Old but great quote from Kieren McCarthy on the very strange world of IDNs, those “international” domains made up of characters not found in the typical “English” keyboard:

One of the things about researching IDNs is it makes you feel so uneducated….When you start looking at the issue at IDNs though, you realise that even your best languages skills often aren’t up to the job. I kinda like that. I love feeling stupid. Reminds you to keep learning and to never start believing you’re wise about anything, just slightly better informed than you were.

I totally agree. And I add, researching IDNs in *any* language other than the one or two you grew up with will show you quite clearly just how “clever” the domainer mind really is. We tend to take for granted how easily we “just know” that foldingchairs.com is worth more than foldingchair.com, and deckchair.com or patiochair.com are worth more than ChaiseLounge.com, yet that determination is actually non-trivial.

Hat-tip to successful domainers - you’re brilliant. And for the rest, there is still hope, right?

TAM Airlines (TAM) is the largest airline in Brazil, and has been expanding operations. They used to compete with Varig in Brazil, which owns Varig.com as well as Varig.com.br, the Brazilian equivalent, and GOL. Airline web sites are notoriously badly configured for SEO, and these are not exceptions, but TAM airlines doesn’t even own TAM.com. For a major airlines, this is very unusual.

American Airlines naturally owns AA.com. British Airways secured BA.com. Japan Airlines, known as JAL, naturally owns JAL.com. They also own the necessary variants of their names, such as AmericanAirlines.com, and BritishAirways.com.

Looking further, Dutch airline KLM of course secured KLM.com, their natural domain. Northwest Airlines can be found at NWA.com. Even South American airline Lan Airline has secured lan.com for itself, which must have been difficult given the generic value of LAN in the computer field (local area network — the domain surely had very high value). Truth is, if you are competing in the global travel space, you simply MUST secure your brand as the customer perceives it. Most airlines know that.

The Polish airline LOT Polish Airlines owns LOT.com, another strong generic domain that had high value to others. LOT knows the value of that domain as a brand. Delta Airlines is found at Delta.com, despite hundreds of non-airline businesses operating under strong Delta trademarks. Continental Airlines owns Continental.com, even though there are very major companies in other industries also operating with the name “Continental”. Why do you think Continental Airlines owns it? If you are a serious airline, you simply must own your name, no? If you visit a page of the Airline Blog that covers Brazil, you will see numerous contextual ads from travel agents and travel companies putting the TAM brand right in front of the consumers. Do they know the value of the TAM brand more than TAM airlines?

So TAM Airlines doesn’t know this? Or maybe doesn’t care. I would find it very hard to believe that the IT systems company near “Mount Tam” in California, the current registrant of TAM.com, would hold out for a higher price than a major International Airline could afford for an exact-match, 3 letter dot com. I don’t know the owner of TAM.com so I can’t be sure, but seriously… if Pizza.com went for just over 2 million, how could a 3 letter exact match for a significant International airline be too expensive to buy out from a small IT company? The online Pizza business last year was billion$ strong, and expected to double in the near term. Anyone could launch into that revenue stream immediately with a 2+ million dollar purchase of THE generic domain in that market. That’s less than the cost of producing a SuperBowl ad, and there was no trademark at risk. For TAM Airlines, with TAM.com an exact trademark match as well as a consumer brand match across languages, it must be worth buying, no?

United Airlines owns United.com, as we would expect although honestly I would not be surprised to learn someone else owned United.com since it is so generic and such a common trade moniker. Yet, United Airlines owns it. Smart move, or simply an essential necessity? Southwest Airlines owns Southwest.com. Swiss International Airlines owns Swiss.com. Spain’s Iberia Airlines owns Iberia.com. I personally know 2 restaurants in high-tech neighborhoods with that name. There’s no way the name wasn’t an early target for many companies. The United Arab Emirates airline “Emirates” is, of course, at Emirates.com. Australia’s Qantas Airways owns Qantas.com, of course, right? They were also smart enough to get Quantas.com, which is how I know them because my language doesn’t like Q’s without associated U’s.

Like I said I don’t know the TAM Airlines people nor the TAM.com registrant, but I think this expose of TAM airline’s sloppiness is a good reminder that companies should research their brand situations today, rather than tomorrow. I’m betting a handful of domain investors will call the current owner of TAM.com now, looking to bet that it has unrealized potential.

