Domainer's Gazette-Home

So, I buy a fair amount of domains from SnapNames, and due to their partnership, Network Solutions (ie. NetSol) winds up being the Registrar after the purchase completes. And being that NetSol charges $34.99 for a one year registration fee, compared to $8.95/yr at Go Daddy, I end up transferring over cash flow positive domains to GoDaddy within a year period. I’ve never seen many posts online that break down the step-by-step process that a user goes through transferring a domain, so I thought I’d share the typical steps I encounter when transferring a domain. I’d also say a majority of these steps are identical when transferring domains to-and-from other registrars..

For this example, and to simplify things, we’ll pretend “Sally” owns the domain ‘planetbnb.com’ and has it registered through NetSol, and she plans on transferring it to “Joseph”, and his account at Go Daddy.

Step One:
Firstly, Sally will have to 1) unlock the domain for transfer within her Network Solutions account and 2) request an Authorization Code (which NetSol will email to her). NetSol locks all domains by default, which basically means that they’re unable to transfer unless the domain owner unlocks them within the Domain Management area. To unlock a domain within NetSol, Sally follows these steps:

• Logs In
• accesses the ‘View Domain Name List’ area
• clicks on the domain name to be transferred
• locates the ‘Domain Protect’ line - which should say ‘On’ - and clicks the hyperlink that says ‘Turn off or Request Authorization Code’
• clicks radio button that says ‘Turn Domain Protect off’, checks the box that says ‘Request Authorization Code’, and clicks ‘Save’
• Done

At this point, NetSol will email Sally a message which includes her Authorization Code:

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,

We received your authorization code request on 04/30/2007 for your domain name PLANETBNB.COM.

Your authorization code is: NMNJp183hPK

At this point, the domain is fully unlocked, and ready for transfer. Sally should keep this authorization code handy, as Joseph will need to use it down the line.

Step Two
At the point, the ball is in Joseph’s court. The actual domain transfer process typically starts on the receiver’s side. In this case, it’s Joseph who’s having the domain moved to his account. To begin the transfer process from GoDaddy, Joseph would follow these steps:

• Logs in to GoDaddy
• Under the ‘Domains’ header, clicks ‘Transfer Domains to Go Daddy’ in the drop down
• Types the domain to be transferred in the submission box (in this case, planetbnb.com)
• proceeds to checkout
• selects registration length, privacy, auto-renew, all that jazz
• pays (current charge to transfer to Go Daddy is $6.95)

At this time, Sally will receive an email from Go Daddy, providing two very important pieces of information: the Transaction ID and Security Code. The letter she receives looks like below (and is quite wordy):

====================================================================
DOMAIN NAME TRANSFER - Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer
====================================================================

Re: Transfer of PLANETBNB.COM

Dear GoDaddy.com Customer,

GoDaddy.com received a request on 4/30/2007 for us to become the new
registrar of record.

You have received this message because you are listed as the Registered
Name Holder or Administrative contact for this domain name in the WHOIS
database. If you are not the Account Holder, or you are transferring
the domain to a new owner, please forward this email to the appropriate
Account Holder so that they may complete the transfer process.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
IMPORTANT: If the steps below are not completed, the domain name(s)
listed above will NOT be transferred to us.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To proceed with the transfer, follow the instructions here:
http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?prog_id=GoDaddy&article_id=1592&topic_id=160&isc=gdbb2

In the process of authorizing this transfer, you will be prompted to
provide the Transaction ID and Security Code:

Transaction ID: 247743080
Security Code: LEDZE03232
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once a transfer takes place, you will not be able to transfer to
another registrar for 60 days, apart from a transfer back to the original
registrar, in cases where both registrars so agree or where a decision in
the dispute resolution process so directs.

If you DO NOT WANT the transfer to proceed, then please don’t respond
to this message.

If you have any questions about this process, contact us by email at
mailto:support@godaddy.com, or by phone at (480) 505-8877.

Regards,
Domain Services
GoDaddy.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Copyright 2007 GoDaddy.com. All rights reserved.

Sally will need to forward this email to Joseph, as he’ll need to plug in the Transaction ID and Security Code into Go Daddy to proceed with the process. In addition, Sally will need to forward over the Authorization Code that NetSol generated for her when she unlocked her domain.

