The Google.com domain turned 10 years old today.

I read earlier somewhere that Google.com was about to be a decade old, so I checked the whois record and yep, it’s true.  Google.com was registered September 15, 1997 to be the domain for a search engine project begun by Larry Page and Sergey Brin which they had orginally called “BackRub.” Think of the enormity of impact that this domain has had on the Internet and world.

At a personal level, my life has been positively affected by the technologies available on the Google domain. My career, finances, relationships–everything seems to have some intertwining with Google. I’ll take it a step further. I am happier, richer, wiser and more socially satisfied because of what began happening on Google.com after it’s registration 10 years ago. So, I say happy birthday Google.com and keep hosting life-changing technologies for webmasters. And, please, please don’t forget to renew.

I may have just become a willing victim of link baiting. I’ve been enjoying the DNScoop tool lately for a very good reason: The DNScoop tool says Clickfire.com is worth $37,204!  This may be a wee bit on the high side given that they are looking at the domain name itself without revenue. Never-the-less, I’m having lots of fun with the figure, especially after the depressing score received a recent Godaddy appraisal ($84 - $260). The DNScoop tool does have some real value in that it reports data of interest to the SEO conscious domainer:

• Domain Age
• PageRank
• Inbound Link Count
• Inbound Links
• Alexa Traffic Rank
• Number of Indexed Pages per Search Engine
• Domain Name IP Report - other services limit the number of domains you can see hosted on a server or require a login.

I wonder if there is a script functionality that can measure webmaster ego?

10 years = 1 template per month

The other day I was digging through some memorabilia and what did I find? The original Clickfire.com domain registration invoice from Network Solutions. I took a deep breath and read the print that I received as an aspiring web designer in the late 1990’s:

Thank you for registering the Internet/World Wide Web domain shown above.

Your welcome! I reflected on the personal journey I experienced since registering this, my first domain. I won’t say anything more about the journey now except that it was worth it. I thought about how to best celebrate the ten years. I am sure there will be more manifestations of celebration but here is what I came up with for now: give away a free website template each month until December, the ten year anniversary of Clickfire. See July’s template below, a business website template.

I would also like to say “thank you” to the millions of Clickfire visitors who have arrived here for whatever reason over the years. If you have gotten anything at all out of Clickfire.com since going live in 1997, I ask that you to place a comment here and tell us. Let the celebration begin!

There are still times in life when you’re left with the telephone as the most efficient medium of communicating with your domain registrar. Before engaging GoDaddy customer support with Alexander Graham Bell’s 19th century technology, I often feel a twinge of adrenalin flowing in my veins because I know that their ultimate goal is to get me to renew my domains. It doesn’t matter if I have autorenew turned on. It doesn’t matter if I don’t care and my house is on fire, the question always comes. And it always begins with:

“I see you have some domains here that are coming up for renewal…”

This time the GoDaddy rep caught me off guard when he mentioned a special deal that would allow me to get an Express Domain Name Appraisal. Interesting, I thought. If a domain I owned were worth millions, I’d want to know about it. Wouldn’t anyone? I spent about 15 minutes negotiating with the guy and ended up spending $71.48 for 9 years of domain renewals and 4 Express Domain Name Appraisals. I figure I got pretty good value on the domain renewals alone, but the domain appraisals left me scratching my head.

“This appraisal will allow you to bid with confidence on an existing auction or set an appropriate asking price for your own auction.”

How liberating. I can now set an appropriate asking price of between $84.00 - $260.00 for clickfire.com should I ever decide to sell the domain. I can just see myself staying up all night trying to decide if I should let my nearly decade old, content laden, labor of love sell for for a two digit figure or retire early on the profits of the three digit figure.

What’s the Methodology to the Madness?

“Our rating methodology includes metrics found at all domain appraisal sites as well as proprietary factors available only from the #1 registrar in the world, GoDaddy.com”

That’s it. Besides briefly referring to ”comparable sales” and “recent trends,” the only other hint at methodology precedes the above where GoDaddy indicates that the domain appraisal is:

“based on a variety of factors related to the name itself.  We have compared the name to recent sales of similar domains, evaluated recent market trends, and applied a desirability factor based on these trends.” 

Can’t I get some details on how the value of my real estate was determined?

The quote is later stated to be independent of any associated “brand equity, revenue, income or profits” in case that weren’t obvious.

GoDaddy Appraisal? Stop Mother, it’s a termite inspection!

