Index of Domaining Terms

The following are common terms used within the firld of domaining. Some may apply more than others in specific domaining situations.

404 Error
Page not found error code, these are normally redirected to the root domain when using a parking service.

ACPA – Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
US Federal law for domain name disputes – 15 USC 1125(d), provides for legal remedies unlike the dispute services which are generally limited to transfer of the domain name only. The court has discretion to award damages of not less than $1,000 and not more than $100,000 per domain name.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/usc_sec_15_00001125—-000-.html

(d) Cyberpiracy prevention
(1)(A) A person shall be liable in a civil action by the owner of a mark, including a personal name which is protected as a mark under this section, if, without regard to the goods or services of the parties, that person-

(i) has a bad faith intent to profit from that mark, including a personal name which is protected as a mark under this section; and

(ii) registers, traffics in, or uses a domain name that-
(I) in the case of a mark that is distinctive at the time of registration of the domain name, is identical or confusingly similar to that mark;
(II) in the case of a famous mark that is famous at the time of registration of the domain name, is identical or confusingly similar to or dilutive of that mark; or
(III) is a trademark, word, or name protected by reason of section 706 of title 18 or section 220506 of title 36.

ALEXA
A site traffic ranking tool that uses a sampling approach where data is gathered from alexa toolbar users to rank websites by estimated volume of traffic. Caution should be taken when using Alexa data as the basis of decisions as the data is sampling based and Alexa can group sites.

BID
Amount paid by an advertiser for each visitor delivered to them, usually in response to a click on their advert under a pay per click model. Bids are made in an auction environment where higher bidded adverts are displayed before lower bidded ones.

BIN – Buy It Now
This is the price to buy the item now rather than bidding in an auction/make offer type format.

CCTLD – Country Code Top Level Domains
These are domain extensions (tld’s) that represent geographical regions e.g..ca for Canada, .uk for United Kingdom, .de for Germany. A full list is available from Wikipedia.

C & D / Cease & Desist Letter
In a domainer sense, these are letters sent out by companies usually via lawyers or legal departments asserting rights in a domain name and requesting that the domain name be handed over or cancelled with an implied/explicit threat that further action will taken if this is not done. They often reference the $100,000 max per domain penalty allowed under the US Federal ACPA legislation.

CP – Control panel
Area of a website/service that allows control over aspects of that service – eg a registrar control panel allows changes to nameserver delegation, contact details etc.

Direct Navigation (linked with type-in traffic)
Where visitors to a site access the site directly rather than via an intermediary site such as a search engine e.g. via typing a url into the address bar. They may be doing so on-spec without knowing the actual content they will encounter.

DNS – Domain Name System
Devices on the internet route data to each other using IP addresses which are numerical “locations”. Sitting on top of these IP addresses are the more human friendly domain names that we know and love – like google.com. When a domain name is registered, nameservers have to be specified which have authority to control what IP address is given in response to a domain name. Different subdomains can resolve to different IP addresses so alpha.domain.tld can be configured to resolve to a different IP address than beta.domain.tld for example. Wildcard DNS can also be employed where everything.domain.tld is configured to resolve to a specific IP address. Round robin systems can also be employed where a domain name resolves to a specified list of IP addresses in a predetermined order to spread the loading across multiple servers.

DS – DomainSponsor (also used as an acronym for DomainState)
Common abbreviation for DomainSponsor, a popular company that offers domain parking monetization services.

EPC – Earnings Per Click
The average earning per click.

ESCROW
A third party service that acts as a buffer between buyer and seller – the buyer sends money to the escrow company who then releases the funds to the seller once the goods/services have been delivered to the buyer. Escrow.com is one of the most popular services for this.

GTLD – Generic Top Level Domain
Domain extensions (tld’s) that are not linked to a specific geographic region and were originally intended to represent a specific usage e.g. .com (originally intended for commercial) and .biz (intended for business usage).

HIT
Used in a wide variety of ways making it meaningless unless qualified – some use it to mean a non-unique visitor, others to mean unique visitors and others to mean each element of a page sent (eg each graphic on a page can count as a “hit”).

ICANN – Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers
The body tasked with managing the domain name system, they accredit registrars, registries and they implemented the UDRP.

IP ADDRESS
This is a numerical address on the internet which is used to route the actual data and is what domain names sit on top of. Domain names resolve to IP addresses via nameservers.

NAMESERVER
These are the servers that issue an IP address for a given domain name.

NDA – Non-Disclosure Agreement
A contract where the parties agree to not disclose details of a second contract – typically used in connection with sales where the buyer/seller do not want details of the sale, especially price, made public.