We have a joke here in our offices about domain name valuation. When a client says “We don’t have our brand as a domain name, but we want to try to acquire it. How much is it worth?” the only answer we can give is “We can’t say for sure, but it’s worth more today than it was yesterday“.

Think Tank is happening and I am now looking forward to it. I can personally vouch for the quality of Dave Klein (DK), who has put this together. He ran a charity poker tournament last fall that was nothing short of great, and several off us encouraged him to follow his instincts after he suggested he would like to host a quality gathering of movers and shakers in this Internet industry. I have full confidence, and I just signed up without hesitation. Those who know me know that is a rare thing.

Serious domainers looking at developing their empires should consider this meeting. I expect it to be on a par with T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Miami last year in terms of the quality of the invitation-only participants, with a focus on empire building using this Internet thing, as opposed to any specific aspect of that (such as SEO or domaining). I can think of a dozen of you who would both contribute and benefit from this meeting, as it is planned. It’s in a quality location, run by a quality host, who is the real deal when it comes to no b.s. this-stuff-matters. No sessions, no speakers, and a non-disclosure requirement. Good stuff.

If you didn’t get invited just follow these steps and tell DK why you belong. Be specific and don’t hold back - if you move millions of eyeballs per day let him know. If you own or monetize premium domains let him know… something like “I’m an entrepreneur and I have a thousand domains” will not get you past the cut, so don’t be shy and tell Dave just why you expect yourself to be considered valuable to the other attendees. If you know me personally and think it will help, tell him how you know me and then continue to make your case. Rest assured that simply knowing me will not be enough!

I think I share a vision that we’re all in this to meet up, listen and share ideas to make good things happen. DK has planned this as NOT an elitist event, but one that is indeed limited to the people who will make it an effective, productive, and inspiring experience for all of us who attend. As an attendee I myself want it to be inclusive of the brightest minds, the freshest thinkers, and the people who don’t just talk the talk but have and continue to make things happen on the web. As far as I know this is a full-boat, invitation-only event which means nobody’s sponsored and nobody’s participating to hawk their wares or write gossip columns..and DK has declared no audio or video at the event (too bad it had to be said, but I’m glad it was).

Most of the smartest people I know in this Internet entrepreneuring space are not in the SEO/Internet marketing industry, which is why I wrote this post. You know who you are. This event is billed as by and for Internet entrepreneurs, not just SEOs and marketers, so please consider hitting Dave early with an email, according to his request, to get an invitation. He’s a great guy and worthy of your consideration. I hope to see you there!

A security firm is releasing a report stating .hk, .cn, and .info domains are the most “dangerous” when it comes to threats of malware. Whether you like McAfee or not, search engines like Google and Yahoo and MSN are very likely to incoporate this “trust” factor into their operations, if they haven’t already done that. We know Google doesn’t like .info as much as .com, and this new “evidence” appears to confirm whatever rationale Google might give for that. I fully expect Google to have more data available on the topic than McAfee anyway.

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.

We had some SEO conversation on this at dinner last night, at a waterfront restaurant near the SMX conference center (it didn’t earn a mention by name). Our questions concerned the way that Google integrates links into its analysis of sites, and whether links have a direct contribution or an indirect contribution. My position is that Google maintains these signals of quality on a per-domain basis, and uses them to judge measurable factors such as links. So, a link will be trusted in proportion to the trust it has established for the two domains involved in the link. (Note I didn’t say linearly…) Ditto for age and other considerations… some of which are market or SERP (definition of SERP) based. Of course this is an oversimplification, as URLs with inbounds likely earn their own considerations, secondary to the hosting domain, but I basically view these signals as grading the measures… trust is applied to ranking factors.

So does it help to be on a .info toplevel domain? No. Does it hurt?

Think through for yourself, how you would deal with the real world if you were Google, and you knew that a “respectable” company like McAfee agreed with your own determinations that .hk domains are more than 3 times as likely to host malware as .com domains, even though there are fewer of them. At the very least, in times of trouble, you would err on the side of caution and not-trust-as-much those evidently less-trustworthy domains, right? If you had cause for concern, would you consider that bias? Probably. If you didn’t want to expose your own internal research as public justification, you can now refer to McAfee.

