who's buying up expired domains? Options

[Mike521]

anyone else noticing all these companies that are buying expired domains and putting up search portals?

so today I went to one site that I visit once a month or so, please excuse the profanity in the domain name, Used to be funny pictures here (sorry if mods have to delete this)

anyway so the site is gone and replaced by a search portal (guess they forgot to renew, or just let it expire on their own). The links all have some sort of reference to apps5.oingo.com, and the page is a frameset with the main frame loading from http://apps5.oingo.com/apps/domainpark/dom...s=funnyshit.com

so I went to http://www.oingo.com and found that it's an applied semantics site, just one page, and all links go to google.com...

now it's late and I have a huge headache, and haven't done any more reading than what I've shown here, so can anyone fill me in on what I'm missing here... why does it appear that google is buying up expired domains and turning them into rather ugly search portals? Wouldn't google be the first one to penalize you for buying up an expired domain and turning it into whatever suits your fancy, just to try and benefit from the PR?

this may belong in the google section so perhaps a mod can move it there if they want..

[Scratch]

I found that. I was looking up a domain that I want, but which has been in use for ages. Suddenly, the t-shirt manufacturer was gone, and there was a "For sale - $5000" page.

[bwelford]

You can understand most of what is happening in a Google Press Release on the Applied Semantics Acquisition. Its CIRCA technology was regarded as a major body of work on contextual searching. They were the company that invented Adsense, since adopted by Google. Another article explains the oingo bit:

Search engine upstart Google Wednesday said it has acquired Applied Semantics (formerly known as Oingo) for an undisclosed amount.

Now who is handling all this domain name redirection: there's still the mystery. :?

[bragadocchio]

Google isn't buying those domain names, but they are selling ads on them:

Google AdSense for domains

I'm not sure when they started doing this.

a snippet:

AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory.

There is a pretty big market in domain names, and they've probably become more of a commodity than anyone envisioned they would be. But the practice has been going on for years.

[Scratch]

The domain name I want doesn't feel like a commodity at $5k!

I wonder...
Is there any kind of service out there that alerts you when a domain name you want comes up for sale, or even better automatically buys it for you? It could even be auction-based, if several people want the same name...

[bragadocchio]

There is a backorder process that some of the domain registers have in place. I believe network solutions uses one. Others may too.

If you go to the network solutions front page and type in a name that someone else has, and it's taken, they don't tell you has it - the whois is on a different page. But they do show a link for you to use to "backorder" the domain name - which would get you into the bidding for that name when it does expire. It's possible that some of the other registrars do something similar.

There's something that bothers me about that service though. The cost of the name should be the cost of any new name if a name just expires.

Of course, the people who hold the name can keep it, and it could never expire. Or someone could make a private deal to purchase it with the present holder, and transfer it over.

[Mike521]

it's interesting that these are google pages being served up -- personally I think they're of little value to the user, and possibly a bit shady because I know there are companies purposely buying expired domains just for the sake of putting up these search portals. I guess if a domain expires, you'd rather see something there, even just a little search page, instead of a "page not found" error...

but I'm not likely to go to one of my favorite sites, see that it's gone, and be inspired to click on a bunch of ads in response. Apparently some people are though, or it wouldn't be profitable.

[Tim]

Google has been doing this for awhile, as far as I know. I think I can recall that I've seen a message on their site about domain parking ads ever since I've been using AdSense (started in July last year).

Go Daddy also offers the backorder service. However, it costs about double the price that the domain would usually cost - it includes one year of registration charge though. If you don't get the domain you want, there's no refund, you just have to assign it to another domain until you get something.

[-Phoenix-]

a bit shady because I know there are companies purposely buying expired domains just for the sake of putting up these search portals. I guess if a domain expires, you'd rather see something there, even just a little search page, instead of a \"page not found\" error...

This has been going on for quite a long time. Ever sense Adsense was started, and even when there wasn't adsense there were many ways to make money from expired domains. I have bought a good numbers of expired names over the past several years, but only if I was to put a permanant site up. I know contract services out to a domain broker in the netherlands, and he can easily make up to $500 bucks a month on an expired domain and adsense ads. The sites are very poor, and they ultimately do not address the user. The user is usually so confused they click through the adsense ads, just to get "out" of the site and away from the situation. The CTR is like 25% on these adsense expired domain sites. Imagine buying an expired "mesothelioma" domain, and putting adsense up there. Talk about some $$ from adsense.

[shorebreak]

Anyone know what % of domains are expired, and/or what % of total internet traffic goes to expired domains?

