We all know the saying “the early bird gets the worm”. Well… when it comes to searching for a good domain name, things are not that straightforwardly predictable.

A few days ago I thought of an idea for an affiliate site. Naturally, the first thing I did after conceiving the idea was a search for available domain names. I couldn’t find a good .COM one. The .NET domain was also taken, and it was only the .ORG one that I could buy. But because of (a) the lack of time to start working on this new project right away (I’ve purchased domains in the past, sat on them for a year, and then, having no time to work on them, released them… and didn’t want this to happen to this one), and (b) the assumption that no one would want the .ORG version anyway, I procrastinated with the domain registration. Next thing I know — the domain is registered by someone else! Yes, the .ORG version that I was certain no one needs!

Immediately after finding this out I tweeted about it, and also posted this on my Facebook wall:

No, this wasn’t the first time I saw this happen. You search for domains, find some good ones, but put the final purchase decision off until tomorrow, but tomorrow some of them aren’t available any longer…

The replies I received on my Facebook wall have clarified many things. Here are just a few of them:

“My understanding is that most registrars have a deal with major domainers: any new domains that are checked for availability but not bought are passed to the domainers. They’re able to keep them for 30 days without paying to see if they attract traffic. If they do, the domainer keeps them. If not, they get thrown back. Happens all the time. If you look up a domain, you have to buy it immediately.” ~ Chris Trayhorn

“Always a great test to see if the names you just researched were magically unavailable moments later. I used to see this at [domain registrar name here] and Chris brings up an interesting point. They are in the business to sell domains and wonder how fast that data could pass to the domainers.” ~ Michael Vorel

“A few months ago I noticed a search in my logs for a domain very near one of mine. Then I was offered that same domain a few days later. Was bothered by email for several days as they thought I’d be interested. After another week it came back to the market and then I bought it.” ~ Herb Breese

“This type of stuff has been happening for years now.” ~ Vinny O’Hare

What Chris Trayhorn is mentioning above is eye-opening to me. He has also sent me a link to an interesting article at CNN Money gives an overview of the tricks that domainers use, as well as the arrangements they have with domain registrars. Here it is: The man who owns the Internet.

It seems that with domains then it’s not the early bird that gets the worm, but the bird that’s faster, better prepared/equipped, and has the right connections.

Lessons learned:

1) When searching for a domain name, don’t use the registrars that are being suspected of special arrangements with domains (not listing any names here, but they are easily-retrievable through search)

2) If you see a good domain that’s available, snatch it! Don’t procrastinate.

It isn’t unusual to see the following affiliate paid search policy set out and enforced by a merchant:

In the vast majority of cases the above PPC policy is one of those best practices that every affiliate program should implement. The reason is obvious: such affiliate activity adds no value to the merchant, and serves a purely parasitic purpose.

The sole purpose of such activity is to divert the trademark traffic to go through affiliate links/ads first. This sets an affiliate cookie on the end user’s machine, and should the latter place a sale/lead through within the cookie life duration, the trademark bidding affiliate will earn the commission on that sale/lead [more here]

Now, imagine my surprise when I see the same merchant (whose paid search restrictions I’ve started this post with) having the following affiliates (highlighted) on board:

If you go to page 2 of Google results for the above-shown key phrase, you’ll actually see more of similar affiliate websites — those with keyword-rich domain names where one of the “keywords” is the merchants trade name.

How is this different from paid search trademark poaching? It isn’t.

I blogged about the trademark use in affiliate domain names. But what about subdomains?

Amazon, for example, deems it “unsuitable” for affiliate websites to:

…include any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain name — for example, a domain name such as “amazon.mydomain.com”, “amaozn.com”, “amazonauctions.net”, “facebook.com/amazondealsgroup,” “endlessboots.com,” “endless.mydomain.com”, “endlss.com,” “kindlemagazines.mydomain.info,” or “kindlewirelessreader.co.uk”…

What about other affiliate programs? I’ve polled affiliate program managers and merchants, and regardless of the fact that not too many people took part in the poll, the results already look quite interesting:

If you haven’t yet participated in this poll, I would highly appreciate your vote too.

In the meantime, it does look somewhat strange that while the majority of affiliate programs out there do prohibit the use of their trademarks in domain names, they are okay with the use of them in affiliate subdomains. Most of the participants of this discussion [as well as this blogger, and many here as well] for example, believe that subdomains are treated and indexed as separate websites. Shouldn’t the rules for affiliate use of trademarks in subdomains and subfolders be the same as the rules for domains?

