Registrar Connections

Start your ICANN meeting journey in São Paulo, Brazil, with a warm welcome from VeriSign. On the evening of Monday, December 4, VeriSign invites you to join us for our VeriSign Industry Forum which will bring together the Internet community including our registrars, ICANN attendees and local industry players. The event will be hosted at the MuBE, the magnificent Brazil Sculpture Museum.

It will be an evening of networking, information sharing and camaraderie. The evening will kick off with a brief program led by VeriSign Vice President Raynor Dahlquist who will share her thoughts on where the Internet and domain names are headed and Ken Silva will discuss Internet security and stability from his perspective as VeriSign’s chief security officer. Then mix and mingle at a cocktail party – with true Brazilian flair.

We look forward to welcoming you to São Paulo and to Brazil! Visit our event page to register and for more information.

Success in Frankfurt for the European Registrar Day!

Over 14 different registrars from all across Europe participated in VeriSign’s European Registrar Day event, held in Frankfurt, Germany on November 2, 2006. The full day event provided those attendees powerful information around the latest industry trends and research as well as insight into the newest products coming out of VeriSign, designed to drive new revenue and domain name registrations.

Coming on the heels of the successful North American Registrar Days in September, the European event allowed registrars to participate in open discussions around some of the most critical topics affecting the domain name industry today, and moving forward. The impact of IDNs, Pay-Per-Click and overall TLD growth were covered along with roadmap overviews of .com/.net, VeriSign’s Domain Name Suggestion Service and the newest product, VeriSign Internet Profile Service. The presentations wrapped up with suggested marketing strategies and a spotlight on the opportunities around the .tv TLD.

Thank you to those who participated and made this event a success. It is always our goal at these meetings to provide our registrar partners with topics and information they can use to improve their business. If you have any questions, or have suggested topics you would like to see covered in future events, please contact us at namingmarketing@verisign.com.

Maximize Search Keywords to Drive More Domain Name Registrations

In August of this year, VeriSign engaged with iCrossing, an industry leading search engine marketing and optimization company, to look at the state of the search marketplace and keyword analysis behind the behaviors of consumers searching for domain name registration. Jorie Hutchings, iCrossing’s Senior Director of Search Analytics, first shared these findings with registrars at VeriSign’s North American Registrar Days event in September.

Hosting and Domain names
Consumers were searching for “Hosting” services 83% more often than domain name specific keywords, and even when domain name specific keywords were searched, hosting played a significant role.

What Does this Mean?
Having content on your site supporting hosting differentiators and benefits in both basic and advanced technical levels could help drive more traffic and a higher number of conversions.

Free and Cheap Dominate
When cost was an issue, consumers were looking for “Free” or “Cheap” services. In fact, the “Free”, “Cheap” and “Affordable” keywords represented over 90% of the cost related searches around hosting and domains.

What Does This Mean?
Keep these terms in mind as you incorporate content on your site and develop your search advertising campaigns to take advantage of these patters.

Learn More
If you have any questions, want to learn more, or get a summary of the entire study, please contact us at namingmarketing@verisign.com.

Feature Series: .tv Case Study #3—Click.tv

This Registrar Connection series highlights .tv customers from diverse but interrelated industries such as the digital media service, non-profit, communication and television & media service industries. Each feature story will be a condensed version of the case study and will focus specifically on the unique value and strength of the .tv domain name. To get a PDF copy of the complete case study, go to verisign.com/tvmarketing, and scroll down to the Case Studies section, or send an email request to namingmarketing@verisign.com.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Click.TV, an innovative solution designed for anybody who watches or publishes video on the Web, has enjoyed rapid growth, due in part to the determination of founder and chief executive officer, Mike Lanza, to have a strong identity and brand name. He explained, “I wanted to get a domain that works as a company name. Initially we looked at .com names and as many mainstream names were already taken, we considered an array of ideas such as misspellings like ‘klik,’ and ‘clic,’ which were short and more affordable, but they just weren’t compelling enough.”

Lanza strongly believes that the choice of a .tv domain name has given the company considerable competitive advantage. He stated, “Click.TV gives people a perception of a cool, leading-edge company. Plus, it’s a good short name, which makes it an instantly memorable site.”

