DomainsBot takes its new gTLD spinner to registries

DomainsBot has started promoting its domain name suggestion services to new gTLD registries.
Announced today, its new TLD Recommendation Engine for Registries is designed to make TLD suggestions more relevant when people are hunting for a new domain name.
It’s a sister service to the TLD Recommendation Engine for Registrars that, as we reported last week, DomainsBot hopes to have in place on many of the major registrars’ storefronts when new gTLDs launch.
After last week’s news, Domain Name Wire did a test of its demo and found it lacking in certain areas, such as failing to offer a .accountant domain to a query containing “CPA”.
DomainsBot CEO Emiliano Pasqualetti told DI that the service being announced today will help TLD registries avoid this kind of problem.
In consultation with DomainsBot, they’ll be able to more accurately define the meaning of their TLD string, improving the relevancy of DomainsBot’s results and potentially not missing out on sales.
Under the hood, it’s based on a database of all the existing second-level domains in existence today. DomainsBot wants to connect each second-level string to relevant results in new gTLDs.
“My goal is to pre-classify every existing second-level domain before new gTLDs go live,” Pasqualetti said.
The service is not free, of course. The cheapest tier has an introductory price of $1,000 per month, which Pasqualetti said will go up in future.
It’s “pay for relevancy” rather than “pay for display”, he said. “I’m not saying if you pay me I will display .cpa every time.”
MinardosGroup, which has applied for .build, .construction and .expert, has already signed on to use the service, according to a DomainsBot press release.

Report names and shames most-abused TLDs

Newish gTLDs .tel and .xxx are among the most secure top-level domains, while .cn and .pw are the most risky.
That’s according to new gTLD services provider Architelos, which today published a report analyzing the prevalence of abuse in each TLD.
Assigning an “abuse per million domains” score to each TLD, the company found .tel the safest with 0 and .cn the riskiest, with a score of 30,406.
Recently relaunched .pw, which has had serious problems with spammers, came in just behind .cn, with a score of 30,151.
Generally, the results seem to confirm that the more tightly controlled the registration process and the more expensive the domain, the less likely it is to see abuse.
Norway’s .no and ICM Registry’s .xxx scored 17 and 27, for example.
Surprisingly, the free ccTLD for Tokelau, .tk, which is now the second-largest TLD in the world, had only 224 abusive domains per million under management, according to the report..
Today’s report ranked TLDs with over 100,000 names under management. Over 90% of the abusive domains used to calculate the scores were related to spam, rather than anything more nefarious.
The data was compiled from Architelos’ NameSentry service, which aggregates abusive URLs from numerous third-party sources and tallies up the number of times each TLD appears.
The methodology is very similar to the one DI PRO uses in TLD Health Check, but Architelos uses more data sources. NameSentry is also designed to automate the remediation workflow for registries.

See all new gTLD withdrawls and Initial Evaluation results in a handy timeline

From today, DI PRO users have a new feature for tracking new gTLD withdrawals that removes the huge pain and inconvenience of actually having to read DI and other domain blogs.
It’s been the mostly commonly requested feature over the last couple of weeks, and we’re happy to oblige.
The New gTLD Program Timeline lists all withdrawals, evaluation results and other major changes to application status, in chronological order.
There are over 1,100 entries in the database so far, going back to August 2012. Withdrawals are automatically updated daily, IE results weekly on Friday evenings UTC.
It’s designed for utility. Here’s a screen grab:

To join the growing ranks of DI PRO subscribers click here. Subscribers also get access to the following tools and searchable databases:
Daily new gTLD program stats, searchable Initial Evaluation scores, the most comprehensive and flexible database of gTLD applications available anywhere, and much more.

