Domain Names in NASCAR Winners Circle - Godaddy

No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet Races to 1st NASCAR Win!

Ron Fellows Drives Go Daddy to Victory Lane

Last update: 9:26 p.m. EDT Aug. 2, 2008

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Aug 02, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Watch out! GoDaddy.com now has a NASCAR victory to go with its IndyCar victory already this season. Ron Fellows drove the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet to Victory Lane after winning today's NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Canada.

This was Fellows' first time behind the wheel of the GoDaddy.com sponsored race car and the first NASCAR win for Go Daddy. Go Daddy Girl Danica Patrick made history this year being the first woman to win an IndyCar Series race by winning the Japan 300.

"First - I want to thank Dale Earnhardt Jr. and GoDaddy.com," said an emotional and elated Ron Fellows after winning the rain-shortened race. "This was good fun. Now I need to beg Dale Jr. to let me run next week."

Fellows took over the lead thanks to some strategic pit stop planning. He then led the historic race, this is the first time Nationwide Series has run rain tires, by more than 45 seconds when it was called due to extremely low visibility.

"It's exhilarating Ron Fellows brought the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet to Victory Lane," said GoDaddy.com CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. "All the pieces just came together...the race was in Canada, Ron is a Canadian fan favorite and he's a road course expert."

GoDaddy.com is the sponsor of the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolets in six of this season's Nationwide Series races. Earnhardt, a GoDaddy.com spokesman and NASCAR's most popular driver, designed the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolets along with racing the car April 5 in Texas. Earnhardt will take the wheel again at the Watkins Glen next Sunday, Aug. 9. Mark Martin then pilots in Michigan Aug. 16 and in Kansas Sept. 27.

Like their drivers, GoDaddy.com is known for speed. As the world's top Internet domain name registrar, it registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second of every day. Go Daddy is three times the size of its closest competitor and recently started offering .CA domain names. Go Daddy is also one of the world's top Web hosting companies and can help novices or experts enhance their online presence with fast, friendly customer support.

To learn more about how you can create or enhance your online presence, visit www.GoDaddy.com.

About The Go Daddy Group, Inc.

Go Daddy is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration plans and Web site design and hosting packages, as well as a broad array of on-demand services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce Web site hosting, blog templates and blog software, podcast packages and online photo hosting. The Go Daddy Group, Inc. has more than 30 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second. GoDaddy.com is the world's No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. GoDaddy.com is also rated the world's largest hostname provider according to Netcraft Ltd. During 2007, The Go Daddy Group registered more than one-third of all domain names registered in the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.

- The Go Daddy Group -

Copyright (C) 2008 GoDaddy.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCE: Go Daddy Group, Inc.

Go Daddy Group, Inc.
Melanie Schmitt/PR Specialist, 480-505-8800 x4294
PR@GoDaddy.com

What Precedes the Dot in Open TLD's?

As I mentioned in my post about that very odd ICANN decision to open up Top Level Domains (TLD's) to virtually any words, it seems like a rather odd move toward confusion and a blow to the concept of Intellectual Property rights.

The first thing to occur to me when I heard this idea mentioned a few weeks back was "What comes before the dot?" Often mentioned in this discussion is the fact that eBay is agitating to be one of the first corporations to buy a TLD - dot ebay. But WHAT.ebay and do they now become registrars or do they simply now have the ability to control the domain name and add virtually anything they like ahead of the dot?

I imagine they'll use the domain name to break out areas for product categories such as auto.ebay and cameras.ebay, etc. And/Or perhaps they'll sell those domains to sellers who have "stores" on ebay so they have a "brand" on ebay. But what of those who start brand squatting within those sites - say Apple.ebay or Canon.ebay etc. Hmmm - not just ebay, but everywhere they can get hold of a new second level domain or even subdomain - who will police this? Wipo?

Below is a quote from Matt Hooker on CircleID about the new domain TLD's.

... it will lead to absolute confusion, and people will not be able to remember one web site from another based on their names. People will not be able to differentiate one web site from another based on their names - and this is a disaster in the making, since we humans use names for everything. We use Language, and by allowing more gTLD's we are creating great confusion in the language of the internet.

This isn't just about confusion and IP protection, it's got to affect reputation management for even the little guy online. If someone else takes your domain name as a TLD - or even as a second level domain within that TLD - how to you maintain search rankings, which until now have been helped by using your brand or keywords in the domain name.

Is Google looking nervously at this development? That element of the algorithm where keywords or brands in domain names carry significant ranking weight is about to be discounted unless they stick with dot com as the default ranking element and manually adjust each new, open domain TLD for it's (subjective) authority - based on the owner of that new domain - the age and probably on inbound links.

Type-in traffic is about to go out the window with this development, cookies may become much more important to customer retention and search engine optimization may be negatively impacted by this potential dilution in domain name authority.

Finding Available Keyword Rich Domain Names Easily

Here is some great advice for the budding domainer looking for keyword rich domain names to drive traffic to your niche products or content sites.

1. Go to Google Keywords tool at this link and research your keywords, when it returns results, click the link at the top of the "Average Search Volume" column, paste the resulting list into a spreadsheet, then select the row of keywords (still sorted by search volume), select and copy that column of keywords to your clipboard
2. Go to this page by clicking the link (new window will open so you can still see the instructions here). Paste that list of keywords into the text box. Don't worry about the spaces, we remove them for you
3. Check only the .com box to get the best domains
4. The list returns those names still available if there are any
5. Reserve the ones you want and point them at your target niche pages to gain the extra "type-in" traffic.

If you prefer video instructions or missed something there, here's an 8 minute video that walks you through the process. Very well done: