DNCart – Domain Network

I am excited to announce the third release in my domaining video tutorial series. In this screencast I show you how to make use of spreadsheets to gather lists of available domain names. The examples I have covered are related to GEO domain names and common prefixes and suffixes which allow you to find quality available domain names.

Launch Video Tutorial

Lower quality version available soon on YouTube and Facebook.

Tools used in this video:

• Google Docs
• Moniker Bulk Scan
• 200 Prefixes and Suffixes

Thank you for the great response and comments on my previous tutorials:

• Video: Get Available Domains with Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool
• Video: Using Google to Find Expired Domain Names

Please join the DotSauce Premium forums for FREE, featuring more insider domaining tips like these.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine – The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Video: Using Spreadsheets to Search for Available Domains

In this video tutorial I will show you how to use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to easily find available keyword domain names.

This is a follow up to my last video tutorial, “Using Google to Find Expired Domains” where I detailed a unique search query that I discovered and use to find expired domains.

Launch Video Tutorial

Lower quality version available on YouTube and Facebook.

Tools used in this video:

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Moniker Bulk Scan

Please join the DotSauce forums for more insider domaining tips like this one before they are released to the public.

I hope you enjoyed this screencast! I plan on releasing more videos featuring tips, tricks and tutorials in the near future.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine – The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Video: Finding Available Domains with Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool

“Bounce Rate” is when a person visits a page on your website and then immediately clicks through to a different website. As webmasters we would love for people to browse several pages of our website and explore our content in depth. This then gives us more of a chance to impress the visitor so that they may subscribe and visit again, more page impressions and essentially more revenue.

Here are some tips for reducing bounce rate on your websites and improving the experience for your visitors.

Watch a Friend Browse Your Site

Ask a friend or family member to browse your website casually while you look over their shoulder. This can be extremely beneficial as it helps you see things you may have overlooked. Don’t give them any direction other than to explore the site as they want. You may be surprised how they choose to navigate and what areas they completely ignore.

Analyzing Visitor Statistics

I highly recommend using an advanced statistics logging software such as Google Analytics. This can provide you with an easy to read view of your most popular pages, where people are coming from and what they are clicking on. By getting into the mindset of your visitors you can optimize your navigation and content to be user friendly.

Study Common Exit Pages

Google Analytics provides data on “Top Exit Pages.” These are the pages where the majority of your visitors are leaving your website from. Sometimes this is normal, such as when you are referring a popular product or service elsewhere on the web. Other times you may want to question why that page is causing people to leave your website.

Optimize Your Home Link

A link to your home page should be prominently displayed in your navigation bar. Make it very easy to find, highly visible and keep it in the same location on every page. This link is essentially your visitors way of finding more of your content after landing on one of your sub-pages or individual articles.

Optimize Your About Page

This is probably the most important page you can have on your website. A reliable statistic that I have now lost but remember quite well informed me that an “About” link is the most visited page after a first-time visitor lands on your website. Tell a little bit about who you are and what content can be found on your website, highlight some of your best content areas and articles, and provide contact information. Here are some more tips from ProBlogger about creating an about page.

User Friendly Navigation

Provide your visitors with a clean and prominent navigation system. It has been found that a horizontal bar at the top of your page works best. If you have to use a list style format in you sidebar that is alright, but make it simple, short and sweet. If you have alot of content to navigate it is important to use category labels for your navigation, this prevents the user from having to scan an entire list of page names and improves usability.

Heat Mapping Software

Heat Mapping is essentially a way to visually view what links and areas your visitors are clicking on. CrazyEgg software provides a free heat mapping account which allows you to track up to 5000 visits per month. This is a simple way to observe what areas of your site need improvement.

Hope these tips and tricks helped you out with your websites!

Got something to add?
Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine – The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Reducing Bounce Rate and Increasing Website Usability

Several months ago, by chance and a little luck, I discovered a unique Google search query which would allow anyone to mine expired domains from old Whois pages on DomainTools. I released this information to DotSauce premium subscribers and am now passing that information on to all DotSauce readers.

I have created a screencast video tutorial detailing my method and the Google query I use to gather expired domain names that have recently become available.