Tickets on sale for newdomains.org conference

After a year’s hiatus, the newdomains.org conference organized by United-Domains is back this October.
Registration has now opened for the two-day event, which is entirely focused on the new gTLD market. The agenda is still forming and United is looking for speakers.
The conference will take place in Munich at the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost hotel from October 28 to 29. Unlike the 2011 event, I believe this time the official Oktoberfest jollities will be over.
Early bird registration comes to €583 ($780) when you include VAT. Prices go up to €821 July 15.
Afilias, Verisign, Donuts, PIR, InternetX, Sedo, Nic.at have already signed up to sponsor.
While in 2011 newdomains had to compete with .nxt for your new gTLD conference dollar, this time it’s competing with Momentum’s gTLD Strategy Congress, coming to London in September.
Like .nxt, the first newdomains.org suffered from coming before the Big Reveal and became a bit of a vendor echo chamber as a result, but was nevertheless a breath of fresh air compared to ICANN meetings.
By October we might have seen the first new gTLDs go live, so this year it will likely be a different story. DI will be in attendance.

Get live new gTLD program stats

Today DI PRO is launching a new live dashboard for new gTLD program statistics.
The idea is to give users quick and easy access to key program metrics.
Want to know the maximum number of gTLDs that can be delegated in the current round? It’s 1,365.
Want to know how many contention sets remain? It’s 222.
Want to know how many how many applications have failed Initial Evaluation? It’s 4.
Here’s a partial screenshot:

While almost all of this data has been easily accessible via the DI PRO New gTLD Application Tracker for months, the new Live Stats interface provides a quicker, at-a-glance view.
All the stats are generated live from the DI PRO database, which is updated at least once a day with the current status of all 1,930 new gTLD applications. New IE results are added Fridays at 8pm UTC.
What’s more, users can drill down into detailed search results by clicking the stat they’re interested in.
User previews have been positive, but we’re always open to suggestions if there’s a stat you’d like to see included.
Subscribers can check it out here: Live New gTLD Stats.

Donuts loses five of the first six new gTLD auctions

The full results of the first six new gTLD auctions are now known. Donuts lost five of them, raising millions of dollars in the process.
Here are the winners of last week’s auctions, which were managed by Innovative Auctions:

• .club — .CLUB Domains.
• .college — XYZ.COM.
• .luxury — Luxury Partners.
• .photography — Donuts.
• .red — Afilias.
• .vote — Monolith Registry

Five of the six were a two-way battles between Donuts, which has applied for 307 gTLDs, and one other applicant. Each of the losing applicants has now withdrawn its application with ICANN.
The exception is .club, a three-way fight that included Merchant Law Group. Neither losing application has been withdrawn with ICANN yet, but the result it well-known.
Innovative revealed last week that the round raised $9.01 million in total. The winning bids for each auction were not disclosed.
Given that Donuts managed to lose five out of the six, it’s a fairly safe assumption that most of that money will have gone into its war chest, which can be used in future auctions.
Of the five applications it has now withdrawn, only .red had already passed its Initial Evaluation, so the company will have also clawed back a $130,000 ICANN refund on each of the other four.
The auctions mean that we now know with a high degree of certainty which companies are going to be running these six gTLDs.
Most of them have not yet passed IE, but with the success rate so high to date I wouldn’t expect to see any failures. None of them are subject to objections or direct GAC Advice.

A little iCal tool that might make your ICANN life a little easier

I’ve created a little free service that might make it a little easier for regular participants in ICANN public comment periods to keep track of deadlines.
It’s basically an iCal feed that should automatically update your online calendar whenever a new comment period is created or extended by ICANN.
This is the link: http://domainincite.com/pro/publiccommentcalendar.php
If you click it you’ll see it attempts to download a .ics (iCal) file to your computer. The contents are automatically created, daily, based on whatever deadlines ICANN has published on its web site.
If you use Google Calendar (as I do) you can add the calendar to your existing calendars by clicking the “Other calendars” drop-down in the Google Calendar sidebar, then “Add by URL”.
My Apple-using guinea pigs tell me that the same functionality is possible with the Mac’s built in Calendar software, by clicking on “File” and “New Calendar Subscription”.
It seems to work with Yahoo! Calendar too.
Subscribing should immediately add the 30-odd current public comment deadlines to your calendar, automatically adjusted to your time zone.
With Google Calendar, the entries are easy enough to remove if you don’t like what you see. I expect the same is true in other software.
If it’s working properly, updates should be automatically reflected in your calendar on a daily basis.
It hasn’t been tested on any other platforms yet, but iCal seems to be a widely-embraced technical standard so I can’t see why it won’t work everywhere.
As you may be able to tell, I’m providing this service for free very much “as is”. If ICANN changes the layout of it its web site or my code is dodgy, it will stop working properly.
In other words, if it breaks and you miss a deadline, don’t blame me.
But if it does work and it makes keeping track of things a little simpler, feel free to buy me a pint.
Bug reports, suggestions and grovelling thanks to the usual address.

Bill Sweetman goes “ninja” with new consulting firm

Bill Sweetman, who recently resigned as head of Tucows’ domain portfolio business, has reemerged with his own “boutique” consulting firm, Name Ninja.
Sweetman said in a press release that the new company “will focus on domain name acquisition (buyer broker), domain name rescue, domain name protection, corporate domain name strategy, and domain name portfolio management.”
He also hopes to help new gTLD registries with their premium name allocation strategies.
You can find the new firm at NameNinja.com.

Blow to domainers as Arab center approved to settle cybersquatting disputes

ICANN has approved a new UDRP resolution provider, the first to be based in the Arab region, despite the objections of domainers.
The Arab Center for Dispute Resolution will now be able to service UDRP complaints. But it won’t be bound to an ICANN contract, as had been demanded by the Internet Commerce Association and others.
The ACDR was approved by the ICANN board last week, almost three years after it originally applied for the privilege.
The board said in its rationale that the move would be good for geographic diversity and that its rigorous community review process highlighted community accountability.
On the issue of UDRP provider contracts, it merely noted:

commenters suggested that ICANN develop contracts with each of its UDRP providers as a means to require uniformity among providers. Contracts have never been required of UDRP providers.
…
the proposal now includes an affirmative recognition that if ICANN imposes further requirements on providers, the ACDR will follow those requirements

The ACDR will come as a knock to the ICA, which recently celebrated the fact that ICANN intends to have formal contracts with providers of Uniform Rapid Suspension services.

Fly9 offers services to simplify new gTLD sales

Portland-based developer Fly9 launched last week, offering new gTLD registries a broad range of software designed to make it easier to sell domain names.
The company, founded by SnapNames and Afilias alum Ravi Surya, hopes its platform will help new gTLD operators tap into registrars’ customer bases in a soon-to-be-flooded market.
“The problem with new TLDs is they’ll all depend on registrars, but the registrars are all busy selling other things, like hosting, they’re not interested in selling your TLD,” Surya said.
For a start-up, only just coming out of stealth mode, three-year-old Fly9 seems to have an awful lot of products with an awful lot of features, judging by a quick demo we saw last week.
Perhaps most interesting is the core TLD Distribution Platform. It’s a software service designed to plug the gap between the registry back-end and the registrar/reseller and simplify channel management.
The idea is to make it easier for newbie registry operators to leverage registrars’ marketing clout, but without asking the registrar to do a lot of technical integration work.
Say you’ve been awarded .pumpkins by ICANN. It’s a niche TLD and registrars — spoiled for choice in a world of 500 new gTLDs — aren’t exactly clamoring to sign up to offer it.
Fly9’s service would enable you to give these registrars a way to very quickly start selling .pumpkin domains, using their own registrar accreditation and payment systems but using Fly9’s hosted, white-label microsite.
According to Surya, registry managers can use the service to sign up registrars as little as five minutes. Adding branding and customizing the site for the registrar would obviously take longer.
Registries can also elect to use Fly9’s partner registrar, NameSystem, and create a channel of resellers instead.
The Fly9 suite also includes services for handling pre-registrations, sunrise periods, and premium domain auctions and Surya said the service can also handle EPP extensions for restricted gTLDs.
Pricing is based on transaction volume, but the software has already been licensed to two major back-end registry technical providers, which Surya said he could not yet name.
LogicBoxes and Architelos are among those offering software services for new gTLD management, but I’d be hard pressed to think of another company doing precisely what Fly9 is right now.