Introducing Drop.com.au - Domain Catch Specialists
A new and exciting internet brand has launched today in Australia. drop.com.au is a new domain business by Dark Blue Sea (most commonly known for their Fabulous.com and FabulousDomains.com brands) and is set to shake up the Australian Domain Industry with it’s domain catch platform.
This exciting new brand offers a domain catching service, allowing participants to re-register expired domain names the instant they are deleted and purged from the registry.
The service runs on technology previously used by the successful registrar Domain8, to catch deleted .au Domain Names, and operates on week-days when the registry releases the expired domains and makes them available for registration.
Catching is the process of re-registering a domain after it deleted and made available again for registration. The drop.com.au system monitors the registry for the randomised purge, and continuously attempts to register the name until it has been caught. The registration process is completed literally within milliseconds of becoming available.
Interested parties are required to bid on the name they would like to register on the morning of the day when the “drops” occurs (a “drop” is the process of a domain name being deleted & purged from the registry) and as in all auctions, the highest bidder at auction close wins the “right to catch”.
Over the past 6 months, drop-catch services such as this have yielded some very valuable domain assets including printing.com.au (which was picked up for a meager $A 9221.00) and many other high value domain names going for as low as a single dollar (plus registration costs).
The drop.com.au service does not guarantee 100% success, but sources at DBS indicate that drop.com.au should perform with 85% success-rate and higher, which is a good result considering other players have also been taking part, officially or otherwise, for the past 2 years or so.
In addition to the Drop-Catch platform, drop.com.au also plans to introduce many new services aimed at the domain investment market. Hopefully a new after-market service is one of these services, because it is certainly lacking in the industry. Aftermarket services for the uninitiated, allow people to buy and sell .AU domains.
Domain trading is a relatively new concept in Australia, with the regulator of .AU domain names only laxing it’s policy on transfers between registrants (the ability to trade a name) in June 2008. There are only a few players in this space, including the rather expensive NetFleet.
Given FabulousDomains.com’s experience in the International Domain Space with it’s Domain Distribution Network (listing over 600,000 international domains for trade), it is a certainty that Dark Blue Sea is capable of providing a superior offering in the Australian Domain After-Market, and Search News will be watching in anticipation of their growth and success, and many of the other innovative tools they promise to bring to the domain name industry.
Visit the newly launched website today: www.drop.com.au
Another Insurer Mis-using Google’s Trademark
Earlier we brought you news of an Australian Insurance company; budget direct mis-using Google’s trademark in it’s advertising. The ad is still on air, but the audio has been replaced and the reference to “Google” was removed shortly after.
Now it seems another insurance company is using Google in it’s advertising, Allianz, with the term “Just Google Allianz”, and also featured a screenshot of the Google homepage being used to type in the name “allianz”.
I’m sure that Google’s lawyers will be on the case once again, but what is becoming increasingly frustrating with these advertising campaigns, apart from annoying Google’s IP lawyers; is they do little to educate their audience or raise awareness of their brand and website name.
Promotion of a website and educating the audience can have many benefits, least of which would save the advertiser money, as they remove the search engine from the equation, where there is a high chance the user will see competing websites or adverts, resulting in a lost customer.
Even if Alliance were to have the user click on their ad, the cost of that click could be as much as $3.00.
Had the advertisement said “log on to www.allianz.com.au” they would be re-enforcing the website name, and encouraging users to enter a website URL, rather than relying exclusively on a search engine to reference or find information, which is creating a generation of lazy internet users.
One of the key rules of Online Marketing is to present your customer with the right information in the shortest possible time to help them make an informed decision and then get on with what they were doing. Adding a search engine in the process of delivering that information, when you’ve already run a TV ad campaign might not be the best way of achieving that end.
Google It! - Budget Direct mis-use Google’s name
A new advertising campaign on Melbourne Television tonight for the car insurance company Budget Direct, is mis-using Google’s name.
Or so one would anticipate, once Google’s lawyers get wind of the incident.
Budget’s popular series of adverts feature a young woman with a French accent advising how you can save on Car Insurance by Calling “Boo-Jet”. The young lady is then corrected by an Australian man “That’s Budget, Love”.
The most recent instalment of the ad sees the young lady telling our Australian friend to “Goo-gal it”, who corrects her and tells her to “Google it”.
Google has been a staunch defender of their brand name since the popular term was penned in TV series in the early 2000’s. Whilst flattering, and a sign of the Search Engine Giant’s success and popularity, Google is concerned such pop-culture references may result in the name no longer being protected under intellectual property laws, where brands such as “band-aid” and “Xeroxíng”get used in conversation to refer to sticking plasters that aren’t owned by the Jonson & Jonson (the owner of band-aid) and the copy device being used to photocopy not actually being a Xerox branded computer.
It is rather surprising and amusing that Budget Direct would use Google in such a context in their advertising, and it is either a deliberate attempt by Budget to gain some publicity (and a possibly costly legal suit), or an oversight by a marketing agency or advertiser, and if so very embarrassing, as any savvy advertiser should know of Google’s advertising and usage guidelines.
Either way, Search Engine News is almost certain that Google and Budget Direct will be in the courts soon.
So, it’s been a while
It’s been quiet on the Searchnews.net.au pages, but most definitely not in the world of search engine news.
We’ll be putting some juicy search engine news up shortly, but here is just a quick re-cap of what has been going on in the world of search engines:
- Google announce Chrome Operating System, First aimed at NetPCs, then other laptop/desktop and server computers
- Bing Beta, Microsofts secret search engine effort code-named Kumo goes live
- Tech stocks have been all over the place in the GFC, but seem to be gaining strength after advertising results showed an increase in online advertising confidence.
- Microsoft is again considering a buyout of Yahoo!
- Yahoo! has made some changes to it’s home page
Stay tuned to Search News for more exciting news and updates.