Yet the .info domain space, for example, has very ligitimate appeal to audiences worldwide. In some cases, a keyword-match .info site can compete with an established keyword .com at a small fraction of the domain acquisition cost. In some cases, a .info can be more valuable than the .com, to users, because the .info launches with real purpose and content while the .com is parked or otherwise undeveloped. But, and this is the strategic SEO part, that .info will need to cultivate an environment of trust (which will be applied to its signals of quality, such as links) in order to do well by Google.

This looks like an issue for the registrars of the TLDs. Maybe they need to work to maintain the integrity of their domain spaces, if they want them to maintain value in the real world, just as neighborhood associations work to uphold the property values in their own communites.

I think the real concern involves sketchy practices or even legitimate web publishing which may appear to be questionable, even if due to human bias. Religious and political sites, for example, where the humans are already unfairly biased against objectivity (some might say “blind”), should probably avoid the .hk and .cn top level domains when serving the non-local markets. I certainly wouldn’t publish an ad-supported chiropractor information site on a .info, if I had other options for more trusted tld’s (more trusted, in a post-McAfee report sense). But I would certainly be upset if my quality chiropractic .info website didn’t rank well simply because it was on the .info domain. Google already trusts blatantly anti-alternative medicine zealots, despite knowledge of their anti-quackery quackery, simply because many humans like to be contrarian, like to believe conspiracy theories, and like to support causes that sound like underdogs. This McAfee “study” provides more fuel for such trust claims, and people’s assignment of authority to such reports is a very real factor to consider, deserved or not.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/ap_on_hi_te/tec_dangerous_domains

http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/

How do you value a web site as an asset? If your company is closing down, what is the web site worth? Increasingly common questions, for which there are no standard answers. And there won’t be any “standard answers” for some time to come. That’s not how business works at this stage of the Internet development game. Oh sure there are sincere efforts underway to assign an estimated value to web properties, so that they can be sold and traded and perhaps most importantly insured, but that is not the same as assigning true values.

Estimating asset value is a process of managing risk through compromise and assumption and reliance upon safeguards via distributing the risk. As the system learns to manage the risk, it builds in the various factors needed to cushion itself against the various flaws in such an estimating process. Reward has to follow risk, and investment has to parallel that risk. The economic system where we work and play has to absorb the risk and pay out the profits. Our capitalist system seeks to externalize costs where risk is difficult to manage.. as painful as that may be for the uninitiated. Our system is getting ready to do that with web sites… but the real important number for buyers and sellers is the liquidity value - the price it would get if it were sold. Until we all have much more experience buying and selling web sites, no one can estimate what someone will pay right now for a web site. Only the buyer knows what he is willing to pay right now.

So you have this block of ice. And you are in Alaska. What is it worth?

A good salesman can sell ice to Eskimos, as the saying goes. Of course she can. In this case liquidity is probably a poor term to use (melted ice is no longer ice?) but the point is the same. The ice will sell for what someone is willing to pay. Otherwise, it has no value and may even come with a cost (it takes up space, absorbs heat, makes a mess, etc).

So if the ice has no value and maybe even comes at a cost, how does it get sold? The broker adds value by doing work. Find the buyer. Make the pitch to justify the value. Provide what is needed for the buyer to manage risk and see the potential. Help externalize the risk associated with disposing of the capital and assuming the asset. The key to selling a domain asset is selling, just as the key to selling ice in Alaska is selling. But selling is not simply talking. It is work. Due diligence. Technical work, market research, investigative work, legal work, and innovation. Did I mention innovation? Innovation is a form of risk…like an investment of time and effort. You remember that part I said earlier, where reward has to follow risk for the system to function?

Why is it that in Canada, almost every community ice arena is build next to a community pool complex? Build a community ice rink and you start throwing off heat into the atmosphere, because you draw heat out of water to make ice. Build that same arena adjacent to a swimming pool and you now have a heated pool for almost no additional cost. Why does the US keep building free-standing ice arenas and free-standing, unheated community pools?