[joezeppy]

According to the people at tucows. It's a 60 million dollar per year industry.

You can backorder domains at:

http://www.enom.com (look for their club drop service)
http://www.pool.com (they'll email you a list with your key words every day.
http://www.dotster.com (look for namewinner service)
http://www.snapnames.com (in bed with Verisign)

There are all kinds of services to help you do this.

It's not a shady business by the way. There are a few shady characters in it, but I can't think of any industry that doesn't have a few of those.

[Mike521]

I think it's shady no matter what. the fact is that people are going to sites that used to have something they liked to read, and are getting a bland looking search page instead. the fact that the people doing this are purposely serving up something completely opposite what their visitors intended to see, and hoping to make a profit off it, makes it shady.

they know for a fact that all those former visitors will perhaps make 1 or 2 visits before erasing the site from their bookmarks, and are hoping to cash in on some errant clicks.. there's nothing there worthwhile to any visitor, so my guess is that once the initial bang wears off, the domain is left completely abandoned.

that being said, if it's profitable, I'd still do it myself

[TargetedTraffic]

It is amazing to me that in late 2004 people still do not understand that generic domain names receive targeted type-in traffic purely on the merrit of the keyword content within the domain-name itself. This is not high concept stuff. I am not talking about links, or old site residual traffic from previous development (which falls away almost immediately), rather I am refering to "Type-in Traffic". What is Type-in Traffic? Type-in traffic is You, right-now, typing a name ending in dot com just to see what is there; based on the weight of 'the name itself' as a stand-alone keyphrase. The very existence of the 4 domain auction houses mentioned in the previous post (Pool, Namewinner, Snapnames and Enom) is a direct result of the fact that inert traffic comes to generic domain names. Multiple parties wish to control that generic intellectual property and so an auction is held, resulting in a sale (often for thousands of dollars or many thousdands per name).

For example, say I owned www.australiatravel.com .. that name is generic, anyone can own it and it is descriptive of a thing. I might type it looking for Australian travel information. Even though the keyphrase "australia travel" may garner thousands of queries at the search engines each day (see: http://inventory.overture.com) the name by itself, with no search engine positioning or development may garner 'hundreds' of visits per day from curious Australia bound travelers, navigating the web using the domain name . Let us say 300 visits per day typing www.AustraliaTravel.com for the weight of the name. 300 visits X the value of that traffic.. ($1.02 per click visit according to Overture.com) = $360 per day or $131,400 per year.. multiply over many names and you understand the cashflow at stake to a bulk purchaser of generic expiring domain names.

To give a real-world example of type-in traffic's power, look no further than Dealtime. Recently Dealtime.com rebranded to Shopping.com --immediately their sales and revenues shot up. This is not so much due to the fact that Dealtime.com was doing a better job as a company, rather their acquisition of a generic domain that garners many thousands of curious and qualified person-visits each day, amplified the scope of their business and that marriage brought significantly enhanced revenue.

I am struck by how many very intelligent people in technology fail to make the simple connections illustrated in the two preceeding examples, either denying that the model exists or otherwise failing to capitalise on it. Not a week goes by without a colleague pointing out some cybersquatter that has registered their former domain name to capitalise on "their development" when in reality the new registrant has done nothing wrong other than being first to register a valuable generic piece of intellectual property based on the keyword within the domain-name. I hope this clarification helps some here to understand domain name traffic better.

[swainzy]

For people waiting for certain domain names, perhaps someone should invent a "snipper" software, likened to ebay, that can automatically "snip" the domain immediately when it becomes available.
Swainzy
:wink:

[-Phoenix-]

Swainy, there are sites that does this, :-) see post above regarding enom and snapnames. They cost about $49.95 to snip a domain, but it can be worth it.

Targetedtraffic, good point. I agree its funny that type in traffic is forgotten about. I have several domains that get this, and its nice, but I make sure to direct them to a correct resource. But, its the domain industry and not everyone is too concerned about it, so type in traffic is not always considered. There is a lot of vying for power in the domain world though, its interesting to observe, and there are a quite a few people in it. I have come across holding and investment companies that buy up these internet properties for the sake of selling them for millions to investors. One company I found so much so I contacted them for information.

It's not a shady business by the way. There are a few shady characters in it, but I can't think of any industry that doesn't have a few of those.

My experience over the last 4 years with domains has been pleasant and fun. I do it half for websites and half for the fun of snatching up some great domains to keep and sell one day. When the SEO work gets to much, I might find myself surfing afternic or thinking about uses for ones I already have.

