A look back at the year in domain news.
As 2009 draws to a close, here’s a look at the top 10 stories on Domain Name Wire this year, as measured by traffic. Of course, traffic doesn’t equal importance…
10. Toys.com, Birthdays.com, Hobbies.com Sold at Auction – Domain Name Wire’s story about a quiet bankruptcy auction started a big ripple. A DNW reader petitioned the court to set aside the sale of Toys.com. That resulted in a re-auction and a decidedly higher take: Toys.com ended up selling for $5.1 million compared to $1.25 million in the original auction. Also see #5 and #1.
9. SusanBoyle.com Getting 1,800 Visits an Hour – Will the real Susan Boyle please stand up? Susan Boyle (the singer) was an instant internet sensation this year, but the domain name was owned by a different kind of artist. I tracked down Susan Boyle, the painter, who lives in the Texas Hill Country town of Kerville. Her SusanBoyle.com web site was getting 1,800 hits an hour during the height of the Susan Boyle viral mania.
8. GoDaddy Disses .TV and What it Says About the Echo Chamber – DNW sets the record straight on what technically happens to a country code domain name if a country no longer exists.
7. Yahoo Buys OMG.com Domain Name for $80,000 – OMG! Yahoo buys three character domain name for its popular celebrity news site.
6. Book Review: The Sex.com Chronicles – um, what? This is a top story? Well, this is a lesson in the power of generic domain names. For a while, this story was ranked in the top five on Google for the term “sex.com”. So many people type in a keyword followed by .com into the search box that this sent a lot of traffic.
5. Will Toys ‘R’ Us Flub $5.1M Toys.com Purchase? – Answer: yes (see #1), but it got a reprieve.
4. Go Daddy Files Patents for Enhanced Whois and DNS Records – note to self: the tech community hates software/process patents, especially those dealing with web technology.
3. Glenn Beck Loses Domain Dispute Over Meme Site – Apparently Mr. Beck is a polarizing figure.
2. After Winning Case, Man Hands Domain Name to Glenn Beck – or, “Man makes Glenn Beck look like an ass”.
1. Toys.com Loses Google Ranking – Toys ‘R’ Us spends $5.1 million on a domain name with great search rankings, only to lose the rankings when it forwards the domain. But ultimately it got a reprieve — Toys.com is currently ranked #3 on Google for “Toys”. Between ToysRUs.com, eToys.com (purchased during the same bankruptcy auction) and Toys.com, the retailer has locked up the top three positions on Google.
Belmassio says
What a damn horrible year it was, even though I made more money this year than I ever have in domains.
Somehow the glory just was not there. 🙁
Stephen Douglas says
Was it bad that I bought “sueboyle.com”? I like buying full name domains… they always have a quick buyer ready to spend a few hundred, and sometimes a thousand dollars to get the domain.
On another note: Does anyone get the feeling that GoDaddy, the biggest and richest registrar, silently benefits from the promotional, educational, and regulatory efforts of the domain community? But, has anyone seen GoDaddy put forth a “PRESENCE” or support of the very business they’re involved in? Just trying to remember the last time I saw a GoDaddy booth up at any domain conference.
I think it’s pretty smart and dirty that a company can use its underlying marketing plan (sell domains as sex objects), capture all the domains purchased through their resellers (that don’t renew their yearly license), and use a humungous 10 page upsell domain purchase process to become the “biggest” domain registrar in the world.