A good SEO can turn a $9 domain into a $1000 month revenue generator, which some people say they can sell for 3-5 times annual revenues ($9 becomes $36,000). The amount of SEO work required probably has a real cost of $15,000 and a market value of $30,000. That’s why so many SEO talents build only for themselves (invest $15,009.00 and earn $36,000). There aren’t many investors paying $30k to build out a site that will sell for $36k at this time (there will be someday.. that’s a decent return if the risk is able to be managed). But there are so many other avenues for finding value that yes, many people are investing the $30k when they are able to see the value beyond that $36k market price — domain name appreciation, market leverage, added-value from a well-crafted portfolio, etc etc. And of course that broker issue - finding the buyer willing to pay 8.5x revenue instead of 3x revenue suddenly increases the profits by another $275,000. Scale these numbers as you see fit…

If you are holding a developed web site that has no value to the owners, hire a good domain broker and hire a good SEO consultant and start fresh in the business of selling that web site. Yes it requires an investment, because reward follows risk taking. But lucky for you, if the web site has potential, those players who can realize the potential for you (selling the ice to Eskimos) will do it for a cut of the sale (some of the ice). When you think about it, its like paying that ice salesman for her services, with some of the ice. Sounds like a no-brainer to me. The only real investment required is the time you spend mulling it over… while the ice is melting.

The DomainRoundTable Conference hosted Matt Cutts of Google and a panel of SEOs, to discuss search marketing and domaining. One topic of conversation afterwards was the value of keyword domains. Is a domain “better for SEO” if it contains exact match keywords?

Matt said yes, keywords in the URL can help rankings, but you don’t need that in order to rank. I would like to expand on that, as I understand it. Since I blogged about Matt’s comments, I have seen several SEO discussions online that I think demonstrate a lack of understanding of what matters with domain names (as relates to SEO) including Matt’s comments. Please comment if you have more to add, or can help me better understand your own knowledge or experience.

Consider the search user. If the searcher asks Google “where can I find books for sale online” by entering the Google search query “buying books online“, Google will serve up a set of results it believes will be useful to that searcher, and which will engage that searcher. Google considers various factors in making that results set, but when it displays that results set to the user as a SERP, the destination URL is displayed prominantly as the name of the listing. That name is the only authoritative identity guaranteed to be present in the SERP for that particular web page.

When the user scans the result set, that user has an expectation, which we assume is aligned with the query “buying books online”. When Google’s customer sees the URL contains the keywords they are searching, that keywordy URL reinforces their hope that the results set provides that which they seek. But it is more complicated than that. The substance of that noticed match must also convey a sense of safety and possibly authority, or opportunity.

There are various facets of user action motivation, but for now let’s just accept that Google anticipates that Google’s customer will trust “OnlineBookStore.com” more than they will trust “buy-books-here-discount-reduced.info” for the query “buying books online”, all other things being equal.

And so Google will give an advantage to OnLineBookStore.com in this case. Keywords in the domain, yes, but more importantly, authority and trustworthiness expressed in the domain name. The keywords added authority (via relevance).

What if the domain is books.com? That is a very expensive domain. Simply because it is expensive, I believe, Google gives it more trust (all other factors being euqal.. such as content and reputation). So in theory, everything else being equal, is books.com is better for seo than onlinebooks.com, for the search “buying books online”?

I don’t think so. Due to the keyword match of both “online” and “books”, I would give the edge to OnlineBooks.com. I don’t think the added value Google might give Books.com is adequate to overcome the value of the easy to remember and well matched OnlineBooks.com URL. That is my opinion, limited to this example.

What about “BuyingBooksOnline.com”, you ask? That’s an exact match to the query. Yes, it is, and that is good. But…. Google is focused on Google’s customer. Books.com is easy to remember, easy to recognize, and authoritative. The user will appreciate it differently than BuyingBooksOnline.com. It is up to Google to decide whether or not users will appreciate BuyingBooksOnline.com as a destination for the query “buying books online”. I would assume there is benefit from the exact match, and benefit from the user experience associated with soley that domain name displayed in the SERP, and that the combination helps Google rank the results set. I would place OnlineBooks.com ahead of BuyingBooksOnline.com, all other factors being equal for this one query, because I think it is a but more accepted by the user… I think they would view BuyingBooksOnline.com as more of an information site than a book store.

