T-Error

I’ve been looking at dropping auctions more regularly on NameJet and SnapNames, and I frequently come across generic typo domain names that are enticing. They seem generic enough that they would avoid any type of trademark violation, and they could potentially get traffic based on some analytics I’ve done. These are typically misspelled words where one letter is replaced with a letter that’s next to the correct letter on the keyboard.

Today I found a typo domain name that I was considering, and I went to the website to see if I could find some analytic information – like Compete.com traffic. When I got there, I saw that it was a porn site, and it got me concerned. I know that a domain owner may not be liable for what a previous owner did, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop a company from filing suit under the assumption that you had something to do with its prior usage.

Now if you are sued for misuse on a high value domain name, that’s another story and a cost of doing business in most cases. However, if you are sued because of a cheap typo name you bought hoping to make enough PPC revenues to cover the drop price, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth the effort.

Furthermore, you should ask if the domain name is really worth acquiring if it’s currently a porn site, as it wouldn’t make sense for the domain owner to monetize it this way if it received traffic (it’s unrelated to porn).

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Yahoo Search Marketing to change its payout algorithms and stop doing business with some of its direct partners. Overall, lower revenues for Yahoo’s pay-per-click advertising partners are expected.

As has been reported by two blogs today, Domain Name Wire and Julia Mackenzie, Yahoo’s search marketing division is going through some changes that are likely to affect the bottom line of the company’s domain parking partners.

Yahoo (YHOO) already announced last month that it would change its payout algorithm, a change which will have a direct effect on the pay-per-click revenue that is generated through domain parking and that is paid out to Yahoo’s PPC partners. Rumor has it that the new algorithm will evaluate all clicks even more strictly based on the quality of the traffic sent to Yahoo’s advertisers. It might be that Yahoo is trying to increase the traffic quality of its search marketing network now that it will cooperate with Microsoft’s Bing for the monetization of its search traffic. Whether Microsoft (MSFT) made it a requirement that the traffic quality may not be below a certain level is not known. Anyway, this change will definitely lower the cost per click for most domains and hence result in lower total revenues for domain name owners. Domain Name Wire has been told by industry insiders that domain parking revenue is expected to decrease by as much as 12% on the average.

In another related blog post today, Julia Mackenzie spreads the rumor that Yahoo is also going to stop working with some of its direct domain parking partners if their traffic score is below 7 out of 10. The traffic score is Yahoo’s internal rating of traffic quality. This is a further step undertaken by Yahoo to improve the traffic quality of its network, and it will force some partners to go directly to Google (GOOG), if possible at all, or simply go to one of the many third-party domain parking providers like Sedo or Parked.com. Either way, they will probably suffer a severe loss in revenue.

Both Google and Yahoo have been working directly with holders of high-traffic domain portfolios to monetize their partners’ traffic, which usually is a win-win relationship because the domain portfolio owners do not have to share their revenues with a middleman. But now, as it seems, Yahoo is going to decrease the number of its direct partners. Julia also writes, however, that the company’s syndication partners (the big parking companies) will not be affected by this decision. That means that Yahoo and the syndication partners will be the winners here, while Yahoo’s smaller partners or at least those with lower-quality traffic will lose out.

Domain parking revenues have been on a decline for a long time now and, honestly, I have lost faith in revenues ever going back up again. It is more likely that either Google and Yahoo or the third-party parking providers will try to get an even bigger slice of the pie in the future. What are the alternatives for domain name owners? Developing domains and then using AdSense for monetization is no real option, because AdSense is controlled by Google, too. I guess direct advertising deals is the answer, but that’s material for another article.

Copyright © 2003-2009 Dominik Mueller.

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Changes ahead for Yahoo domain parking partners

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Defamation,  is a tort action where one party can sue the other for damages,  when they make false statements about the other,  in writing (libel) and spoken words (slander) which damages that person’s reputation or causes that person distress.

The question is, can a domain name, in and of itself, be defamatory?

The question is being asked because this week, TV and radio talk show host Glenn Beck, threatened to file such an action against the person who registered the domain, glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com.

According to the domain owner the site and the domain itself (which is based on a joke) is completely satirical.

The site says in part:

“””Why won’t Glenn Beck deny these allegations?” asks the site. “We’re not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990—in fact, we think he didn’t! But we can’t help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won’t he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?”

At the very bottom of the page is a small text disclaimer saying that the site was satirical.”””

This week, Beck’s laywers, contacted the registrar of the domain, NameCheap, demanding that the “highly defamatory domain name” glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com be deleted, that the WhoisGuard privacy protection service be revoked, and that the owner’s contact information be turned over to his lawyers.

NameCheap refused.

Beck’s lawyers also filed a WIPO action this week on the domain.

But the bigger legal question is can a domain name be itself defamatory, leaving the owner liable to a suit for damage?

Paul Levy of Public Citizen, told the blog, Ars Technica:

“Certainly, domain names alone “can be defamatory”

“I don’t think ‘Ha ha it’s a joke’ at the end gets you off,” he says; if the parodic information is defamatory, it’s risky for the defendant in such cases. That’s complicated by the fact that the original domain name made the allegedly defamatory claim against Beck—and of course no one stumbling across the site in a search engine or elsewhere would see any disclaimer. In such cases, the domain name itself is a standalone piece of content; the disclaimer may help regarding the website content, but it won’t necessarily transfer a cone of protection to the domain name as well.””