Launch Video Tutorial

Tools used in this video:

• Google Search
• DomainTools Whois
• DNClearner
• Moniker Bulk Scan

Please join the DotSauce forums for more insider domaining tips like this one before they are released to the public.

I hope you enjoyed this screencast! I plan on releasing more videos featuring tips, tricks and tutorials in the near future. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine – The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Video: Using Google to Find Available Domain Names

My buddy Russel Rockefeller pointed out some interesting news today about a change in Google search results. Many, including myself, have confirmed that Google search results are now case sensitive. I don’t know how long this has been in effect, but many developers and marketers are surprised and concerned about the impact this may have on their business.

Check out the results yourself. Searches for “Domain Industry” and “domain industry” return similar websites, but rankings are changed up significantly. Other keywords and phrases have even more dramatic changes.  Oddly enough, this documentation on Google clearly states that search results are not case-sensitive.

There is speculation that this may be an attempt to serve more accurate results. For example if someone was to search for “widget” it would be assumed they are looking for a thing. But, when someone searches for “Widget” they may be looking for a company or specific product.

How will this affect search engine optimization and marketing? Will marketers now need to write copy with varying capitalization of keywords and phrases? I guess we will have to wait and hear what Google has to say if anything.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine – The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Google Searches Now Case Sensitive

The Science Channel, part of the Discovery network, has some of my favorite television programming. Some of my favorites are Myth Busters, Future Weapons, Beyond Tomorrow, and Survivorman I love shows that are inspiring, innovative, and thought provoking. Sexy hosts making stuff explode makes it all the better!

“The True Story of the Internet” is about the internet revolution of the last 10 years. The founders of eBay, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape and many others tell the personal stories of how they made their untold billions in this short time period.

The style of the story-telling is up close and personal. With first-hand testimony from the people that matter, we tell a story that has all the excitement of a thriller — full of battles and back-stabbing, moments of genius and moments of sheer hilarity. You will never surf the net in the same way again.

Did They Leave Out the Domain Name Industry?

Domain names are the backbone of all this progress in business, branding and the internet itself. I am not positive, but I don’t think the domain industry will be put in the spotlight within any of these episodes.

Soon domain names will become main stream as more and more big stories unfold. Aside from Mr. Gates himself, domainers are making as much if not more income than many of these featured business founders.

Episode Premier Schedule

There are four separate hour-long episodes in this special presentation. Listed below are the premier air times. Each episode will be rerun many times in the following days if you happen to miss the premier.

Trailer Video Clips

• Mooning the Giant: Bill Gates gets the necessary fuel to begin an all-out war.
• Navigator: Netscape’s latest invention, Navigator, begins to take the world by storm.
• YouTube: YouTube Co-founder Chad Hurley discusses his outlook on people driven browsers.
• MySpace: What’s next for the new generation of Web 2.0?
• Bill Gates: After dropping out of Harvard to run his own company, Bill Gates is going nowhere but up in the PC World.
• Web 2.0: These innovators are heading the revolution of Web 2.0.

Enjoy the show! Feel free to reminisce about what you were doing during the 90’s internet revolution with a comment. I wish I had been buying domains!

Google Presentations launched two months ago as an excellent addition to the current suite of web based document creation tools. The new presentations have been well received and apparently the Google Docs team has taken alot of feedback to heart. They have recently announced some great new features for 2008. I have highlighted some of the features in an embedded presentation I created here:

*RSS Readers: You’ll have to visit the live article to check it out*

To recap the new features; no, I am not special, anyone can embed Google Presentations! You can now drag and drop images and use custom backgrounds. PowerPoint slides can now be imported. New functions to create sub-folders and rename files have been included as well.

Visit Google Docs, the free resource for creating textual documents, spreadsheets and now presentations!

StomperNet is an online business-building membership website. They currently have some great quality videos published online featuring “cutting-edge content.” I’d like to share with you their “Click Fu” video which I found to be an excellent learning experience.

I have embedded the “Click Fu” course video in this post. In total it is 30 minutes long, separated into four parts, but is worth every minute of your time. You will learn through the eyes of your website visitors how to optimize your content.