“As our domain is our company name, everything we do in marketing activities helps promote our URL. We’ve had a lot of feedback that people love it, and it’s clear from our growth that they remember it too. Having a .tv domain name is perfect for our business.”

A Successful EPP Migration – The Latest Chapter in Domain Name Registration

With the rapid growth and demand for domain names in the 1990s, it became imperative to create a shared registration system model that allowed all registrars equivalent access to the registry, and the ability to register domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. To meet this need, the Registry Registrar Protocol (RRP) was developed as a standard Internet domain name registration protocol for use between domain name registrars and domain name registries. Even as RRP was being deployed in 1999, the next generation protocol to improve RRP and enable additional uses beyond domain name registration was being developed. This protocol is the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP).

Since its adoption as an Internet standard, EPP has become the industry standard for most domain name registries. VeriSign Naming Services began the task of migrating the over 800 .com and .net registrars from RRP to EPP over two years ago, with the goal of minimizing the impact to their business. The transition plan included extensive customer communications, webinars, individual meetings, and engineering symposiums. On October 28, 2006, VeriSign sunset RRP and all operational registrars have been successfully migrated to EPP.

Thanks to the dedicated and focused efforts from the entire core team from within VeriSign and the registrars themselves, we were able to achieve this milestone with a minimum of disruption. A Job Well Done!

VeriSign Partner Logo is Now Available for Use on Your Site

Accredited VeriSign registrars now have the opportunity to participate in the VeriSign

Partner Program and use an official logo on your site and in your marketing materials.

Registrars simply have to complete and sign a trademark agreement and VeriSign will send the official materials you need to incorporate the VeriSign logo on your site. If you are interested in this program or want to learn more, visit the Registrar Marketing Tools Page, or contact us at namingmarketing@verisign.com for more details.

VeriSign Naming Services Staff Spotlight: Inez Toppin

As a Contract Administrator, Inez Toppin helps to manage the ramp up process and contract administration for all of VeriSign’s registrars. Registrars come from all corners of the globe, so Inez works hard to simplify the process where possible, and is sensitive to unique challenges of working with different legal, tax and financial standards. Her goal, and the goal of the entire customer affairs team, is to provide the most effective customer experience in the industry.

"Over the past eight years, I have seen the number of registrars increase from just a few dozen to over 800 today. It is exciting to be involved in an industry experiencing that kind of growth, and if the last few months are any indication, I don’t expect to see a slow down any time soon."

If you have any questions or want to reach out directly to her, she can be reached at itoppin@verisign.com.

Customer Service: Frequently Asked Questions

This section includes some recent questions handled by the Customer Service group.

Question: I requested to register a ccTLD and received the error <reason>Purchase period not valid for suffix.</reason>. What does this mean?

Answer: The domain create request was rejected because the registration term submitted does not comply with the ccTLD NIC’s requirement. The minimum registration term for the different NICs varies from 1 year to 10 years. Please check the NameStore Product Guidebook to confirm the required minimum registration term for the ccTLD you are trying to register.

Answer: You can update an auth-code via the registrar tool or via EPP. Below is the sample XML for updating the Auth Info Codes using the EPP Domain update command.

Question: Is there a new Registrar Tool now that the Registry has migrated to EPP?

Special Report on Technology from eMarketer: More high speed internet connections will lead to more online spending!

Confident shoppers with high speed connections will increase their online spending by 20% this holiday season!

Even before gas prices started dropping, consumers and retailers alike were predicting that this would be another strong online holiday shopping season.

"eMarketer forecasts that this holiday season (November and December) Web merchants will ring up sales of $24.3 billion," says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and the author the new Online Holiday Shopping Preview. "That's a healthy 22.1% more than last year."

eMarketer's Q4 2006 retail e-commerce sales forecast is $33.2 billion, accounting for nearly 31% of all 2006 online retail sales.

"Sales growth will come this holiday season less from e-commerce newcomers and much more from experienced online buyers who increase their spending," says Mr. Grau.

