The newsletter has “well over 65,000 subscribers” and I have been using it for years as well.

Here is the screenshot of the App available for free in iTunes

Congrats to another South Florida domainer, Dan Rubin

…

Now Google has put out a tool that tests your Page Performance and gives you hints and tips on how to increase it.

In a post on Google’s blog by Ram Ramani, Engineering Manager, Google announced it had rolled out a new product “Page Speed performance” on Friday which test the speed of your site from various locations around the world of your choosing from a drop down menu.

You can access the Google Speed Test here

I just ran it through for TheDomains.com and it showed the following:

Page Speed Service Comparison for http://www.thedomains.com

	Original	Optimized	Difference
Page Load Time	5.579s	5.703s	+0.124s (2.2%)
Repeat View Page Load Time	4.602s	4.365s	-0.237s (5.1%)
Full Test Result	view test	view test

So it looks like we are doing pretty good or at least as well as we can based on the content and ads we carry.

Here is the info from the blog:

Two years ago we released the Page Speed browser extension and earlier this year the Page Speed Online API to provide developers with specific suggestions to make their web pages faster.

Last year we released mod_pagespeed, an Apache module, to automatically rewrite web pages. To further simplify the life of webmasters and to avoid the hassles of installation, today we are releasing the latest addition to the Page Speed family: Page Speed Service.

Page Speed Service is an online service that automatically speeds up loading of your web pages. To use the service, you need to sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google. Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google’s servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times. Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources or other web performance best practices.

In our testing we have seen speed improvements of 25% to 60% on several sites. But we know you care most about the numbers for your site, so check out how much Page Speed Service can speed up your site. If you’re encouraged by the results, please sign up. If not, be sure to check back later.

…

One blogger even wrote about it calling it:  “VeriSign Releases Domain Traffic Treasure Trove to the Public”.

We had a chance to play with some of this data on a registrar only provided basis in the past and were never though the Score’s were an accurate and consistent reflection of traffic.

But when VeriSign put it out to the public,  we thought we would take a second look at this “Treasure Trove” of traffic information.

So we ran all 44,625 free drop domains that were dropping on July 8th, 2011 (two days after the product was released) through the VeriSign Domain Score script and to our amazement 38,593 of those domains, well over 80% came back with a 7 day, 30 day or 90 day Domain Score of 2.5 or more.

There were 37,787 scored 5 or more.

Less than 7,000 domain names came back with a zero score.

Now anyone who has been in the domain game for a while, knows that impossible for  80%+ of all dropping domains to have traffic.  Actually most of us know that well over 90% of drop domains have little to any traffic.

So if the script is giving 80%+ of  drop domains a score,  to me it mean the scores are pretty worthless.

We also found of the 2,500 domain names dropping that day with the highest Domain Score, less than 250 were and are still registered as of the date of publication.

Strike Two for Domain Score.…

Screenshots.com is a perfect match for Domaintools.com which is a service which pulls histories of domain names.

Screenshots.com is now directing to DomainTools.com and with the database of information DomainTools.com already has, this promises to be a WayBack Machine killer.

Alexa.com’s WayBack Machine indexes how websites looked in past years and/or months.

For myself, the service always seemed inconsistent usually not pulling up anything different on dates that would indicate a change to the index site and often no information at all.

Beyond that I have always found the WayBack Machine difficult to navigate aa you have to click on different dates to see what comes up.

Screenshots.com (directed to Domaintools.com) on the other hand has a side by side comparison how a site looked on certain dates with  screenshots and the dates of the change.

Checkout the WayBack Machine for TheDomains.com

This is TheDomains.com on ScreenShots/DomainTools.com:

Screenshots.com/DomainTools.com has other the relevant data you would want to see like Alexa ranking, Compete ranking, visitors by country, visitors by city and SEO score just to name a few which appear below the actual screenshots.

Now knowing the buyer of the domain name Screenshots.com to be DomainTools.com and seeing how its being put to use, this domain may turn out to be one of the best purchases of 2011.

Congrats to Ammar and his team on a great pickup.…

Here is how it works.

You  simply deposit $50 through paypal.com

This starts a creative chain reaction as  hundreds of contributors start submitting their ideas.

Once a  winning suggestion is found, the contributor who came up with it  gets 40% to 60% of the fee via PayPal (anyone can become a  contributor, registration is free).

