Backorders cost $28 upfront at Godaddy, I think they're $79 at NameJet, only payable if you win.

The real reason godaddy backorder are not as good is because the only way you’ll actually win the domain is if nobody else backorders it at a different company. Literally any other place will get it first so Godaddy only works for domains people don’t really want. NameJet has a much higher rate if success.

Which Backorder service do you use and why?

• By Gordon Hempton
  CEO of Spot

What if I told you there was a way to instantly increase your email deliverability, website accessibility, the number of social media posts, and the customer perception of your brand? We just did exactly that by switching our primary domain from spot.xyz to spotvirtual.com.

Initially, the allure of a four-letter domain was strong. The .xyz extension was also fitting–Spot being a 3d virtual workplace in the browser–as it pertains to the multi-dimensional nature of our product. Moreover, surely choosing the same top-level domain as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been using for years is a relatively safe choice for our application? Unsurprisingly, this turns out to not be the case.

Not all top-level domains (TLDs) are created equal and some are much worse than others. We suspected as much, but we didn’t know how to quantify the risk when we were making this decision. In this post we lay out the impacts that having a .xyz was having on our business and hope to simplify the decision for other companies in the future.

Email Deliverability
We should have known better from the beginning as we previously founded Outreach.io, the leading sales engagement platform, making us no strangers to email deliverability. In the early days of Outreach, we had utilized some short .xyz domains to use for shortened links in emails sent on behalf of our customers. At the time, this seemed like a sensible decision, as Outreach was also using a relatively unknown TLD, .io.

This turned out to be a very poor decision. Even though we weren’t even sending emails from .xyz domains, simply including occasional links with URLs ending in .xyz caused very poor deliverability for our customers. We quickly course-corrected and switched over to .net and .com domains and the situation improved.

Despite this experience, we still decided to use spot.xyz. It had been six years after all and the spam detection algorithms undoubtedly had improved significantly... right? It must be the case that as long as we have all of our ducks in a row, SPF, DKIM, etc. we shouldn’t see much of a deliverability impact.

Our first moment of consternation came when we started getting anecdotal reports from our early customers that transactional emails, such as password resets, were winding up in their spam folders. This also happened occasionally with highly personalized work emails sent directly to contacts.

Once we switched over to spotvirtual.com, not only did the anecdotal experience drastically improve, but we were able to quantify this based on some of our emails which were tracked. After switching, our initial email open rates rose from 70% to 86%, second email open rates rose from 50% to 72%, and overall meeting conversions rose from .1% to 3%! This improvement alone is worth the domain switch.

webmasters and site administrators as well as we describe below.

Firewalls
This is a straightforward downside to using a .xyz domain. Some organizations have the entire top-level .xyz domain blacklisted, disallowing all of their user base from accessing websites with that extension. When Googling about, it is common to come across webmasters who are seeking advice on how to block the entire domain. Even if your application is strictly obeying the best edicate possible, simply being associated with a .xyz domain is enough to become entirely inaccessible to a subset of traffic.

For me personally, the most notable experience I had was being on the campus of my alma mater, the University of Washington, and being entirely unable to access spot.xyz on their wifi network.

Social Media Networks
Anecdotally, posting spot.xyz on Facebook, Reddit, and other social media sites often resulted in the link being categorized as spam (or worse, a malicious site) outright. Switching to spotvirtual.com resolved this.

How to Pick a Top-Level Domain
This post has been specifically about the .xyz domain, but we suspect that the same applies to many other top level domains. When choosing a domain, we suggest the following order of precedence:

Tried and true: .com, .org, .net, etc.
Used by lots of up and comers: .io, .ai
The most expensive lesser known domains.
Avoid at all costs (or savings) all domains which are priced incredulously cheap. The poisoning of the proverbial .xyz well was most likely caused by really cheap prices and promotions causing them to be chosen by spammers. Looking on namecheap.com, .xyz domains are currently priced at $1 whereas .ai is priced at $70. The cost of a domain is trivial in the larger context of starting a business and well worth it.

Source: https://www.spotvirtual.com/blog/the-perils-of-an-xyz-domain

However, the seller is not sure how to actually do the transferring of the domain (ie so that I as the buyer am the only one who can ever access the domain going forward). Any advice? Thank you!

We currently have a have a business name with a matching domain name – (eg. Nucleotide Services with the domain name nucleotideservices.com.au) as many businesses do.

In the coming 6-12~ months, we are looking at rebranding. Business Name and domain name will change.