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, -Phoenix- and TargetedTraffic.

I'm always intrigued when a thread gets into an area that I've never even thought about before. Clearly there is a slice of the audience out there that is slightly unsophisticated and is willing to just 'surf'. If the click-through rates are sufficient, then go for it.

I would also try to make sure that I've done enough SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that you also "own" the composite word in the search engines too. In other words, if someone does exactly the same typing, but puts it in the search engine field rather than the address field, then your domain should come up top or even uniquely. It usually doesn't take too much effort to do that.

[TargetedTraffic]

Pretty much all of those auction houses have abandoned the $49.95 model and are now auctioning the names they snipe to the highest bidder. Supply and demand. If the name you are interested in garners even a handful of visits each day you can bet there will be an auction. Picture a domain name like ilovetotravel.com --certainly not a name that will stop traffic, but that phrase likely still garners 7-12 unique person visits in a day (based on the name weight alone). Even that name will generate 75 cents in a day through the Google program. $273 per year.. now think that this traffic keeps coming.. there is a 'moores law' of Type-in traffic. It is like old faithful and keeps coming day after day, year after year. There are seasonal adjustments but by and large the same number of people, yet different people come to a domain name each day. So back to my example, in 5 years even based on today's pay rates (which are climbing), the name ilovetotravel.com will earn $1365. The renewal after the initial auction is only 10-15 dollars, so the registrant is free to harvest that traffic revenue for as long as the domain name system exists, subject only to the renewal fee. A savy registrant will not likely forget to pay it.

The point about names incorrectly targeted and frustrating users is a good one, but even this seems to be resolving itself. Reason? Money. A correctly targeted name will make it's owner significantly more than one pointed to a page of irrelevant information and pop-ups. I think in the future most generic, inactive and parked domain names will be targeted to some descriptive meaning within the name. Google, Overture and Findwhat are presently the leaders in the parked domain name space. They all have publisher program links for those interested in learning more.

[TargetedTraffic]

Thanks for the welcome bwelford :wink:

To your SEO point, I would think of domain names and the sites subsequently created on them in 2 different ways.

Names which get organic type-in traffic are usually good descriptive terms which mean something and/or are catchy. As per my previous gyser analogy I would not worry about scaring away your type-in visitors --they will come in spite of you. You can monetize 100% of your visits without offending anyone or cowtowing to a search engine. On the other hand say google.com went out of business tomorrow (not likely but just an example). How much traffic would google.com (the domain name) get after 2 - 3 years of inactivity (without the wonderful search tool they've created on the other end)? Not very much compared to today. Perhaps a few thousand curious onlookers driving by the wrekage each day.

THAT my friends, is the difference between type-in domains and SEO traffic. Focus your efforts on acquiring a good domain name descriptive of a term or thing (ie. ilovetotravel.com, cheapdrugs.com, australiatravel.com) and wait for the fully monetizable person-visits to roll in from your cabana on the beach.. Or take the SEO route, buy a comfy chair, a back support, some Advil; then work 5-10 hours a day, 7 days a week for the rest of your life so that the people don't stop coming. Quite a difference.

Lastly it bears mentioning that search engines are not your friend. They want you to keep navigating through them. You can bet that the SE's are aware that there are 10-30 million good domain names (com, net, org country code domains) registered with type-in traffic and they are hoping and praying that you do not use them en' mass. They will not go out of their way to help you 'position' your good domain. So I would not put a ton of work into positioning your great type-in domain over your dash-filled-copy of a great name. Use a poorer name for SEO and monetize the type-ins.

To learn more about domain names you can join dnforum.com (small fee) or read dnjournal.com (unrelated enterprise and it's free) you can evaluate what terms people are typing by logging searches to your own site or by subscribing to wordtracker.com The domain auction houses explain the expiring name process quite well. Pool.com and Snapnames.com are the best but if you don't want to miss your name.. go with enom.com and namewinner.com as well. Good luck out there

[swainzy]

Phoenix - whoops. Didn't pick that one up.

Years ago I tried to think of future names for biotech industry sites. Along the lines of Genentech. It is hard to come up with names that a future company in that arena might name themselves. It can drive you nuts. I think that field will expand so much. I also tried to think of domains along the lines of organ growing or stem cell.
It's tough to do but just think if you hit on a name that someone like Genentech would want. Genentech by the way is in the S. F. bay area. My dad played golf with the owner a couple of times. Think he's wealthy?
Donna