The exact  payout depends on contributors rank, which is a measure how good  he  or she is, based on the number of likes and dislikes received  from  clients.

If client decides that he or she does not like any suggestions,   they can request a refund, so there is no risk involved.

Currently,  PickyDomains.com has 1200+ clients, 44,000 registered contributors  and 1500+ completed projects (DiskScout.Com,  Xutta.Com,  NadaPay.com, GymGenius.Com, Simplytics.Com,  Coderria.Com,  Nogeno.Com, MadConomist.Com to name a few).

You can see the most recently selected domain names by clients on the front page of the site.

The  service has been  even hired to name Las Vegas strip club and to  baptize pitbull  puppy for a Detroit rap star according to its founder, Dmitry Davydov.

Once a domain name is chosen the client can register the domain with the registrar of his choice.

“”Looking for a cool name, domain or slogan but can’t think of one yourself? You’ll love PickyDomains.com.

• Our service is 100% risk-free. That is, you pay only if you like our work.
• Unlike naming/branding agencies that charge up to $120.000, our price is $50 per domain/$75 per slogan.
• You’ll receive hundreds of great suggestions.
• We understand your confidentiality concerns, and your order can be set up in a way that there will be no mention that your domain, name or slogan has been authored by our contributors.”"

From the contributor side here is what the site says:

“”If you have a knack for coming up with cool, unusual and memorable names, domains or slogans – here is a chance to turn your talents into cash.

Here is how the process works – register as a contributor (it’s free), select orders you want to work on and send your suggestions. If your name, domain or slogan is picked, you’ll get 40-60% of the order value (averages around 25-35 dollars depending on your rank and order type). The money will be sent to your PayPal account, so it’s important that you have one or can get one easily.”

Its an interesting concept and while you aren’t going to get any category killers or exact match domains, its an alternative for those with a very small budget.…

When I first heard about the product it sounded like a DomainTools.com killer.

But now that the product has launched, I think DomainTools.com doesn’t have much to worry about.

Here’s how  Verisign’s described the service when it made its request to ICANN for product approval: (pdf)

“VeriSign periodically receives requests for historical domain name registration data, including information on domain name which have been deleted. These requests are made in order to address a wide range of needs, such as a request from registrars who may need for a more complete registration history of a particular domain name or a request related to investigations or legal action related to trademark infringement claims, or other investigations of potential nefarious uses”

“Once a domain name deletion request has been completed, the domain name is removed from the registry Whois service and the Whois data associated with such domain name is no longer publicly available.”

“By implementing the Domain Name WhoWas Service, VeriSign will provide an automated capability for a customer (which may be either a registrar or non-registrar) to look up a domain name and receive a response with the registration history for the entire life of such domain name which will include the domain name, registration dates and registrar of record for each period of time”

Sounded good right, kind of like the information you would expect to find at DomainTools.com for a domain, but at a much lower cost.

Problem is that under the WhoWas product you don’t get prior registrant information.

So although you get to see the registrar, creation date and some other info, you don’t get to see who used to own the domain.

So WhoWas doesn’t tell you WhoWas the owner of the domain.

Here is the VeriSign’s own example of how the product works:

“For example, a request for history of “example.com” would return:”
Domain Name: Example.com
Domain ID: vrsn-123
Registrar: Current Registrar, Inc.
Create Date: 1-jan-2009

ICANN Registry Request Service
Ticket ID: Z5K1I-4P7Z6
Registry Name: VeriSign, Inc,
gTLD: .COM, .NET, .NAME
Status: ICANN Review
Status Date: 2009-07-01 13:53:45
Print Date: 2009-07-01 13:55:15

Expiration Date: 21-dec 2011

Domain Name: Example.com
Domain ID: vrsn-003
Registrar: Xyz registrar, Inc.
Transfer Date: 15-apr-2003
Deletion Date: 17-apr-2006
Domain Name: Example.com
Domain ID: vrsn-003
Registrar: Abc Registrar, Inc.
Create Date: 21-nov-1994
Transfer Date: 15-apr-2003

“This example shows a domain name with two distinct registration periods, indicated by the gap from the deletion date to the  next creation date and the change in the Domain ID.…

For example checkout this domain for sale on BargainDomains.com, HandymanServices.com.

As you can see sellers can show the monthly traffic and revenue certified by DNWStats.com when submitting their domains for sale.