NEW TLD’s
Typically used to refer to the generic top level domains that were launched after the original .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov and .mil tld’s – examples include .info and .biz

PARKING
A complete traffic monetization service where the revenue generating content is provided by the park company and revenue is earned by displaying advertising to the visitors and sharing the revenue generated with the domain owner. Parking is generally designed to convert existing traffic not to create new traffic. Examples include DomainSponsor, Sedo, Fabulous, GoldKey and NameDrive. Parking is generally designed to convert existing traffic, not to generate new traffic.

REDIRECT
This is where someone accessing a domain name is routed to a different domain name/URL. There are different methods of doing this, the most common are:

Header redirect – this is where the browser is instructed to leave the current url and move along to the new site, the url displayed in the address bar is that of the new location.

Javascript/META refresh redirect – this is where code on the page instructs the browser to leave the current url and move along to the new site, the url displayed in the address bar is that of the new location. META refresh redirects also include the option of a timed delay before the redirect takes place.

Frame/Stealth redirect – this is where frameset code is used which loads the new location into a frame on the existing page. This page is normally configured to be 100% so in effect it means the entire screen. This has the advantage that the url displayed in the address bar remains that of the typed url.

REGISTRAR
An entity that offers registration services, usually within various tld’s (extensions) – examples include Enom and Network Solutions.

REGISTRY
The controller of the tld’s eg Verisign with .com

ROUND ROBIN DNS
This is where a domain name is configured to resolve to a specified list of IP addresses in a predetermined order to spread the loading across multiple servers.

RPM – Revenue Per Thousand
Usually means revenue per thousand unique visitors, but can also mean revenue per thousand non-unique impressions.

RPC – Revenue per click
The average revenue per click (aka EPC – earnings per click).

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
Using a calculated methodology to influence the position(rank) within the search engines for targetted terms to generate traffic.

SLD – Second Level Domain
Reading from right to left, and splitting a domain into separate parts using the dot as the delimiter, this is the second element e.g. in domain.com “domain” is the sld, in bbc.co.uk the SLD is “co”. Domain.com is said to be a second level domain because the identifying element controlled by the registrant is “domain”, with the “.com” top level domain being controlled by the registry.

TLD – Top Level Domain
Sometimes referred to as the “extension”, this is the first element of a domain name reading from right to left before the first dot e.g. in domain.com the tld is .com. These are further broker down into gtld’s which are generic top level domains such as .com /.info etc which do not have a geographical association and cctld’s which are country code top level domains such as .uk/.de which do have a geographical tie and are usually operated by agencies within the country referenced.

TRAFFIC
Visitors to a site – can originate from the search engines, links from other sites, bookmarks or direct address bar type-ins.

TYPE-IN
Where visitors to a site access the site directly via the address bar rather than using links from an intermediary site such as a search engine. They may be doing so on-spec without knowing the actual content they will encounter.

TYPO
Where a person enters an incorrect term/address usually through incorrect spelling.

UDRP – Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (Most gTld’s like .com)
Dispute service that most gtld’s (e.g. .com) are subject to. Remedy if found against the domain holder is the transfer of the domain name. There are several forums that offer UDRP services, WIPO and National Arbitration Forum being 2 – the complainant chooses the venue.

http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm

Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a “complainant”) asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of Procedure, that

(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and

(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and

(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

UNIQUE
Commonly used to identify a unique visitor to a site, usually in a defined period like 24 hours, but can be an algorithmic system to determine uniques (eg using cookies).

URL – Uniform Resource Locator
The address of a resource on the internet – usually used in connection with a full website address like https://www.https://domainbuyersmarket.com/helath-available-domain-names/. This includes the protocol (eg https://), the domain name (eg domainbuyersmarket.com) and a page name and path (helath-available-domain-names/).

VERISIGN
Operator of the .com and .net gtld’s, they also own several other companies such as GreatDomains.com and operate several other registries including several country code marketed as gtld tld’s like .tv (the cctld for Tuvalu) – not television.

WEB SERVER
A program running on a server that issues the page code (eg html) and page elements (eg graphical images) that are rendered via browsers such as Edge, Chrome, or Firefox into the web pages we see when browsing the web. Requests are routed to the web server via the DNS. Common web servers include Apache and Microsoft IIS.

WILDCARD DNS
This is where the domain is configured to resolve anything.domain.tld rather than the traditional www.domain.tld and just domain.tld. The configuration is performed in the nameserver that has authority for the domain name and the web server also needs to be configured to accept the full domain when the data is resolved to it for correct functionality.