So what about OnlineBookstore.com, you ask? Again, all other factors being equal (trust and reputation, backlinks and content, etc), I have to consider the cultural aspects of the Google customer. In what context does the Google customer refer to “bookstore” as compared to the context for the use of “books” in our language? College students refer to “the book store” quite frequently. Gift givers look for books more than they look for book stores. OnlineBooks may refer to PDF files you can download instead of books you hold in our hand. And store is often a synonym for shopping cart or ecommerce web site. That’s right… I am suggesing that Google incorporates cultural sensitivities into the ranking algorithms. if for no other reason than because the corpus of information Google uses to determine relevance comes out of our culture: the index of documents studied by Google. We, like Google, have to consider the context of our question “buying books online” when sorting through available web pages and compiling a set of search results.

Based on my perspective, I’d give the edge to OnlineBookStore.com over OnlineBooks.com, except in the context of college life I’d definietly go with OnlineBookstore.com. That’s an opinion… I don’t have Google’s resources. But I think it demonstrates my thought process, and maybe you can see how it would be applied to other search queries where you and I may have significant insight into the vernacular of our customers. Google wants the search results to be good for the user experience, and if the URL adds to the user experience (or detracts), Google wants to consider that in the ranking/scoring algorithm.

But does Google do that? Theoretical discussion are great for academics, but does this really matter? Does Google count it? Yes, Matt Cutts tells us that when the domain adds to the user experience, there is an advantage (all other factors being equal). And he said so in the context of a question addressing whether or not keyword domains are better for SEO.

Matt won’t tell us if Google discriminates between OnlineBooks.com and OnlineBookstore.com, but our example of assuming “everything else being equal” is a tough constraint anyway for our practical world. Small differences in back link quality or quantity or content quality are probably more important than the difference between OnlineBooks.com and OnlineBookstore.com. And that’s an important point!

Maps.com is a great domain name. But MapWorld.com may be better, because it contains the second keyword “world” which matches queries that contain “world”. It also suggests a content theme “world” which is semantically associated with many search keywords commonly paired with the word “map” (such as “maps of the world” and “maps of north america” because of the semantic association of “North America” with “world”). Think about that search index.. when Google tries to guess searcher intent for a query, it looks at word associations based on the indexed documents and their relationships.

Again… there is so much more being considered by Google for ranking web pages, but the domain name “MapWorld.com” contributed significantly to user experience and semantic meaning in the context associated with a large number of search queries. That adds value. For a global map business do you need maps.com or can you do it just as well on MapWorld.com for a much lower initial price for a domain?

I know this is complicated and somewhat subjective. That’s part of the point. It’s not all about the domain name, but domain names that carry meaning for the searcher do have more value, within a specific context. Think user experience… user experience… user experience, all other factors being equal, and then make sure all other factors are not equal, in order to compete.

ISPs are placing the security and privacy of their customers squarely in the hands of a third-party ad company

Dan Kaminsky is always fun (and scary) to watch, and he is describing how some ISPs are utilizing a 3rd party DNS service in an attempt to monetize user activity. According to Dan, that third party is exploitable (XSS vulnerability), and this outsourcing action is putting ISP subscribers at risk. Via Wahington Post.

This is live blogging from matt’s session. It will update as I enter information.

Matt said: about his role on the web spam team, he defined spam as sites that “rank higher than they deserve”. Go figure that one out.

Matt asked how many people were into domaining because it was like a garage sale, where you find a rare book worth a lot on sale for only 50 cents. He also asked how many were in it for the money, and then how many had a life long commitment to creating new content and publishing content of value to users on the web…. Can you see where Google is going with this? Sure you can.

He highlighted GMHS.com which is a for sale domain. User won’t be happy if they typed in the name of a high school and got this. Not too happy a user.

Earthday.org parked page… says it is relevant. Lots of user stuff. Complete new user might be happy landing on it. A savvy user will not be as happy with it.. they will wirte in and say… Matt suggested hiring a blogger to be the EarthDay Blogger for 10% of the eventual value… cherry pick your top 10,20 domains and give a blogger some equity to write content.

Ajaxian.com neat site about AJAX. Take gmhs.com and get somebody to develop it.. that’s the high end of content and value add, because not everyone is providing that. For the valuable domains, that is what Matt would do.

