First, hello to all as I have been taking it easy lately to recover my health and I have been digging deep to keep up with these changing times in the domain industry and the economy as a whole!

So, today I was browsing one of my wifes magazines, Prevention and noticed an ad for Philips Sonicare and the sonicare toothbrush. The large STOP BRUSHING is pretty catchy since it shows a toothbrush and the call to action domain StopBrushing.com.

The problem, by visiting StopBrushing.com you see…

I am not sure if Prevention the magazine ran the ad a little early (it is the December issue) or if Philips made this mistake, but they should get the wheels moving no matter what and get StopBrushing.com up asap as it just looks bad! I’m sure the ad was not cheap either and they are simply losing visitors!

Further looking through the magazine, I was checking out all the advertising (lots of it) but the one common thing is, EVERY company matches either their Company Name, Product Name or Service with an Exact Match .com domain name!  So below is something to point out to your next interested party in your domain name!

First, Prevention.com for the magazine Prevention. They also include Prevention.com on every page that has a page number. It’s not tacky, it’s just their and smart in my book!

Inside the first page… Weight Watchers with WeightWatchers.com . A Chevy ad with Chevy.com . Cambells fires up a Direct Product domain with CambellsV8Soup.com. They clearly own Cambells but this just shows you can own an exact match to your product and advertise with it!

Vicks was one ad that didn’t include their domain name?? Not sure on that one, but they did include a Yahoo! logo with a mini search box with the word Vicks in it… Interesting, but considering many people search, it’s not a bad idea!

Quilted Northern toilet tissue ad with QuiltedNorthern.com all in lowercase but it’s their.

Johnson & Johnson appears to be missing the boat! An ad for Pledge and Aveeno on seperate ads. Aveeno.com is in the one, but the Pledge ad does not, but later on does… They do own Pledge.com, but didn’t use it in the ad but then did..

Curel has Curel.com, Lipton has Lipton.com, Rosetta Stone has RosettaStone.com, Delsym has Delsym.com, Egg Lands Best has EggLandsBest.com.

A sports bra ad with BestForm.com matching the bras name and Singulair using TakeOnAsthma.com for their asthma drug. FreshStep.com with a very funny pic of a cat holding it’s "privates" promoting a "perfect naming" of a cat litter product Fresh Step. Clorox with the domain Clorox.com and I think you get my point!

It’s vital to match your company name, product name or service so it’s easy for your customer to Find you and Remember you!

I was looking at some recent auctions that ended at NameJet.com. What the domains ended for, who was the bidder, what are they doing with the domain now etc.. You mean you don’t do that?

So anyway, this just happened to catch my eye and made me think… That doesn’t look right!

Now, I understand how NameJet.com works with "Bidding" and "Pre-Bidding" etc. For those who maybe unsure, this is how it works from my understanding.

~Pre-Bidding takes place BEFORE the domain name goes into a "Private Auction". Most pre-bidding takes place on Pre-Release domain names. The minimum bid is $69. If NOBODY has a bid in, and you bid $1,000 then the price of the domain is $1,000. Your bid is not a "Proxy Bid" until the 3 day private auction starts. Others can still bid the minimum of $69 to "get into" the auction as long as it’s before the deadline that NameJet has in place. The  private auction actually starts the following day from when the pre-bidding stop, but the starting price of the private auction will be what the high bidder has as a bid.

~Private Auction Bidding, takes place for 3 days until the auction is finished. The auction will "extend" if a last second (Minute) bid is placed so no snipping can happen. If the current high bid price is $100, and you bid $200, there is a chance that the first high bidder had in a "Proxy Bid" etc.

http://www.dotweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/BatteryCase.png

Now if you could please click that link above. It’s a scrolling Screenshot of a NameJet.com auction that had ended. Here are some things that are not matching up if you ask me.

• Winning bid was $201
• The winning bidder placed the "High Bid" on 10-26, which was the day the auction ended
• Second High Bidder’s bid was $88
• The second high bidder placed their bid on 10-11, which means it was a Pre-Bid
• All other bidders bids, were $69
• All other bidders bids were placed during "Pre-Bid"

Ok, if you are following me, the Key Point was the second high bidder at $88 placed their bid of $88 during Pre-Bid (10-11). During pre-bid, there is NO proxy bid, so that was limebomb’s highest bid placed. No other bids were placed when "Proxy Bidding" would happen…. So how does a bid that was placed DURING proxy bidding, go UP TO $201, when the second high bidder was only at $88?

It just looks fishy if you ask me…. and makes me wonder "what" drove the auction to end at $201 and not something like $98? Has this happened with other auctions? Am I missing something? It just looks fishy to me.

I always wondered this question and the other day I sent the question off to DomainTools.com and this was the reply:

Question~ How is a record created for "whois history" for the Whois.sc/DomainTools.com whois system ?

"Technically, a record is created at your registrar each time there is a change.  So if you update anything on your record at all, it will create a new record.  However, what we notice is that the popularity of the site determines the number of records in our system.  Check out google.com.  Possibly the site in question sparked some new interest or came up on a search queries.  You may not have changed anything on your side; but, for some reason, people find it interesting and looked it up. No real magic, although you’d think."

One reason I asked this question is because I see some domain names with a lot more "records" for whois history then others but the "age" of the domain names can be pretty much the same. Secondly, a domain name that I own has a new record for nearly every day since May, then took a month off and then was back at it again etc. I had changed nothing at my registrar, so these records must be coming from the "However" part of the answer.

The "However, what we (DomainTools.com) notice is that the popularity of the site determines the number of records in our system" could also translate into when somebody searched your domain at Whois.sc or DomainTools.com as well.

Having a recent climb in this number for a domain name you own, might get you to do some checking and you may find out why people might be searching it. In my case, somebody has been posting on Craigslist and useing my domain for people to visit to see more info in regards to his job posting. lol Thanks for all the traffic.

I always get a kick out of watching Bob Parsons video blog and have Really thought about changing my blog to a video blog! I do not hold any editing skills, nor have the equipment to do it, so that’s what’s holding me back!

Bob’s blog (BobParsons.tv) clearly has people "spice up" his posts and he goes all out in making them!

Enjoy the 5 tips Bob provides and his new little "helpers"

Well, this was the "other" domain name that I was talking about that I acquired the other day that was still in escrow. 4N.net and now I would like to hear what you think I should do with it.

What approach would you take on offering this Gem up for sale? Keep it?

Very unique 2 character domain name to say the least considering it sounds like "Foreign". The number 4 appears to be one of the most popular numbers and the letter N can stand for so many things it will make your head spin. "Network" was my first thought.

A couple facts:

• 4N.net was first registered in 1997
• 4N produces 18.7 Million google results
• Only 260 Number/Letter .net domain names exist in the world
• I am looking at a fair price (IMO) of $9,980 USD for the domain.

R4.net was the only other 2 character .net that I could find currently at auction on the market, with the current bid price of $8,750 EUR ($11,342) and four days left in auction.

Out of the 1,043,918 domain names on SnapNames, 0 (Zero) are 2 character domains and that was for .com, .net and .org… Again, this is a very rare domain!

I also have 9U.net which I might offer up for sale as well…