In the meantime, I was thinking of getting the domain name change out the way now - kind of like the first phase of the change.

The domain name still represents what we do/offer but it isn't an exact/or even a close match to our current business name. When the new brand/business name goes live, all will match (eg. New Business Name = www.newbusinessname.com.au).

My concern though - is it wrong/bad practice to have a domain name that doesn't match the business name? Not really sure what the general 'rules/guidelines' are, if any?

From an SEO point of view, I can setup permanent 301 redirects that will redirect the old page etc to the new such as nucleotideservices.com.au/page-name-1 to newbusinessname.com.au/page-name-1 - so I don't see this being a big problem. Google is usually pretty quick to catch these changes.

Any suggestions, thoughts, comments would be greatly appreciated. Not really sure what do to - should I wait to change the domain name or start getting it out there now and just drop the redesigned website/logo etc into place in 6

My GoDaddy account settings under active sign ins consistently shows an IP address and location I’ve never used, vpn’d, hosted of know anything about. I remove it and it’s back within 24 hours.

I removed it last again night and checked again today and it is back. GoDaddy support confirmed someone is able to access my account somehow bypassing the MFA but is refusing to give me any information or assistance. I was told they will not provide more info on it other then confirming it is going on and told me to talk to legal and get a court order.

What’s strange to me is it doesn’t appear they even consider this a potential breach of their system. They will not be escalating it or doing an internal investigation as far as I know. Does anyone know why they are taking this stance when they confirmed to me that MFA is set and still someone is accessing the account? They say they don’t know how it’s happening which in my mind should trigger someone looking into it to make sure they don’t have a hole in their system.

It’s always the same location and IP that shows up in the active logins. What’s strange is under sign in history I only see my sign ins and nothing from anything I don’t recognize as me. What should I do?

loremipsum.com (target domain)

lorem-ipsum.com (not expensive but available)

loremipsum.us (not expensive but available)

Which one do you think is a better choice in general? would appreciate all the help/advice.

Thank you

Get started at domains.google.

I don't manage any of my domains at google, use dnsmanager as a single place to manage domains from multiple places.

I thought the ".1" was a new tld/URL until it splashed a warning across my screen, I'm paraphrasing:

"THESE ARE BLOCKCHAIN DOMAINS, DO NOT REGISTER THEM UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE."

So I ask you what these are? I found an article that may not be talking about the same BLOCKCHAIN DOMAINS:

"Blockchain domains are essentially suites of smart contracts — software written on a public blockchain. This gives them a number of unique features and advantages over traditional domains.
The history of blockchain domains goes back to the early days of cryptocurrency. One of the first crypto platforms was called Namecoin, and it was built so users could register their own domain names on Bitcoin."

what is the best course of action I can do to buy it? from what I found so far, I can:

Try contacting the domain owner. However, the whois details said "GDR masked"
Try Godaddy domain broker
Try a " Backorder" service by a local domain register to apply a request registering the domain as soon as the domain expires
ANY OTHER OPTIONS?

I want to run the url shortner Yourls on these domains as the only service. But it seems I need to have my DNS servers also located in the states? My current hoster does not have any servers in the US.

Is this really a hard requirement and do they really check and act? Love to hear your thoughts and perhaps some suggestions where to host for such a minimal service.

Thanks for your help.

srsplus?

godaddy?

sav?

netsol?

other?

Is there anything I can do to get my domain unlocked so I can transfer it when Pheenix isn't responding to my support tickets?

A domain registry I don't know anything about is selling new ".COM" Domains for only $4.99 – USE PROMO CODE RDRNOW499 at the following site:
https://www.DomainRightNow.com/

A more familiar and trustworthy domain registry is selling ".com" for 6.99 until 6/30/21 - https://www.Dynadot.com/

The best ".com" transfer coupon code I'm currently aware of is COUPONFCNC to get $7.28 transfers at NameCheap.com

If you're unfamiliar with this story, please start by reading the background info, this Brent Oxley domain lockdown is turning into PR nightmare for GoDaddy as you can read about here:
https://www.thedomains.com/2021/03/06/brent-oxley-godaddy/

Now check out the result & win by Brent Oxley:
https://domainnamewire.com/2021/03/17/godaddy-to-remove-locks-on-brent-oxleys-domains-changes-policy/#:~:text=GoDaddy is removing domain locks,changing its policy going forward.&text=Oxley said publicly that he,to extract payments from Oxley.

By James Clayton - N. America technology reporter

Google Argentina's domain name was bought by a web designer while the site was out of action for two hours in the country last Wednesday.

