Update: LeadRefs no longer exists and has been taken down.

For those who like to do affiliate marketing, buying domains is a familiar subject. You never know what set of keywords will be the next big thing, so you buy several domains with several different combinations of keywords. Many affiliate marketers buy tons, and tons of these types of domains, and work to get those domains ranked in the search engines. Oftentimes, the domains can be used for highly targeted niche sites, and some can even be flipped for a profit. But then there are times when you own a domain that you can’t figure out anything useful for it, and you don’t have an immediate buyer for. This is the kind of problem that LeadRefs.com can help solve. [Read more…]

Google has decided to retire the “hosted domains” product that they have through the Google AdSense program. According to an email directly from the Google AdSense team, they have evaluated the benefits of their partner network and decided to retire the Hosted Domains program with Google AdSense. [Read more…]

As Danny Sullivan reported a while back, Microsoft has been testing and playing around with a new brand, called Kumo. As he reported, when you went to Kumo.com there used to be an actual search engine there, that looked a lot like today’s Bing.com. However, what I find very interesting to note: You can no longer search at Kumo.com. In fact, when you go to Kumo.com now, it redirects to Bing.com. [Read more…]

BabyCenter has revealed the most popular baby names of 2011. I am not surprised by the names–and even had a relative with a new baby this year name her baby Chloe, which made the list this year. Here is the list of the most popular baby names of 2011: [Read more…]

Most likely a result of Facebook having sued a whole lot of cyber-squatters recently, Facebook has recovered 44 domain names that are typos of the Facebook brand. As you might recall, if you are a regular reader of my blog, I previously reported about Facebook suing a group of domain name cyber squatters, people who owned typos of the Facebook.com domain name. [Read more…]

On a regular basis, I watch the domain names that Google registers, as sometimes it is an indication of things to come–sometimes the registration of a domain name may indicate a future project. It is interesting to note that Google today registered a lot of typo domain names related to Google Analytics, their web analytics service. [Read more…]

Networks Solutions, a popular domain name registrar, revealed the real identity of the domain name owner even though the domain name owner had opted-in and paid for their domain name privacy service. When a domain name is registered, buyers have the option of paying $9.99 per year extra to keep their domain name ownership private. But a loophole in Network Solutions’ own domain name management system reveals the real owner of any domain name, even those who wish to keep their names private. [Read more…]

After a few years of collecting, using, developing and parking domain names, I have decided to auction more domain names this week using Godaddy’s aftermarket domain name auctions. There are a few pharmacy-related domain names, including DallasPharmacies.com, AirportPharmacies.com, and even AustraliaPharmacies.com. [Read more…]

Facebook, the social network, has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California, claiming trademark infringement. The case, “Facebook, Inc. v. Cyber2Media, Inc. et al”, involves a lot of domain names, which are essentially “typos” and other names that closely related to the Facebook.com domain name. [Read more…]

Google, in an effort to protect their interests in their new Google+ Plus social network, has recently acquired the International Domain Name (IDN) +.com, also known as xn--dra.com. The problem here is that xn--dra.com (+.com) is an illegal domain name–the domain name violates IDNA2008, as published by IETF. [Read more…]