Definitions first: lawyer Kelly M. Slavitt, in her Protecting Your Intellectual Property from Domain Name Typosquatters article, wrote:

Cybersquatters register domain names based on a company’s trademarks and then attempt to extort payment from the actual trademark owner in exchange for returning use of the domain name…

Typosquatters are a variation on cybersquatters, but the motive of both is the same: to profit by trading off of the goodwill of intellectual property assets established by rightful owners.

Typosquatters register intentionally misspelled domain name variations of the actual company’s trademark. The typosquatter profits by directing traffic away from the actual Web site to the typosquatter’s rogue site.

Affiliate program manages and online advertisers in general are overwhelmingly against the use of trademarked names in affiliate/publisher’s domains. The same stance is being taken against typosquatters as well.

Now, let’s take this one step further, and look at company (an affiliate/publisher with some of the major European and U.S. affiliate networks) that cashes in on mistyped domains in a different way. I am referring to Barefruit:

Barefruit has partnered with major Internet service providers and portals to develop a system whereby mistyped domain names do not land nowhere, but the end user sees a page with sponsored listings instead. The revenue (which frequently stems from an affiliate marketing relationship) is thereafter split between Barefruit and its partners.

Isn’t this just another form of affiliate marketing parasitism as my friend Donk has pointed out here? It certainly does look like one to me.

Wikipedia’s article on Barefruit quotes some interesting statistics:

Network Solutions has indicated in the past error traffic makes up up to 20% of total network traffic and of that NXD (i.e. Non Existent Domain) errors make up as much as 15% in addition Google recently indicated that 404 HTTP errors alone account for 6.96% of published pages on average of the 11.5 billion web pages currently on the web. These huge volumes has stimulated significant interest in monetising this “lost” traffic.

The fact that there is a market for it, does not mean that it’s okay. There are huge markets for trademark bidding, downloadable toolbars, comprehensive coupon aggregation (even at the expense of theft of exclusive affiliate-specific coupons), etc. But this neither makes these practices ethical, nor valuable for the industry. The essence of Barefruit’s approach is really no different from that of a typosquatter.

Obviously, there is another take on all of this, as nearly every major UK-based affiliate network works with Barefruit. Am I missing something (apart from the financial component, of course)?

Related Articles & Discussions:

• Anyone Heard of Barefruit? (discussion)  <– a must read
• Is Barefruit Good for the Internet?
• Google Profits From Typo Squatting, Report Charges
• Is This Typosquatting? (discussion)
• ISP Network Analyzing Tactics
• Comcast Starts Typosquatting Domain Names

A merchant has just asked:

I have an affiliate that just registered “trademarknameproducttype.com” and is going to start marketing our new [trademark name] product line. Is this acceptable? I know he’s doing marketing for us, however he’s using our trademarked name.

The intent of the above-quoted affiliate is obvious — to get the traffic which would search specifically for the merchant’s trademarked brand in combination with a popular keyword for the type of product. Keeping in mind that most search engines love keyword-rich domains [see this post and this poll, for example], the above scenario is really no different from trademark bidding in paid search. Just as it is with TM PPC bidding, the merchant should answer the following two simple questions:

• Does this affiliate marketing method add value?
• Can it generate incremental business/sales?

If the answer to any of the above two questions is negative, then there is no reason to allow this in your affiliate program. You also want to spell this restriction out in your program’s TOS.

Almost three weeks have passed since I have blogged about keyword-rich domains as a part of the peel-the-inventory method, but after reading today’s post on the topic by Ann Smarty, I have decided to single this one idea out, and write about it separately. I have seen this method working for my translation website, and apparently other people are seeing this tactic working well in other contexts as well. It is therefore my belief that affiliates should be utilizing this more frequently, putting together niche websites focused on highly-searched-for key phrases.

Ann wrote that “search engines are reported (or rather expected) to be putting less and less emphasis on keywords in domain names” to exclude spammer abuse of the long-tail domains technique, and she also points out that “today it is almost impossible to get hold of any ‘exact match’ domains that  wouldn’t be too long or pointless”. However, after conducting her little experiment, she has noticed that, in reality, search engines do love keyword-rich domains. Additionally, I would like to add that with a bit of extra research it is still possible to find good long-tail domains. Based on my personal experience I have voted for option 1 on her poll “How much weight do keywords in domains have?” and I highly recommend affiliates to start experimenting with this idea.