Already up in BargainDomains.com and should also be implemented  this week in in all the vertical marketplaces of Domaining.com including Catchy.com, PremiumDomains.com, Flipping.co.

It’s optional, but if the domain for sale has significant traffic and/or revenue it should give a big boost to the sale of the domain.

As the volume of sellers using this feature grows,  the Domaining marketplaces will add these metrics to their listings,  like they are already doing with; term frequency & search popularity.

In a side note, the Domaining Marketplaces by the end of the week should launch a vertical marketplace dedicated to domains with certified traffic and revenue where domains will be sold for multiple of years revenue.
This is an exciting new feature that should help out sales.

Congrats to Francois.…

Afternic Portfolio Manager is available immediately at no cost.

“Afternic Portfolio Manager provides our customers the ability reconcile their inventory in a single request, while providing instantaneous add, edit, and remove domain functionality,” said David Hauser, NameMedia Senior Vice President. “Today’s launch means that large portfolio owners have a reliable, flexible and simple web service solution to effectively manage inventory in real-time while placing the domain names for sale at AfternicDLS,”

” TurnCommerce, a leading domain development company, has been using the product to list and sell its domain names over the past month, and has seen a 20%  increase in domain names sold since using it. ”

“NameMedia’s new product provides us with a great resource to sell domain names,” said TurnCommerce Co-Founder, Andrew Reberry.  “AfternicDLS has helped TurnCommerce tap into the small and medium business market while simplifying domain sales management.”

“”AfternicDLS reaches retail buyers of premium domain names through its websites at Afternic.com, BuyDomains.com and a network of more than 40 distribution partners, including many of the world’s largest registrars.

“Through its global distribution network, Afternic’s Domain Listing Service (DLS) receives more than 35 million requests each month by consumers looking for a domain name, making it the most productive platform for connecting domain sellers with domain buyers.”

For more information contact Bob Mountain at bmountain@namemedia.com, 781.839.2871 or  Sarah Ptalis (sptalis@namemedia.com) 781.839.7982.…

SmartNames.com has a new app that you can check your stats on your parked domains.

The SmartNames App is free and can be downloaded here.

Cirtex Corp released its new Webmaster Tools application, providing webmasters worldwide with core website management functionality on their mobile device.

The new application, which is available free of charge from the Apple iTunes Store, allows users to perform a wide-range of tests and checks, including domain WHOIS lookups, DNS lookups, Reverse DNS lookups, Ping and Latency checks, Tracerout searches, and more. Users can  also perform specific searches on domain name related data, including Alexa rankings and DMOZ listings.

You can download the App here.

RtLabs.ca released  an app for managing domain names on the iPhone and iPad.

The app called Mydomains (no relation to mydomains.com) is a whois checker that keeps the domains you own in a “Mydomains” list and those you are interested in acquiring in a “myWatchlist”.

While there are several free whois checking apps none to my knowledge allow you to store a list for later use.

This app is priced at $.99 and can be downloaded here.

Godaddy.com has an free app that allow you to register domains on the go on your iPhone or iPad.

The iPad app was just released last month

You can download the App for free here.

You confused about ccTLD’s and what countries go with what extension.

A free App can help you with this.

The TLD, free app shows you buy Map or country name which ccTLD belong to each country.

Currently the service, which can be found on domaining.com main page under the  “Closing Auctions” Tab, tracks the auctions from: Afternic.com, BargainDomains.com, Sedo.com, GoDaddy.com and Latonas.com  and in the next day or two, Domaining.com will be adding AuctionPus.com and in the next week or two, SnapNames.com

The list not only shows the domain name, the current price, the auction house, and the time left until the auction closes but also gives you; the “value” of each domain (as estimated by Valuate.com), the frequency of each domain (which is the number of times the term is indexed by Google); the “searches” for each name (the number of times the term is globally search (data from Google)); how much competition there is for PPC ads for that term and the current CPC for the search term.

You can sort all the auctions by any of these columns, so if you wanted to pick the domains with the highest Valuate.com value then you can for example.

You can also filter your results by search term, domain extension (mulitple extension with a comma), the “value” of the domain as estimated by Valuate.com , the top bid, number of bidders and auction house.

Wow

A Lot of information.

Nice service.

Well organized, user friendly and free.

Guess you have no more excuses for missing out on any great deals at any of these auction houses.

Congrats to Francois who has created I think the definitive tool to track all auctions.…