Surprise Traffic To A Domain Name From An Unlikely Source

Recently we acquired a medium sized town / city .COM on drop, I think it slipped through since some people call the city one thing yet the official name is another. I chose to pick the name up because after doing some research (one of my employees used to live in an adjoining area) I determined the official city site plus other governmental sites all used the name of the city plus the word city in their domain names. As luck would have it though they developed the .ORG which makes sense for them.

Now, as you know I make my living from developing alternative extensions and have not had any issues doing so but the occurrence I found today was actually quite interesting, forget all the discussions about traffic leaking to the .COM if you develop something other than a .COM. That is something that will be a discussion for the years to come and really cannot be argued, the only thing that can be argued is how much.

But how about links being pointed to the wrong place, link leakage. Now, as I say that there is no way for me to know if that is what happened here but from what I can tell no major development happened on this domain name. I had it parked for a few months but never really checked where the traffic was coming from (yes it gets type in traffic)  but recently I put a small development on it, to be honest it was just a place holder site until we got ready for the next step but when I went to check if there were any terms ranking yet I noticed something. Several hits from the local police station website.

What happened? Well I went to the site and found the link is pointing to the .COM , I have no idea if the intention was to point it to the .ORG or not. But what I did find looking through Archive.org is that the site was registered back close to 2000 but was really just a link site with a few links to local businesses, looks like a local had it but then let it go and a domainer picked it up on drop along the way.

So it is possible that the link was meant to be to the .COM but I am thinking I am possibly getting link leakage rather than type in leakage this time around.

Find Geo Domains With Geo.Godaddy.Com Is Addicting, Useful, Expensive

As everyone was putting out stories on the impending launch and functions of the GeoDomainMap search that Godaddy.com was putting together at Geo.Godaddy.com I held off saying much although I had several people email since they know I have an affinity for geo domains.

After spending some time with the tool I must say, I personally think Godaddy did a great job pulling together a tool that both mades it easy for them to sell more names and for users to search more easily for niche geo targeted names. We all know local search is growing, with that it only makes sense that locally targeted names will become used more frequently by smart business owners.

My initial thought after digging around a but was this is addicting, I would pick a state and then pick and area then zoom in and out on different niche markets and was amazed at individual neighborhood names popping up. Knowing some of the areas I was searching it was impressive knowing just how small some of these neighborhoods actually are. I know it is just a geo targeted database but with all the talk of hyperlocal this or that, this takes it one step further when searching for domains that target at the hyperlocal level. I could sit here for hours if I did not watch myself.

Which takes me to the next comment, if you are not disciplined this could get very expensive really quick. 50 states multiplied by X amount of cities, then go down to an even more local level and then pick any niche and you get my point. My advice, if you are going to use this tool pick a niche and do not start buying names in every known niche around every city and every state. I am going to have to really watch myself on this one. As I have worked to get my portfolio to the quality over quantity structure I want this would make it easy to go back in the other direction. In other words it probably does not make sense to buy a CityNameLawyer.com if the town has 50 people but the name just happens to be available.

All in all though I think this is a great tool by Godaddy. As much as domainers like to bash Godaddy at times I think they got it right this time. Although us geo owners might be cringing just a bit....

Geo Domain Names For Sale – BUY NOW

UPDATED: I have added some City/State.org names at the bottom, they are all at Fabulous. Take a look, the prices for these names will go up in the future so act fast on these. These are names being brokered for someone else.

UPDATE #2: I have just deleted out several names that are in process. Thanks to the buyers.

UPDATE #3: More names removed. Clarified the names added at the bottom are being brokered for another individual.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago I have been working to focus my domain portfolio in certain niche areas, and really am 90 percent focused on selling domain names to end users rather than at wholesale prices between domain investors. That said I have several that I would like to give my blog readers a chance to grab before I either a) develop them or b) market them to end users.

These are not names that will be dropping so do not get your hopes up, these are names with high search volume or are in tourist areas with high value. Some of these get revenue as well but that is not really relevant since one direct ad on any of these names would top any PPC revenue.  Feel free to contact me through my contact form or email me directly to claim these names. After any name is sold I will completely remove it from the list so there will be no reference if you resell it in the future. If you want to buy multiples please send the list to me and I am willing to play lets make a deal. Here is the list:

Names deleted for buyer NDA reasons......

Talking Domain Names and Local Search with Rural Missouri

I spent today speaking at 2 seminars focused on showing small businesses in rural Missouri how to take advantage of the opportunities they have to grow their business online. As the rural broadband stimulus money is doled out to telecommunications companies rural America will change the way they use the Internet and small business, which is really the backbone of American business, will need to be able to compete with large corporations who have been using search marketing and working online for years. It was an absolute pleasure meeting and discussing how business gets done on the Internet with the business leaders that came to the seminar sessions today.

I want to personally thank all fo them for attending and for Big River Telephone for sponsoring and bringing the group together. And I want to thank the radio station personnel and the people from the SE Missourian newspaper who were open minded and attended the discussion today that had a portion focused on the failure of legacy media and advertising companies to take advantage of the new business models that have shown themselves on the Internet. The open mind show in attending a session such as the one today shows that the companies you are working for have a chance.

It is always enjoyable to speak directly with the small businesses that do not have technology as their focus. Sometimes those of us that are focused so strongly on online media forget that that most business owners do not really care about the details, they care about what the technology changes mean to their business. Days like today prove that. We had comments come in that this is overwhelming but that the importance of changing the way they approach marketing is understood.

Other discussion topics included about how to use social networking to get customer feedback, promote the company website, and how even if the business owner themselves do not use the Internet their customers do. That is something important for small businesses in rural America to remember, as rural broadband spreads, and it will no matter what some industries want to believe, the people with the disposable income are the ones searching for products and services online.

Thanks to all that attended! The next session is being planned for Farmington, MO in the very near future.