Part 1: Welcome to Click Fu!

Part 2: Click Fu – Understanding Visitors

Part 3: Click Fu – Optimizing Text Content

Part 4: Click Fu – Wrapping Things Up

I downloaded and toyed with their “Scrutinizer” utility mentioned in the video. It allows you to simulate how a visitor envisions your page layout. Their vision is narrowly focused, contrasting colors are emphasized and peripheral vision is blurred so, as you learned in the Click Fu videos, you need to group important data and links together and organize headers and navigation properly.

Here is a screenshot of the Scrutinizer application in action viewing the DotSauce Forums. Wherever you place you mouse the surrounding area goes out of focus.

The StomperNet Scrutinizer download is free.
Give it a try and scrutinize you website content.

10 Uses for the Scrutinizer Utility

1. Simulate eye tracking in a usability task
2. Assess the ease of use of multi-step processes
3. Give your designer a fresh pair of eyes
4. Find out what �pops� in your design
5. Conduct findability challenges
6. Ask: does your visual grid work?
7. Evaluate your site�s contrast levels
8. Insure learnability in your template
9. Avoid button gravity errors
10. Tell the story of how your eyes work

David Airey, a popular logo designer, was the unfortunate victim of an unusual domain name theft. While on vacation in India his GMail account was compromised through the use of a malicious injection of a filter which forwarded important messages to the hacker’s email and then deleted the messages permanently from David’s inbox. Thankfully, Google has corrected this exploit, albeit way too late. David’s flagship website and domain name DavidAirey.com is now in the hands of some evil prick who has attempted to sell the domain back for several hundred dollars. David refuses to put money in the hands of this thief and is now using the domain DavidAirey.co.uk.

Click here to read the full account of this domain theft, including taunting messages from the thief himself. Be sure to include a comment showing your support, post a link to David’s new domain to assist his search rankings or find a way to donate some money to getting the domain back if you feel obliged.

Is your Gmail account infected?

This exploit could be affecting you! Login to your GMail account now and click on “Settings” and then “Filters” to browse for any possible forwards which you may have not created yourself.

Getting The Domain Back

David has received an overwhelming sympathetic response to his loss. Many have offered suggestions and are helping to track down the thief. The domain was transferred to GoDaddy and is under a private registration. I believe he plans on taking the issue to court to get his domain back. In my opinion, Google should step up and take some responsibility. Good luck to you David! I am sure this fool will get what he deserves in the end.

Google has an exciting new project which they call a “Knowledge Portal,” hence the codename Knol. It has been rumored that Google is upset about Wikipedia dominating it’s search results and is releasing this open-author information sharing website to compete for some top results. Knol is currently in private beta testing, you can read more information on it here. It is also naturally getting alot of buzz from the blogosphere.

What?! Knol.com Owned by Steam Cleaning Company

Tens of thousands of visitors, including myself, typed “Knol.com” into their browsers after hearing the news, only to be baffled by a Dutch website featuring high quality vacuums and steam cleaners. The company who owns the domain has posted a thank you message to Google, for the traffic and publicity I assume. They later posted this surprising message which is, oddly enough, badly translated by Google:

“Well, from that Friday there is a real run immediately on domains that the word “Knol” in itself, as also the domain knol.com….. This has resulted in tens of thousands of visitors who came to take a look at our Knol.com! ….. In a short time, we had received visitors from more than 130 countries around the world.

Fortunately, the website in a position to be able bastions and the site remained in the air.

But that was not in, we were by Jan and alleman asked if we do not want to sell the domain….. Unfortunately, we have to disappoint everyone, how beautiful their offer sometimes.

…. In short, it was a special experience.”

There you have it, they will not be selling the domain name to Google, nor any other individual. Someone should call and suggest a way to monetize their new temporary flood of international traffic.

The Squatters Came Out in Full Force

A quick search on Sedo shows 358 pages of domains containing the term “Knol.” Many have bids and are receiving a minor amount of traffic. Apparently these people do not realize that “Knol” is only a codename! Google is going to brand it’s new knowledge portal with a completely different name and acquire it’s respective domain name.

Think before you squat.