BumbleSoft

Snap Names Refund Offer

gerry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:03:35 +0000

SnapName internal employee caught illegally sniping bids since 2005 from customers for personal gain.

So, I just Received this email…

I guess this is really only a big deal if you’re an Internet Marketing geek like me or are into domain flipping and buy a lot of domains or have in the past. I’ve bid on tons of expiring domains using this and similar services like tdnom, pool, etc only to have them snagged away from me.

But, in the back of my mind I’ve always wondered if some employee is setting back there in the darkest corner of the office after everybody else goes home, snagging the best domains up for himself. How hard could it be, right?

They all told me I was craaazy.

Well, I was right, bichez! Ha!

But, seriously, Snapnames seems to be doing the honorable thing.

Here’s the email that we just received…

Dear SnapNames customer:

I’m contacting you today to inform you of an unfortunate incident at SnapNames, and to let you know what the company is doing to address it.

Recently, SnapNames discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid in SnapNames auctions. This is a clear violation of our internal policy and was not approved by the company. We deeply regret that this conduct has impacted our customers.

Extent of impact

This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions:

* Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
* The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005.

No matter the level of impact, SnapNames takes this matter extremely seriously. When the matter was discovered, the company immediately closed the account in question and began a thorough investigation. The employee has also been dismissed from the company.

SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.

Remedy to affected customers

Though on some occasions the employee won the auction, in many instances the bidding caused the ultimate auction winner to pay more for a name than had the employee not participated in the auction.

SnapNames neither condones this conduct nor wants to be perceived as benefiting from the conduct. Accordingly, we have decided that regardless of the circumstance, in every auction where the employee’s fictitious account submitted a bid which resulted in a higher price being paid by the winning bidder, SnapNames will offer a rebate, with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions. The rebate will be available in cash or in credit on the SnapNames platform, at your discretion.

SnapNames has moved quickly to address this situation. The company has retained Rust Consulting, an independent third party, who will administer the rebate offer. Within the next week, Rust Consulting will contact affected customers to provide details regarding the offer.

Your business and ongoing relationship are important to us and we can assure you that we have taken all necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the platform and reinforced controls and procedures to avoid any possibility of further breach. These include:

* Enhanced monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior
* Additional controls over financial transactions
* Specific domain name registration policies for employees

In the meantime, if you have any questions, you may consult the FAQs here, or contact the SnapNames support team:

By e-mail: support@snapnames.com

Phone: +1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

SnapNames, and all in the Oversee family of companies, are deeply disappointed with this incident. Since its founding in 2000, SnapNames has been committed to the principles of fairness and trust; the company wants to assure customers—through both words and actions—that it remains committed to those principles.

Thank you again for your business, and for your ongoing trust in SnapNames.

Sincerely,

Jeff Kupietzky Craig Snyder
President and CEO General Manager, SnapNames.com

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Beamers Dallas

The Great SEO Domain Debate – .com .net .org .info

gerry — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:40:03 +0000

Which Domain Name is BEST for Top Rankings in Google?

It’s one of the most commonly asked questions from beginning webmasters across the net but one that no one seems to have a solid answer to.

The Question: From the top TLDs, which domain extension has superior SEO Value? Are they weighted equal in the eyes of Google?

The Theory: COM Good – INFO Bad

The most common response is probably that the SEO benefit of .com domains outweigh other TLDs. And, contrastly, .info domains are at the bottom of the spectrum, often considered to be spammers choice due to their cheap price tag, thereby making them equally disliked by Google and other search engines.

The Author’s Opinion

I think its up for debate but from what I’ve seen personally, .com is only truly superior for branding purposes. As far as SEO goes, they’re all pretty much the same. I’d still consider getting a good .com over a great .info because I like to always hold onto the idea of branding a site in case it takes off.

I had one domain I never thought would do well but a month or two later it was pulling $1000/day with little to no work and it stayed that way for 6-months. If it had been a brandable domain from the get go, it could have taken more hold and maybe be doing even better today. Alas, it left the Search Engines as fast as it got there and was never heard from again. Thanks, MSN algorithm change!

But, because Google, The King of Search Engines is also King of Secrets, nobody knows the answer to the forever weighed question.

The Experiment: A Live Study

The only real way to find out the answer to an ongoing debate is to introduce some empirical data into the equation. But, fact is, running tests like this take time and patience, two things most online marketers often lack!

But, the owner of the SEO Empire blog decided to run a little experiment of his own!

I’ve taken the liberty of pulling a little data for our readers. You can see the entire experiment at the following link…

http://seoempire.org/seo-test-11-com-vs-org-vs-net-vs-info/

The site author states his Google rankings from the test:

position 2 (.com)

position 3 = (.net)

position 5 = (.org)

position 10 = (.info)

…all with the same content put out approximately the same time, same wordpress blog template, etc. Only major variable being the domain TLD.

The experiment began during the end of July, 2009…

The Results: You be the Judge

All things remaining unchanged, we might have something to go off of, the only real variable left up to debate would then be the varying dates each domain was 1st published to the web and possible effects it may have on duplicate content penalties.

Overall results could have been more solid if all domain content had been published online at the exact same time, not days apart.

Also, the test doesn’t take into account possible backlinks and other off-page factors that might be tugging at the strings.

Now, 2 months later (Oct 2009), the scoring has changed…

.com = 3

.net = 4

.info = 5

.org = 9

Final Analysis

The one thing that appears remotely solid is that .com seems to be holding the top spot which is on queue with what the majority of SEO hobbyists and professionals alike, might expect.

If I based my opinion off of this test, it may result in a little added bump to my previous instinctual tendency to lean toward .coms but, not so much that I’d go all in and bet my whole stack of chips on it.

It would need quite a lot more testing to be 100% certain, a test group and all the angles covered, something this single test didn’t do. Still, its one step in the right direction.

Digging Deeper

I decided to do a little further testing on this just to be sure…

Upon running a backlink analysis comparing the 4 domains, here is what we found.

Number of Backlinks to each TLD

.com = 28

.net = 4

.info = 1

.org = 0

This would explain it pretty well IMHO.

The .com domain had backlinks pointing to it as early as January 2008, probably by a previous domain owner or some other unknown event. The .net domain picked up a link early on from another site and picked up a few more a month later and the .info never received a link at all from anyone, ever. Never ever.

Which raises another important point…

Brandability

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the real value of .com domains is the brandability that comes along with it.

Most web authors, bloggers and everyday Joe’s across social sites, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of ‘em, have become comfy with .coms. So, when they link, they link to .coms.

With Google, backlinks are the most important factor of all and if I had to bet the farm on any theory, that would be my take.

So, rather than worrying about which spamtastic domain extension you want to drop in your cart next time you visit godaddy, just remember, get something brandable. The price tag may be a couple dollars more but, the payoff may be well worth it.

By the way, I also find that Namecheap is much more affordable than Godaddy providing you are like me and religiously use private registration. With Godaddy I believe that runs an extra $9/yr or so. With Namecheap, its free! :)