Retsambewers, start your engines (no pun intended). The Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity SEO Contest announced by Tim Shroeder of Webmaster-Talk.com on April 3rd carries a smaller cash and prize value than the big contests like the Shoemoney SEO Contest we reported earlier. The Webmaster-Talk SEO contest cash and prizes are valued at $5000 or so while the Shoemoney contest is said to be valued at over $25,000.00 (details are forthcoming). But, the booty is not the only factor that webmasters and SEO’s consider when joining. What I like about the Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity contest is Tim’s careful consideration in formulating a fair contest for new webmasters as well as experienced site owners. A few of the key rules that will no doubt hamstring some are:

• Bloggers may not benefit as easily because no remotely hosted blog domains or even subdomains are allowed (except for backlinking).
• Owners of older domains cannot get a leg up in rankings from any Google bias toward the age of their domains or existing incoming links because a new domain name must be used (must be registered after 4/3/2006).
• Perhaps the best leveler of the playing field is that the contest keywords (Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity) cannot be used in the domain.

I’ve been a member at Webmaster-Talk since 2002 and have enjoyed reading and posting on the discussion forums there. Tim has done a great job of thinking through and planning Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity. Charity sites are not the most SEO friendly. It’s especially nice to see the benevolent side of webmasters being brought out in that one of the goals of the contest is to put focus on charity sites. I’ve set up a special Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity site to keep up with the contest, push for charity, and hopefully to compete with fellow webmasters and SEO’s. Let’s see if the Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity page attracts any attention from search engines. The full details of the SEO contest are available at Webmaster-Talk Forums.

I keep learning this lesson over and over: a domain is useless unless you take the time to register it. In a previous post, I had mentioned a few domains that I had wanted to register but sadly missed. As I continued my spring cleaning and organizing of computer files, I found a file named Domains to Register.doc. The file consisted of a list of domains that I was watching and considering registering at some time in the future. Can you guess where this is going? Fellow procrastinators read on.

These domains were all available and I considered reserving them:

• download-software-files.com
• Filegirl.com
• Ninebest.com
• localjobboards.com
• seowebdesign.info
• directorysite.info
• seowebdesign.net
• nichedirectory.info
• nichedirectory.net
• insurance-reviews.net
• HealthInsuranceReviews.com
• auctioncrib.com
• findyourcoupons.com
• lookupcoupons.com
• couponlookup.com
• crossblog.com
• downloadavatars.com
• keywordpeople.com
• techfolk.com

Someone thinks these are worth the risk of buying and holding them for years. Are these domains really valuable? Some contain good keywords and others perhaps some merit for branding. Best wishes to the owners of these domains that might have been mine and yours!

This weekend I finally got around to doing a little spring cleaning and organizing of computer files. I found a few lists of domains that I had wanted to register but found that some other zealous webmaster had beat me to them. It’s always disappointing to find out that someone else had the same idea and went about the perfunctory task of registering the domain and thus shutting you out.

With this set of domains, I had checked the availability and very soon afterwards went back and tried reserving them. They were gone (by the way, don’t waist your time doing a whois on Yahoo.com. Someone has already reserved that one):

• webover.com - This was my first domain registration snooze and lose lesson. I actually sketched a business plan for this site. Essentially, Webover was going to be a play on the term, makeover. Web site owners who needed a web site makeover could enter some info and get a site evaluation, then get redesign recommendations, some of which would have been leads from advertisers. I had gone as far as to write snippets of copy, design notes, and even thought as far ahead as like an affiliate program and press release.
• 2008election.us - Seems like a no brainer, but I hesitated too long. When I went back to register, the domain was taken.
• govrates.com - I had actually checked this a day or so earlier and it was available.

Here are a few that I thought of retrospectively and rushed to check and see if by some chance the domains were available:

• freedomfries.com - I missed owning this domain by 22 days. On 3/11/03 I realized the value of this domain after the controversy erupted over France not supporting the U.S. position to go to war against Iraq. Freedom Fries had just become a buzz word. Although congressional restaurants changed the menu items from french fries to freedom fries, the buzz appears to have died out now. I checked the availability. It was taken around 2/17/03.
• shockandawe.com - Another war related buzz phrase. I missed this domain by 2 ½ months.

It’s no good dwelling on what I should have done. There are other domains out there just waiting for a home. To the owners of these web properties, I would like to wish you the best of success and let you know that someone else was out there poised to snap these up. You may not realize it, but you just barely got them. Congratulations. You have great timing.

I received a letter from a domain registrar that said my domain name will expire soon and I have to pay a renewal fee of $40 by a certain date. What do I need to do? –Originally appeared in the Clickfire Spark Newsletter

Nothing. The letter you received is an attempt to get you to transfer your registration of your domain to a different company that charges a very high price for domain registrations. I’ve received these pseudo invoices from companies I’ve never heard of. This practice is very deceptive. Some unsuspecting site owners won’t realize that this is not the company they originally registered with and will pay without much thought. The reason scammers can do this is that your name and address appear on the public “who is” registration record, which is sort of like a property deed for domains. Anyone can view the official domain record of a web site at the Whois Source or any number of other who is database sites. They know who you are and when your domain expires so they try and scare you into renewing. Only later will you realize that you actually switched your domain registration to a different company. It reminds me of the way that some long distance companies used to switch service without permission.