Answers to three commonly asked questions about the ‘halvarez’ scandal.

The topic commonly known as ‘halvarez’ — the insider bidding scandal at Snapnames — wasn’t a major topic at DOMAINfest. I didn’t expect it to be, either. Within days of the scandal breaking I talked to several big SnapNames customers. They were disappointed about what happened, but also understanding. Most had accepted SnapNames’ compensation offer and moved on.

But a number of people still have questions. So I took advantage of a media breakfast with Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky last week to get some answers to some of these commonly asked questions.

If ‘halvarez’ did what Oversee.net alleges, why hasn’t a lawsuit been filed against him?

This is the questions I hear most frequently. Kupietzky described it as an “ongoing legal matter”. This makes sense. Contrary to what some people believe, the first reaction when someone allegedly does something wrong isn’t to file a lawsuit. There are other ways to get restitution or compensation.

Has it always been against SnapNames’ policy for employees to bid on auctions?

The exact date that employees were notified they may not bid in auctions isn’t known. However, the employee’s alleged behavior of bidding to increase customer’s costs has clearly been against the rules and norms.

How much compensation has been paid out to customers?

SnapNames isn’t releasing the actual dollar amount. But of the compensation pool it set aside, about 55% has been claimed.

My personal knowledge from talking to some of SnapNames’ biggest customers is that most customers weren’t owed nearly as much as you might read about on some forums and blogs. Some of the biggest customers were owed low-to-mid five figure sums. This depends, of course, on what types of domains they were bidding on. But as I mentioned before, most big customers I’ve talked to took the compensation offer and continue to bid at SnapNames. (Hat tip to Kieren McCarthy for asking the last question.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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Dynadot extends data use to customers.

Last year VeriSign quietly started offering its Internet Profile Service (IPS) to domain name registrars. The service provides traffic data on pending delete domain names. Since VeriSign runs the DNS for .net and .com, it has access to data that most other sources don’t have.

Now domain name registrars are beginning to make the same data available to their customers. One of the first is Dynadot, which offers IPS to bulk customers. (Bulk customers spend $500 or more a year with the registrar. If you open a new Dynadot account, you can prepay $500 to become a bulk customer and get access to the data immediately. Dynadot also offers to send the current daily report for free so you can see if it’s worth it before signing up. Just send an email to info@dynadot.com with your request.)

IPS’ data set is rich, including non-existent domain and existent-domain traffic data. For example, here’s some of the data on a few domains currently going through pending delete:

The first two numbers represent a scale of the amount of traffic the non-existent domains are receiving for the last six days, as well as over four weeks. It’s on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest.

IPS also includes traffic data from the three months before the domain expired, a traffic score, the number of incoming links, and about a half dozen other metrics.

When using IPS to find domains with traffic, you should look for consistent traffic from the three months of data, as well as high scores for non-existent domain queries for both the last 6 days and four weeks.

With IPS, you can actually register expired domains at retail prices after they expire that still have traffic, and target them without the no-longer free practice of domain tasting. Granted, without marrying the database to a pay-per-click database, you won’t be able to estimate parking revenue. The data will be more valuable when a company such as FreshDrop integrates it into drop analysis systems.

Most of the domains on the list will be domains from previous web sites, so traffic will likely fall over time. You should also be wary of trademarks and trademark typos when using the data.

Also keep in mind that there is no data on domains that are sold through exclusive deals with NameJet, Snapnames, TDNAM etc. because these are usually sold before the domains reach pending delete status.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

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2. Dynadot Recovers from Two Day Outtage
3. GoDaddy releases traffic data

SAA plays the blame game.

South African Airways (SAA) is blaming service providers for letting its domain name expire, causing a web site outtage. When the domain name expired, Network Solutions followed its standard practice of changing the DNS and sending visitors to a landing page.

In a note from SAA acting CEO Chris Smyth on the company’s web site, Smyth writes:

…This outage was not as a result of any oversight by SAA or its personnel, nor was this due to cyber attacks.

The problem was a direct result of service providers not meeting their obligations and SAA will be taking further action in this regard. Unfortunately SAA did not receive any pre-warning of the pending suspension but within hours of the problem being identified, the SAA IT personnel were able to address the problem ensuring minimal disruptions to our customers.

Smyth could be correct, if indeed the job of renewing its domain name was outsourced to, say, an IT firm, or if it had some sort of autorenewal contract with Network Solutions. That appears it may be the case. The contact email on FlySAA.com’s whois record was for ISP In The Net Technologies. It’s possible that ITNT dropped the ball. But it also makes domain name registrar Network Solutions look bad. So FlySAA should probably come out and say who made the mistake, rather than a general reference to a service provider.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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3. Network Solutions introduces backorder keyword alert service