One of the reasons for that is that Internet retailers have successfully learned how to extend the length of the online holiday shopping season by guaranteeing delivery the week prior to Christmas. In fact, last year, according to comScore Networks, the peak sales day of the online holiday season was Monday, December 12, and the peak week, ending December 11, produced $3.1 billion in sales.

"It is worth noting," says Mr. Grau, "that the online holiday shopping numbers come amid less than robust overall holiday forecasts."

In September, the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated that 2006 US holiday sales would be $457 billion, an increase of only 5% over last year and the lowest growth in three years.

Despite somewhat gloomy forecasts for other sectors, online retailers are optimistic.

An October 2006 survey cosponsored by Shop.org, the e-commerce arm of the NRF, and Shopzilla, a comparison shopping site, found that 72% of online retailers expect good (15% or more) year-over-year online sales growth this holiday season. 21% of them expect online sales growth of 75% or more.

"Another good sign for online merchants this year is that not only will online customers be shopping later, they will also start shopping earlier," says Mr. Grau. "They are expanding the online sales season from both ends."

The Shop.org/Shopzilla "2006 eHoliday Mood Survey" found that 20% of online shoppers planned to start their holiday gift buying on the Internet earlier this year than last year. More than one-third (34.9%) of the respondents said they intended to start shopping online before November, and 21% said they would begin their shopping in October.

For more on what to expect this online holiday season, and why, read eMarketer's new Online Shopping Preview today.

In the News

This section contains a selection of articles pertaining to the Domain Name Industry compiled by Information, Inc.

"Youtube or Utube? Mix-up Floods Local Web Site"
The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) (10/14/06); Pakulski, Gary T.

The Web site for Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment., UTube.com, was shut down for most of the week of Oct. 8, as a result of thousands of hits from people thinking it was Youtube.com, the popular site recently purchased by Google, where users post homemade videos. Ralph Girkins has operated the site since 1994, while Youtube.com was only started in February 2005. "We were kicked off four servers," Girkins says. Jason Wiltse, a sales representative from one of the companies who had to close the site and refer it to a larger provider, explains, "we could not handle the volume." Girkins says he gets as many as 40 requests a day from people all over the world who want to know what happened to all the video clips. UTube.com was even listed by Yahoo as the sixth most popular site for a U.S. manufacturer. "We've got 18 people here," says Girkins. He is not sure whether or not the outage cost him any business, but it has certainly given him some unexpected publicity. "I'd like to work a deal with [Youtube] so that, in some way, we and they could benefit," Girkins says, accepting that a sale of his domain name may be in order.

ICANN has announced that it is making progress toward commencing laboratory tests for internationalized domain names (IDNs), and ICANN has contracted with Autonomica AB to develop, conduct, and report on IDN laboratory testing. The forthcoming lab trial run will include creating and interjecting a Punycode string into the domain name root in a replicated environment. The test will look for scenarios and problems that might arise in a real-world environment. Once this phase of IDN development is complete, a live root test will be initiated. IDN development and testing is being conducted under the auspices of the ICANN Presidents Advisory Committee for IDNs.

"Politicos Mull Data Retention by Web Hosts, Registrars"
CNet (09/27/06); Broache, Anne

Domain name registries and Web hosting firms may be required to retain customer records for a year under legislation being considered in Congress. The data potentially would be used to combat online child pornography. Domain name and Web hosting industry representatives participated in a congressional hearing on the matter on Sept. 26. Requirements to retain customer data could be "productive" for law enforcement, said GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones, but this data should be limited to identifying-data about subscribers, such as IP addresses and credit card numbers, and should not include their communications, she said. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) asked Jones and Blue Gravity Communications CEO Thomas Krawecz whether their companies had the technological ability to monitor for child pornography sites on the Internet. "If I had a staff of 1,000 people that could go and review all of our hosted pages every day, we would," Jones said. "But at $1.99 per month for a hosting account, the economics are not really there for us to do that." One possibility is that the legislation would require Internet providers, social networking sites, and search engines to retain IP address data. But a more broadly worded bill could force companies to retain data such as the addresses of Web sites visited, the identities of people communicating via email, and a tally of sent and received instant messages (but not the content of the messages.)

November 2006

In this issue:

Traveling to ICANN São Paulo? Join us for the VeriSign Industry Forum – Brazil