Back in November 2011 I shared a very interesting story about turning an $800 offer into a $20,000 domain name sale. The domain name in the story was BattleForEverything.com.

At the time when I was helping Ryan out, I had fully thought that NBC was the interested party in the domain name, because they registered BattleForEverything.net shortly before contacting Ryan, the owner of the .com . It made perfect sense with the recent .net domain registration.

I was wrong! According to whois records which just updated, reveal who the $20,000 buyer was! It was The Coca Cola Company!

I didn’t see that one coming! So it must have been just an odd coincidence that NBC Universal wanted to own BattleForEverything.net days before Coca Cola wanted to own BattleForEverything.com . NBC hand registers the .net and days later Coca Cola uses "Kate Spade" the secret buyer for CSC and purchases the .com for $20K. Pretty crazy!!! (who’s to say that NBC did buy the .com, but Coca Cola wanted it after NBC purchased it? LOL… could be…)

An interesting end to the story, that is for sure! Well, it’s not really the end of the story yet, because we have yet to see what Coca Cola will put on the domain name. Maybe some kind of game? Maybe they will use the domain in the upcoming Super Bowl? Hard to say really, but they are likely planning on doing some thing with it shortly with the whois now displaying them instead of the secret buyer and the DNS change to KO.com, which is the DNS Coke uses.

13 year old domain name ExpiredDomains.com has, well expired and is on public domain auction! View Auction

Expired domains are some of the most popular for domain name investors, so clearly this domain has some major potential. According to some data provided with the expired domain auction, the domain already has some built in traffic with an estimate at around 1,400 visitors per month. I’m sure some of that traffic is due to the popular expired domain site on ExpiredDomains.net, which is likely the best free expired domain tools offered.

Current bid price is only $15 and the auction is No Reserve.

This would be a nice domain to have for any service like GoDaddy, SnapNames, NameJet, Epic or Pool who offers expired domain names daily but it clearly could do well in the hands of somebody that is deep into the expired domains market. I wouldn’t mind owning it but I would expect this domain to fetch a pretty penny by the end.

The past owner currently is not known, because whois privacy is on the domain and has been for several years. It doesn’t appear there was a site on the domain prior to expiring. It should be a fun auction to watch. The auction ends 02/05/2012.

Check it out!

If you were to do a search on Google.com for google keyword tool, which is a pretty popular search term… I was pretty surprised to see two domain names that contain the trademarked word "google" and they rank in the top 5 for the search term!

GoogleKeywordTool.com ranks in the natural #3 position. IMO, the site "looks like" it would be owned by Google, but it is not. According to whois records, Chris Wilde owns the domain/site. He purchased the domain name after it expired according to the about page on the site.

Google is a registered trademark and IMO is very confusing to many page layouts that Google uses. There are no ads currently on the site, but Chris did state "Recently, after updating my Google Analytics account, a Google AdSense rep called me. She made the point that content-sensitive ads could help my visitors. She’s probably right. Maybe I’ll add a few Google Ads."

Although all the links on the site DO go to Google, I think by Google ranking the domain name very well, even though it contains Google’s trademark could make somebody think it is OK to cybersquat. Chris did state the site sometimes gets over 35K visitors a month and IMO is benefiting from the traffic in several ways, like promoting his film editing.

There is a very small disclaimer at the bottom of the site, which states the site is not affiliated with Google, but that won’t cut it in court.

If Chris is OK with it and Google is OK with it (heck a Google rep even called Chris and said to put ads on the site) then I think it’s OK for me to do it, you to do it and really anybody to do it as well.

GooglePosition.com ranks in the natural #5 position.

This site has ads.

This site doesn’t have a disclaimer that it is not affiliated with Google Inc.

This site displays a ton of terms that relate directly to Google’s products.

What’s My Point

Just because it may seem "OK" to do something you know will likely get you in hot water, don’t always judge a book by its cover.

Google at any time could de-index the sites, file a UDRP and get the domains and I’m sure much more. IMO, I just think by Google allowing the sites to rank very well for a popular search term, while containing their trademark terms in the domain is simply silly. It is like away of saying…. register our trademark in your domain name and promote your business like you are us! Sweet.

Some things I see really make me shake my head and this was one of them today. Maybe you feel differently about it? Let me know what you think, maybe I’m just missing something.