings within Yahoo last week about the possibility of a merger or partnership, and with Microsoft performance slipping last quarter, along with Yahoo coming in a bit under Wall Street expectations, the option for the two companies to work together on search and take advantage of a combined 30%+ market share in an attempt to challenge Google may indeed make sense.

This morning, AdAge.com dropped the bomb that the Yahoo Microsoft deal should go through this week :

The deal, which would make Microsoft a more credible competitor to Google, is likely to be announced this week, and seems likely to be based on a revenue share, not on a big fat check upfront, as some at Yahoo had hoped.

Adding these details on the possible partnership :

1. Yahoo would be compensated from a share of revenue from the sale of search ads and will not be paid upfront.
2. Yahoo would be allowed to sell search ads on Bing.com as well as its own site, giving it more search inventory to sell and making it a bigger player in the search sales front.
3. Yahoo will save millions by not having to maintain its own search infrastructure.

What are your thoughts on a Yahoo & Microsoft search partnership? Please feel free to share them below after taking this poll :

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Should Yahoo & Microsoft Bing Partner?

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According to data from the Chitika Ad network (since when did Chitika publicly become a data mining and reporting property?), Microsoft Bing driven users click on ads on 3rd party sites at a much higher click thru rate than both Yahoo & Google.

The study seems to have been put together specifically for coverage on TechCrunch, so let’s look at some of the numbers shared by Erick Schonfeld :

Chitika looked at the clickthrough rates from 32 million ad impressions across its network of more than 50,000 sites in a week in July. Visitors from Bing clicked on an ad 1.5 percent of the time on average, versus a 0.97 percent clickthrough rate for Google visitors and a 1.24 percent clickthrough rate for Yahoo.

Of course, Bing only has a search engine market share of about 8%, and Bing users may be just getting accustomed to the format, but these numbers may further explain why a Yahoo Microsoft Deal is even more important and makes so much sense, as the two search engines do attract similar audiences because of their content networks and would combine for a 30% market share if Yahoo were to power its search via Bing.

Post Yahoo deal, given the increase in 3rd party CTR% and other numbers, one would think that a centralized Microsoft Ad Serving system across Yahoo, Bing & MSN aligned properties would be an easy sell… especially with Yahoo serving ads on the sites which it sometimes directs users to, for example via the Newspaper consortium.

One question which comes to my mind about this data is, CTR is nice … but what about the conversions?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Bing Driven Ad Click Thru Rate 55% More than Google

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For avid Google Maps users, here’s a cool feature which combines two recently introduced features of Google Street View - Smart Navigation and the option to browser user-contributed phots in Google Maps.  What the new Google Street View feature does is to let users navigate between similar-user contributed photos.

So, if users submitted their own photos with zoom-in images of a particular landmark, others can navigate through the layers of this photos giving a zoom-in functionality to Google Street View for landmarks and important tourists spots.

Users would know that an image in Street View has close-up photos when a small set of the zoom polygons are displayed at the top of the photo viewer. Users can click through these polygons to view the zoomed-in photos.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating this new Google Maps Street View feature:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Maps Rolls Out Zoom Navigation in Street View

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