Ars Technica also quotes Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who says:

“I’m not sure of any case where someone has claimed that a domain name was defamatory”.

I agree.

I think if this case is filed, the decision will be one of first impression serving as legal precedent for other domains.

This of course is an extreme example and there are first amendment considerations, however the 1st amendment does not give anyone the right to say anything they want about another.

Yet much of the law surrounding intellectually property is not legislated,  but determined by the courts as this issue might be as well.

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Two months after the Yahoo-Microsoft deal was sealed, it’s now time to scrutinize the said deal. The US Justice Department has just asked the two companies to provide more details about the search ad deal. This latest development officially puts the controversial partnership agreement under a long procedure to determine whether is should push through or not.Both Microsoft and Yahoo are reportedly preparing their responses to questions that could include details of their respective search-engine investment, ad pricing and product plans. All of these are aimed at proving that if the said deal pass through the Justice Department, its claim of not being anti-competitive is actually valid.

Among the possible questions that Microsoft and Yahoo would need to answer is whether their claim that the said deal will make them more competitive agaisnt Google. Along the way, the Justice Department might also probe on other relevant internet advertising programs of Microsoft and Yahoo to determine whether each individual company will not be able to compete if they will not team up. In addition, the Justice Department would also like to find out whether this deal will really be beneficial to users.

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Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Faces Scrutiny by the US Justice Department

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in an interview with CNBC that she would have accepted Microsoft’s offer that former CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo rejected last year.

In an interview Thursday on CNBC, when asked about the $40 Billion offer to buy Yahoo last year, Bartz replied, “Well, sure. You think I’m stupid?” She calculated the difference between Microsoft’s offer, which is $33-$34 as high as Yahoo’s share.

Oh snap! Is Bartz saying that Yang was “stupid” for turning down Microsoft’s offer?

In the interview, Bartz discusses the other aspects of Yahoo’s strategy and its value to the consumers, advertisers and publishers. She went on to say that, the company’s goal was to increase the user base for My Yahoo by making it easier to set up.

Bartz talks about the company’s search agreement with Microsoft which will allow Yahoo to cut costs by using Bing’s search results. At the same time, Yahoo will continue to give people their good experience around those results. Bartz also believes that display advertising is an emotional part of the marketing mix and said, “I think it’s great for Yahoo.”

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Bartz : Yahoo Should Have Accepted Microsoft’s Offer

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Bing has been up and about for a couple of months now and despite not gaining considerable search market share, Microsoft is still determine to push it further. And so if the tweets posted by some Microsoft people right after their annual meeting is any indication of a soon to be launch, we might be looking at Bing 2.0 very soon.

Zdnet’s Mary Joy Foley is reporting that Bing 2.0 might be released as early as next week. The tweets coming from those who attended the Microsoft Annual Meeting are very indicative of many new features that will be rolled. One of the tweets even said that Bing 2.0 will be released and should happen anyday next week starting on the 14th.

Unfortunately while the tweets are indicating some generalized remark on the new features and functionality of Bing 2.0, none of the tweets say specific features. But it looks like Bing 2.0 will be big on map integration with Bing’s search index. Perhaps   a Google Maps rival is in the pipeline and awaiting release date.

A Microsoft spokeperson also said that everyone in Bing camp are pretty much excited about the new Bing features that is going to be rolled out in the coming months, not next week.

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Bing 2.0 Coming Soon, According to Some Reliable Tweets

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This morning, as I watched the live CNN feed of the tribue to those who were lost in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, I sifted through the search engines to see if any of their logos are honoring 9/11. Of the major search engines, Microsoft’s Bing and also Ask.com are showing tasteful memorials to the fallen of the September 11th attacks.

Yesterday at the White House, eight years after the attacks and loss of thousands of lives, President Obama declared September 11th a Patriot Day and National Day of Remembrance and Service. Splendid job of remembrance Bing and Ask.com.

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September 11th Honored by Bing & Ask.com

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Super Search is a valuable option for real search addicts. It’s handy addon that combines over 160 of the people search and web search engines in one toolbar.

Super Search for Firefox allows users to perform web searches, people searches, reverse lookups, public records searches, due diligence and background research, using multiple tools and databases.

Two main features include:

• Access 67 most popular engines right from the toolbar search;
• Access all included 160 search engines from the toolbar drop-downs.

After being installed, the toolbar looks as follows:

As far as you can see, all search engines are grouped into 4 categories:

• Web search (Google, Yahoo, Bing, StumbleUpon) including real-time Twitter-based search as well as social search;
• People search (Twelow, Facebook, YoName, ZomInfo, etc);
• New, Blogs and More (including Craiglist, Google and Yahoo Groups);
• Video, Images and Audio (YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, etc)

There’s also a separate section to the left of the search files called "Search links" which allows for more search options including WhoIs reverse lookup, maps and how-to:

Note: the addon obviously caters for the US users, and there’s no way to configure it if you want to search any local version of the chosen engine.

The tool was revived under SEJ disclosure.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Featured SEO FireFox Addon: Super Search

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