Q for Matt: standard dupe content question. Matt says he can handle that. Litmus test is “were was the first place this content debuted (was viewed)”. Gigablast is like 2 guys and can’t do that, but Google can. Google filters out dupe content that is not as useful as the original. What abut shuffling content, dictionaries.. trying to evade detection, as Matt says. He says it is easier to find someone to generate that content for you.

Q: on DMCA process from Ron Jackson, do you complain to Google or the host? Matt says google.com/dmca.html to describe that process. There is a process for counter-notify and dispute, and if that happens Google stops and leave the debate for the involved parties to handle.

Q: from a lawyer… an admittedly frustrated lawyer, not having great success because people just switch web hosts when challenged. Matt says Google “doesn’t ant to play police”. The lawyer says Federal copyright registration is a prerequisite to DMCA, and not easy to get a copyright on a web page. Matt suggests that after you’ve been scraped a few times…people look for ways to embed links in the article to take advantage of the scraping… “I get a lot of links”…”I’m guaranteed to have more page rank than they do”… he personally says “oh well, that’s links that go to my website”.

Q; on tld’s and their impact on ranking. Matt says early literature shows G didn’t care about what TLD was using.. just # links and how reputable those links were. He says except fro some corner cases, it doesn’t matter, and he says most people will never fit those corner cases.
Note: Matt says the new york times is more reputable than your college friend (he was addressing link value). Think about that.

Matt: “you never want your users to be angry” , Matt remembers his mother in law with a huge infection of scumware, and how much Matt spends the first day of a visit cleaning up her computer. Some people don’t want their ads showing on parked pages. Matt says Google helps show people how the domain channel can work as a profitable advertising channel.

Q; about how long it takes for a new site to monetize. Taking longer now than it used to. Matt says people think a page gets a little pagerank just because it is a page, which is a misconception. Page rank is peanut butter… you’re spreading it around, it gets thin. You need more links (more peanut butter?). Think about marketing aspect.. catchy angle that attracts people’s attention, and then spread that around your network. Q: Gestation period has gotten much longer…. Matt says it can take time for pages and trusted pages to develop.

Matt showed off searchmash.com. Will we see some of these features on Google? Entirely possible. Notes the integration of DomainTools for whois as of yesterday. “please don’t scrape this”…. Google has built in a “fair amount of checking” so too frequent queries will cause it to block you. “We like this idea of trying out experiments”. He searched “aa 127″ and got American Airlines flight status for flight 127.

Matt says if a domain changes hands, Google resets the links vale to zero/near zero. [Update: Matt apparently said this about expired domains in 2007. I can’t be sure of exactly what was said here, but these were contemporaneous notes so perhaps we will have to wait for the recorded sessions to be sure].

Domain names are the primary way of mapping where domains are on the web and Matt expects that to continue. Domain names are important and inseparable going forward.

Generic domains that users are likely to remember, will indeed carry more weight than others. There is a real value to those FuneralHomes.com for example. Google does give keywords in the URL a certain amount of weight, but you don’t need it in order to rank.

“We have a deal with GoDaddy that if you sign on with GoDaddy you’re automatically registered with Webmaster Tools”.

Q: Parked Domains: ” We try to detect parked domains, and once they leave their parked status, we let them in relatively quickly”

Q: If a domain says it is for sale, does that harm it’s chances in Google? Matt: Our litmus test is not whether or not it’s for sale, but if their’s good ocntent on it and it’s helpful to users.

Q: if you stub your toe [violate google guidelines] on on domain of thousands, do all of their domains suffer? Matt says no.. just because one domain is doing something bad…. BUT, it does increase the odds of google scrutinizing the other domains. Says google knows how to find other owned domains via common templates etc. If just doing everyday stuff, one domain in trouble doesn’t hurt other domains.

Q: Breakup page of more than 100 links… people complain about it.

Q: Ip cloaking to block abusive users. Matt says be careful.. ok to block scrapers etc but Google runs spot checks from different IPs… matt will go to his old school account to see what the page looks like. If user and Googlebot see same thing, should be ok. Matt cares about cloaking Google, not other users. BUT be careful not to get it wrong.

