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Network Solutions Enhanced Whois
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November 27th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
Want to place an ad inside your own whois record? Network Solutions has decided to offer this service to all their customers. Instead of just displaying contact information and your address you can now place whatever text you want inside the record. This, “Enhanced Business Listing” allows owners to place more descriptive text inside their whois record. When anyone looked up the whois record they would see your opening sales pitch before they even approach you about buying your domain. Sounds like a great idea to me. The listing costs $12 a year, which seems a bit expensive to me but I am sure people will buy it. Buy why would you buy this service if you also bought Whois Privacy? Read Network Solutions full press release about the service. If you are trying to protect your information then this is not the service for you. Whois Privacy and this service are completely opposite each other. For more information on the Enhanced Business Listing service check out their page on it.
The weird part about this service is that you are advertising on your own whois record, why should it cost money to advertise on your own record?
What would be a more valuable service would be if they verified information about your company and put that in the whois. Such as, Registered Doctor in New York City. If the registrar could authenticate claims I can guarantee Search Engines would use those authenticated claims and boost the sites in their index based on those claims. Now that would be an enhanced whois service! I pitched that exact service to Network Solutions about 3 years ago.
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Posted in Network Solutions, Whois |
November 27th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Best be patenting that last one there.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
It seems redundant. However, network solutions will always try to charge more for something that should be either really inexpensive or free. I know this is more on the shoulders of ICANN but why are the prices of domains going up rather than down lately? It is not oil they are pumping out of the ground…
November 27th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
nothing new; has already been available
https://www.securepaynet.net/gdshop/jump_pages/deluxe_sample.asp?prog%5Fid=4buck
November 27th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Network Solutions should provide the traffic data for the WHOIS. If I have to pay them, I want to know how many people checked my domain name’s WHOIS record.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
It is nothing new but it’s new for NSI and a neat little add-on. It’d be really much better if they’d put the ad in a better position, allowed advertising on other domains, and other enhancements.
As for the privacy thing and combining it with the enhanced listing, it makes perfect sense to me if the owners were selling the domain and wanted to keep their personal info private but provide info about the domain and how to sell it (thru a broker or another contact point)
It would be cool if NSI gave more info on how many times a domain name is looked up so you knew how many impressions your ad was getting and then even showed those numbers (like the ovt tool) and allowed people to buy ads that way. Or maybe allow people to buy the data on who was looking up their domain names. I guess that’s only possible if you have a whois that requires membership. Gee I wonder who has that. .
You got the same kind of data and searchers. Why not allow ads on your whois results based on each domain ? I’m sure you have a ton of inventory, even the history and it’s more targeted than “run of site”
BTW . . Tested the service out last night and wrote it up last night
http://www.domainnamenews.com/featured/network-solutions-enhanced-whois-listings-provide-advertising-to-1-million-per-day/1315
November 28th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Jay,
I can do you one better with WhoIs ad messages. How about a WhoIs extortion message? Earlier this year UltraRPM (AKA MetaPredict) was posting their “message” in the WhoIs record. How very convenient when the Registrar, Registrant and the Domain Squatter are all one and the same. Attached is an example from August 2007.
Registrant Search has preserved over 10,000 copies of UltraRPM’s WhoIs message:
http://www.domaintools.com/registrant-search/?&and=While+UltraRPM+employs+extensive+technological+means+to+avoid+the
You have to love Registrant Search, unless you are a Domain squatter with something to hide!
Mike
Attachment from August 2007 WhoIs.
UltraRPM, Inc. (”UltraRPM”) respects the intellectual property rights of others. UltraRPM does not intentionally register or use any domain name that is identical to or confusingly similar to any person’s trademark or trademarks. While UltraRPM employs extensive technological means to avoid the registration of any such mark, the possibility nevertheless exists for an unintended occurrence. Accordingly, if you believe UltraRPM has registered a domain name that incorporates your name or trademark, or a variation thereof, please notify us immediately at domain@ultrarpm.com with the following information:
Domain Name(s) in question
Trademark Number, or evidence of use of the common law trademark in question
Your Contact Information, including your first and last name, your e-mail address, your mailing address, and your phone number.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Verifying credentials is kind of the point of .pro …