Nicolas Kurona, aged 30, said he managed to buy Google.com.ar through a normal, legal process.

"I never imagined that it was going to allow me to buy it," he told the BBC.

Google Argentina told the BBC: "For a short term, the domain was acquired by someone else." It added it had regained control of the domain very quickly.

The story started when Nicolas was at his desk on the outskirts of Buenos Aires on Wednesday night, designing a website for a client.

He started getting messages on WhatsApp that Google was down.

"I entered www.google.com.ar into my browser and it didn't work," he said. "I thought something strange was happening."

He decided to go on to the Network Information Center Argentina (NIC) - the organisation responsible for operating the .ar country code domains. He searched for Google - and up popped Argentina's Google domain available for purchase.

Despite thinking it would not work, he "followed the steps and then I received an email with the purchase invoice", he said.

Nicolas shared the NIC invoice with the BBC. Google Argentina's domain name was acquired for 270 pesos (£2.08/$2.90).

'I was frozen' Dumbfounded, he tapped www.google.com.ar into his search bar and pressed enter. "My personal data appeared," he said. "I was frozen looking at the screen. I could not believe what had just happened."

At 21.52 local time on Wednesday, Nicolas bought Google Argentina's domain name. All of those millions of Google searches, and people coming to www.google.com.ar, were now in theory, coming to him.

"I want to make it clear that I never had any bad intentions, I just tried to buy it and the NIC allowed me to," he said.

Nicolas's night had, in just a few minutes, turned into a major news story.

"When the purchase process was completed and my data appeared, I knew that something was going to happen... I was really anxious," he said.

Nicolas tweeted what had happened - to try to clarify how events had gone down, he said.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
So what on earth happened?

Well, one theory is that Google had simply forgotten to renew its domain name. However, Google says its licence for the domain hadn't expired - and was not due to expire until July 2021.

Open Data Córdoba group (which is dedicated to tracking expired Argentine domains, and tracking registered ones) backs this up. It's still unclear why Google's domain name was released.

Nicolas says he has no idea what happened, but it feels "slightly strange" to have so much media attention. He has been hailed as a hero in some corners of Twitter, and his tweet clarifying what happened has racked up 80,000 likes.

Nicolas says he's just relieved that he didn't get into trouble.

He says the NIC took the domain name away from him shortly after he purchased it, but his 270 pesos have not been returned.

He says Google didn't get in touch, and that he wasn't paid. Google has yet to clear up how they got the domain name back.

The company is investigating what went down on Wednesday. But for some reason, for a few minutes at least, Google lost control of Google Argentina this week - to a 30-year-old web designer, it seems.

James Clayton is the BBC's North America technology reporter based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @jamesclayton5.

The problem is that domain brokers purchase hundreds or even thousands of domains that have common words in them because know someone someday will want it. Then they charge you thousands of dollars for the name because they have to offset the cost of buying all those other domains!

Of course, that’s not always the case. Sometimes a domain name you want will already be in use by a legitimate organization. Either way, finding a domain name can be slim pickings these days.

So now that we’ve covered the lousy part of this ordeal, what can you do about it?

How to get an awesome domain name for $10
With some persistence and strategy, you can still find an awesome .com domain name for $10. Here are the tips I use when finding domains for my own websites.

Create a master list:
If you come up with the perfect domain and wait too long expecting it to be available, you’re in for a rude surprise. It’s almost certainly taken.

Do the opposite::
Come up with a list of dozens of potential domain names and don’t get attached to any of them yet. There’s no process for generating this list. Just start ideating any names that could work and avoid being picky for now.

The more names you have in your list, the more likely you are to find an available name.

Maximize your list with synonyms
Use a thesaurus website to find synonyms for the names in your domain name ideas. Thus you come up with more variations.

Add additional words:
Come up with addon words that can make your domain unique and not yet taken.
Here are a few terms you can try:

get
download
try
the
start
Any of these terms can be added to the beginning of your domain name to find an available variation.

Stick to .com:
I would recommend using a domain like getcloudapp.com before cloudapp.net.
When’s the last time you visited a .net website? Or a .org that wasn’t a non-profit organization?
Consumers expect your site to use .com and they trust these domain names much more than alternatives, especially .biz and .info.

The new domain extensions are gaining acceptance, so while I wouldn’t recommend them as a first choice, I think a relevant TLD could be a better choice than another extension like .net or .org.

Check the availability
Once you have your master list compiled, you don’t want to check them all one at a time.

Preferably out of reach of the United States.

Thanks