Q: Geo IP cloaking question… Matt says ” different MD5 sum means high risk category” ;-) Dont treat Googlebot like it was it’s own unique country (Googlestan), getting Googlestan content. We crawl from California… if you cloak it, be very careful to say what you are doing “it looks like you are outside of Colorado..so we’re serving you outside of colorado content…”

Q: on use of nofollow. Directory owner, asking if nofollow helps or hurts. Matt says nofollow is a “very simple thing”. Nofollow link doesn’t flow pagerank, doesn’t flow anchor text. Link level to say “I trust this link but I don’t trust this link”. You don’t want to flow page rank through them if you don’t trust them. Real business 3-4% of your links will be stale, don’t worry don’t need nofollow. If check them at some point, willing to vouch for them, at some point checked them for quality, then don’t need to worry about nofollow. If just a domain directory, use no follow.. it is a matter of how much due diligence you put in.

Q: Webmaster asked about DiamondsDirect.com and why it and other sites don’t appear in Google. Matt looked at it, said the site was good, most users would lik eit, but the feed data was dirty (some control characters showing up) and appeared at many places.. probably more unique content.

I’m at Domain RoundTable, in San Francisco, with several hundred Internet entrepreneurs. Like other webmasters, these guys own the Internet. Unlike most webmasters, these guys own a significant percentage of the Internet. But besides scale, they have similar interests to other webmasters: managing risk, earning and monetizing traffic, navigating politics and managing cash flow.

They have the same search marketing concerns as well. If Google publishers a new browser that is “free”, will they assume control of the traffic stream outside of consumer awareness? What will this do to your business model? If Yahoo! becomes Microhoo!, what does it mean? If Matt Cutts says “no donuts for you“, how will you pay your developers?
If you can sell a domain today for 500 years revenue, why wouldn’t you do that? If someone offers computer.us for sale at $17,000, why wouldn’t someone based on the Euro buy that piece of American entitlement for what is really something like $8,000 ? Of course they should (and they did).

So about live blogging - will I live blog all of the key, important strategic bits direct live from Domain Roundtable? Of course not. That would be silly. A day pass is $400 and the value is incredible. You should be here, as I am and several hundred other people are. We will all enjoy a competitive advantage OVER YOU as a result of that investment.

Aaron Wall recently asked via his twitter stream, could blog should go behind access restrictions, to serve a select audience instead of an open, public audience. Of course it could, and it should. The market might not be ready for that, which is why I think Aaron asked the question.

If you want to know my perspective on what is going on over here at DomainRoundtable, watch this blog. i will be blogging. But not nearly everything, and probably not the strategic bits of greatest value. If you want those too, let me know in the comments or send me an email.I’m thinking about Aaron’s question, and welcome your comments.

Google’s mission is to make a fortune off other people’s content organize the world’s information, and now Google and DomainTools are joining forces to bring the power of WHOIS lookups to the Google interface. Again.

Google started hitting the Network Solutions WHOIS lookup without permission back in 2004 before Netsol promptly shut them out. That seems like a really silly and abusive action for Google to have tried, in hindsight, but I bet it seemed like a good idea at the time. At least this time they will be working with the pros.

The Google/Name Intelligence collaboration was announced on the DomainTools blog in March, but many SEOs are still unaware. I think this is a very important development, which needs additional consideration. Please think about it when you get a chance. I guarantee it will come up in discussion at meetings and conferences for quite some time into the future (partly because I will be bringing it up in conversation!). Of course it is one highlight of the upcoming Domain Roundtable meeting, where Matt Cutts is very much involved this year (I will be there as well, on the SEO Experts panel).

What will increased public access to the whois data mean for your business? Think further than that… what will easy access to WHOIS data like that do to the value of the WHOIS data? Once so trivialized, will the WHOIS data become less important and less trusted? Will it become less reliable, as it becomes less accurate, simply because Google has made it more accessible? I think it will. I’m loving this new development.

Related references:

• Google Finds Unregistered WHOIS Data from johnon.com March 2007
• Blip.tv hosted video where Jay reveals the upcoming collaboration with Google (via Domaintool Blog)
• Send a question for Matt Cutts to answer at the DomainRoundtable meeting
• Google monetizing my web content and trading on my name
• Name Intelligence monetizing my WHOIS information