Step Three:
At this point, to proceed with the transfer, Go Daddy will request Joseph to plug in the Transaction ID and Security Code. To do this, he’ll login to his Go Daddy account and navigate to ‘Pending Domain Transfers’ dropdown under the ‘Domain Names’ header (next to the Globe image). He’ll then click the ‘Authorization’ button and plug in the Transaction ID and Security Code in the provided boxes. After submitting those password keys and clicking ‘Continue’, Go Daddy will request the Authorization Code (that Sally generated when she initially unlocked her domain). Once Joseph plugs this in, and clicks the Continue button, he’ll be finished with his portion of the transfer process, and the domain will be set as ‘Pending Current Registrar Approval’ within Go Daddy.

At this point, Joseph will receive a confirmation email from Go Daddy stating the following:

Dear Joseph,

To complete your recently requested transfer, we must receive approval of the administrative contact currently associated with the domain name(s) below, which we have determined to be sally123@aol.com. A request for approval has been sent to that address. If you believe the email address is not correct, you must visit your current registrar and have it updated.

Step Four:
Once Joseph completes plugging in the Transaction ID, Security Code, and Authorization Code, Go Daddy will communicate to Network Solutions that all the required passwords were successfully provided. Network Solutions will then email Sally with the message below:

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,

We have received a request to transfer the domain name registration listed below to another domain name service provider. You should also have received an email from that registrar regarding this transfer request.

Domain Name: PLANETBNB.COM
Date of original request: April 30, 2007 5:12:06 PM EDT

In an effort to ensure that this request was not sent to us by mistake or in response to a “notice” sent to you by someone other than Network Solutions, we wanted to let you know that a number of our customers have informed us that they have received (and in some cases mistakenly responded to) notices they thought were from Network Solutions, but were actually from an unrelated third party. If you ever have any doubt or questions about a notice you receive, please contact us to verify its authenticity.

You do not need to transfer your domain name registration if you are only changing your ISP and/or hosting provider. In that case, you can login directly to Account Manager at http://goto.networksolutions.com/account-aoff and update your domain name servers (DNS) to match the DNS information provided by your new ISP or hosting provider.

IMPORTANT: Transferring a domain out of your Network Solutions account will result in the deletion of any other Network Solutions services that are associated with that domain.

If you have received this notification in error and do not wish to transfer your domain name registration we must hear from you before May 4, 2007 5:12:06 PM EDT so we may cancel this request. Please go to https://www.registrar-transfers.com/?h=758882e7d2debd944774d390f (or copy and paste the URL into your browser) and follow the instructions.

If you do still wish to transfer your domain name registration, we hope that you will reconsider and choose to stay with Network Solutions. We value your business and would like to keep you as a customer.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please visit the Customer Service Center at http://www.networksolutions.com/help/index.jsp

Thank you for choosing Network Solutions®. We are committed to providing you with the solutions, services, and support to help you succeed online.

Sincerely,

Network Solutions® Customer Support

..and that’s a mouthful. What the message basically says is this: If Sally wishes to transfer the domain, she should do nothing - it’ll be transferred after a 4 day waiting period - on May4. Network Solutions also provides a link, the one that starts with ‘registrar-transfers.com’, for Sally to click if she’d like to cancel the request immediately.

SHORTCUT ALERT!!
Now what Network Solutions *doesn’t* tell her (in this email) is that Sally can skip the 4 day waiting period, and immediately approve this domain transfer by clicking that same link. If she clicked the link, she’d reach the following page below, asking whether she’d like to cancel or immediately approve:

If Sally selects the ‘Confirm’ radio button, and clicks ‘Submit’, Network Solutions will immediately release the domain to Joseph and his Go Daddy account. Typically, it’ll show up in Josephs account in under 15 minutes. Once confirmed, Go Daddy will also email Joseph with the below message:

Dear Joseph,

Congratulations! The transfer request for the following domain name(s) has been completed:

PLANETBNB.COM

That’s it! Hopefully this helps someone out there attempting a domain transfer. Feel free to share if you found it useful..

I’ve seen a few mentions of this company online (Liberty Names of America), and how they attempt to quasi-confuse you to re-register (ie. transfer) your soon-to-be-expiriring domain through them. The following pics were taken from an actual letter they sent to me..

Now, how Liberty Names can get away with sending pseudo invoices for domains that they don’t control, and are attempting to transfer under their ownership, I don’t know.

Here are a few other articles online about them:

Many say Liberty Names of America are Scammers

“Liberty Names” SCAM

Liberty Names & Corp.com Scams

This is for all the newbies out there..

All the engines provide ways to view backlinks to specific domains, and all the engines differ slightly on how to make that initial request (and also differ on how accurate they are revealing true backlink numbers). Backlinks, are -of course - all links from other websites pointing to your specific website. Jim Boykin provided his favorite backlink request at SES a few weeks back, so I thought it might be helpful to list all the ways to pull this type of query from all the engines. We’ll use the domain ‘planetbnb.com’ as the example.

Google:
either ‘link:http://www.planetbnb.com’
or
‘link:www.planetbnb.com’
will successfully generated a backlink report from Google. Note: Google doesn’t list every single backlink on the web; only a small subset it seems to feel are of most value (or maybe only the ones it wants to)

Yahoo:
Yahoo seems to provide the most accurate representation if the entire universe of inbound backlinks on the web. There are really two different ways to pull this request from Yahoo - two different ways that provide two different sets of results. The first is the preferred method of Jim Boykin, and the second pulls a bit larger results due to aggregating multiple links from a single site.
‘linkdomain:planetbnb.com -site:planetbnb.com’
or
‘link:http://www.planetbnb.com’
the first seems to present the most accurate result from all the engines, and is slowly becoming my preferred method..

MSN
As of March 28, 2007, MSN pulled the plug on their backlink tool due to several consistent automated queries hammering their boxes. Once they go back online, I assume they’ll use their old method for users to make these request, but who knows.. below is their old method.
either ‘link:http://www.planetbnb.com’
or
‘link:www.planetbnb.com’

ya’ll know any more? Am I missing any?

After catching the early Linking Strategies session at SES Friday morning, I decided to attempt and board an early flight back to ATL on Airtran. A very bad idea it turned out to be - as the early flight was 100% booked, and my actual flight got delayed 3 hours. So, being in a foul mood, with a full 8 or so hours to kill, and the only form of reading material being the SES Conference Handbook (I tossed my laptop into my checked luggage), I decided to play a game of sorts.

A grading game, really. There seems to be soo many new businesses popping up catering to the Search world, and each attempts to rise above the noise by creating a unique business & domain name. Some of these names seem pretty odd, in my opinion, and some seem right on the money. So, to kill time in the airport, I decided to don a ‘High School Bully’ attitude, and personally review and grade Business & Domain Names that caught my eye - and provide somewhat candid reviews on the ones I don’t quite “get”. So, in order by Sponsors then Exhibitors:

Sponsors:

GoECart & www.goecart.com
I can see them training new employees to remember how to spell & capitalize their name when emailing potential customer or clients: “remember, it’s big G, little o, big E, big C, then a-r-t”. And if you were an employee, the name sounds like you work for a go-cart company based in SC somewhere.
Business & Domain Name: D-
doesn’t effectively describe the fact that you sell shopping cart software.

Revenue Magazine & www.revenuetoday.com
Um, if your domain is ‘RevenueToday.com’, why don’t you just name the magazine ‘Revenue Today’. Looks like they were sold on the ‘Magazine’ name, and weren’t willing to shell out the revenue (ha) to buy the domain ‘revenuemagazine.com‘ from Zhivago Marketing Partners in Jamestown, RI (who are simply sitting on the domain seemingly waiting for a buyer.)
Business Name: B
personally, I would have just named it ‘Revenue’.
Domain Name: D+
I understand revenuemagazine.com was prob too expensive, but you couldn’t simply buy some form of it like revenuemag.com or revmag.com? I’da given you a B for any of those names..At least it has the word ‘revenue’ in it.

Entrepreneur & www.entrepreneur.com
I’m actually a fan of this magazine and site. And they get high marks from this high school bully for their forward thinking - domain wise - by registering several domain mis-spells of their name. For example:
entrapreneur.com
&
entrepraneur.com
they did miss entreprenewer.com, though.
Business & Domain Name: A+

AdGooroo & www.adgooroo.com
“We like how our name makes up appear associated with Google, but at the same time it’s quite different enough so we can avoid potential lawsuits.” C’mon, was ‘AdGuru’ too difficult of a name to choose?
Business & Domain Name: C-
they’re in the CPA ad game, so the name is somewhat relevant..

Axioma Search & www.axioma.com
I know I’m not reveiwing actual products here, but this search engine took over 10 seconds to return a results page for the search term ‘flowers’. oye. Also, it seems no one at this company understands SEO, cause they’re getting their lunch eaten by ‘axiomainc.com’ in Google serps for the term ‘axioma’. Ouch.
Business Name: D
the Isuzu Axiom was a bad car (my cousin owned one), and axioma is a worse business name.
Domain Name: A
well done grabbing your .com extension.

Blogsvertise & www.blogsvertise.com
When I was in the airport, I worried that they have have accidentally forgotten to register blogvertise.com (without the ’s’) - but they were smart, and did. Well done.
Business Name: A+
name clearly communicates that they help people advertise in blogs
Domain Name(s): A+
were very smart to register their name without the ’s’

ClickTracks & www.clicktracks.com
A well-seasoned leader in the online analysis field. I love the business name & domain.
Business & Domain Name: A+

Did-It & www.did-it.com
Ok, at what point could someone look at this business name and conclude, “Yes, I’d like to build my empire off this moniker”. And to push matters worse, they promote their domain ‘did-it.com’,with the dash, despite the fact that they own ‘didit.com’, and could promote that instead. Very confusing.
Business Name: F
sorry guys
Domain Name: B
I’m only giving them a B cause they also own the un-hypenated version of their domain name.

Genieknows.com and www.genieknows.com
Genie knows he could have done better choosing a business name.
Business & Domain Name: F

Hot Banana & www.hotbanana.com
Wouldn’t the business name ‘Hot Banana’ be better used for these business models:

• Gay Male Strip Club
• A Roller Skating Rink

…and not for a Web Content Management system? (which is what they provide)
Business & Domain Name: F
they asked for it, really

LeadQual & www.leadqual.com
It seems like they ran out of business name ideas, grasped at staws and came up with LeadQual (dont forget to capitalize the Q!), and said it over-and-over in the heads until it sounded good enough to use. It’s difficult to even pronounce…
Business & Domain Name: D+
They help people acquire leads, so the name at least has that mention. It would have been funny if their domain was something like www.lead-qual.biz

Orange Soda & www.orangesoda.com
I wonder if these guys are a sister company of Hot Banana. Imagine if they went in on a pitch to some big company together, and someone had to introduce them. It’d sound like some new Hip-Hop group, “Orange Soda & Hot Banana”.
Business & Domain Name: F
sell your name to Fanta and move on.

WeRLive.com and www.werlive.com
I’m tempted to say ‘We R Good At Choosing Bad Business Names’, but I digress.
Business & Domain Name: D+
they provide live experts, so they get a few points for the ‘live’ part.

Have ya’ll heard any other business names that make you scratch your head? Online or offline..

Sorry for the light blogging, been at SES in NYC for the past week. Picked up a few good tidbits of info from the SEO and Blogging front. Hope to implement a few of those changes here. One of those changes was implementing the Sociable Wordpress Plugin, which dynamically appends social bookmarking sites to the end of each post. Sooo sooo nice.

ok, I may be somewhat green in this space, but what rules govern .edu domain names - in regards to ownership? Can only educational institutions own them? Can regular joes like me register one, or win one in a SnapNames / Pool auction? .org domains were supposed to only belong to organizations, but that idea seemed to quickly explode as the masses simply used that extension cause .com and .net suffixes were taken..

Has anyone registered a .edu domain before?

Update 4/11/07:

Guess I could have done a bit of deeper digging on this topic, in a way I was simply thinking out loud..

Looks like the .edu domain name is managed by a company called EDUCASE, and they seem to be the sole registrar. And it looks like they have a laundry list of requirements needed before they grant that extension.. From their website:

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, is the sole registrar for names in the .edu domain. The Department of Commerce awarded management of the domain to EDUCAUSE in October 2001. Requests for new names in the domain are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis for eligible institutions, and holders of .edu domain names must use this Web site to manage their domains and hosts. EDUCAUSE also is the exclusive provider of contact information for the .edu domain, available on the Whois server.