This is Domain Movers! We keep track of corporate domain name activity and report the early findings to you.
The following is a small sampling of activity over the past 24 hours that we detected.
Grab.com, which DotWeekly broke the news that they acquired Grab.com, for rebranding from the restrictive “Grab Taxi”, just raised a $2 billion dollar round, with a $6 billion valuation. Wow!
Aspen Financial Solutions Inc. registered several “Abound” domain names: AboundConsumerLending.com, AboundFinancialServices.com, AboundLending.com, AboundLendingServices.com, AboundLoans.com. They continued with similar terms like“Aspen” domains and “Chartpath”. They also registered a few “Forest” and “Green”, “Launch” “Savannah”, “Reach”, “Shift”, “Soar”, “Tempus” and “MoneyMart” domains. Some further examples are: ForestLendingServices.com, MoneyMartFinancial.com, LaunchLendingServices.com etc. FinancialServices.com and ConsumerLending.com were the most commonly used terms with all these different names.
GoDaddy NameFind ~ something happened. Over 6,000 domain names that were connected to the NameFind portfolio changed name servers but nothing else in whois. I checked several of them and they are redirecting to SearchInquire.com and specific to the domain visited. That SearchInquire.com domain is registered at PDR under privacy. The domains are showing a For Sale type page with an Afternic logo. But.net to see an example. They are likely just testing different for sale type landing pages under the code name “TDFS NameFind”, based on some code on the page.
HughHefner.com has transferred out of CSC Corporate Domains under Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. to Google’s registrar under CMG Worldwide. CMG are business agents and the domain is showing a coming soon page.
HGroup Holding GmbH have acquired BrandWand.com at domain name aftermarket service Sedo for $4,560
Marksmen helped acquire two more domain names for currently unknown corporate clients. Houseplant.com was the first domain, which has been registered since 1997 and was for sale using the Uniregistry system. The second domain was SpectrumMedia.com, which was likely acquired for Charter Communications Spectrum brand.
Shape Real Estate Limited have acquired MakeHomes.com at domain name aftermarket service Afternic.com for an undisclosed amount. The domain was owned by BuyDomains prior.
The Chemours Company FC, LLC registered the domain OptForBetter.com adding to the 640 other domain names the company owns. The company owns brands like Teflon, Krytox, Freon, Viton and more. This domain is likely slated for an advertising effort in some fashion.
Cerave.com has transferred ownership from Valeant Pharmaceuticals North America LLC to L’Oreal. CeraVe, AcneFree and Ambi were sold to L’Oreal for $1.3 billion in cash and the domain was one of its assets included in the deal.
Syngenta Participations AG have acquired Enogen.com from its past owners, IG Interactive Inc. via Ian Hoppes. The domain has been registered since 2004.
Daniel Vernon LTD has acquired Draft.co, with the transaction taking place and handled by Escrow.com.
Travel Africa Ltd acquired TravelMauritius.com from Frank Schillings Name Administration Inc.
ExpressKitchen.com was sold by Name Administration Inc., this one is being done with payments based on whois data and the email used. The buyers appear to be ExpressKitchen.net, since the domain is redirecting to it. Interestingly, the companies business name is Express Kitchens (plural). My friend Dr. Anthony Lam owns ExpressKitchens.com and certainly should be a focus domain for Express Kitchens. Anthony mentioned to me that he has had several inquires to purchase the domain but no agreement has taken place to date.
Anheuser-Busch, LLC registered the domain BluepointBrewery.com which actually took place 1 year ago, it just transferred into CSC now. The domain was under a Cindy McKeehan with an Anheuser-Busch email address, who is an IP specialist at Anheuser-Busch.
Hulk.com transferred ownership from Marvel Characters to Disney Enterprises, Inc. in relation to Disney acquiring Marvel for $4B in 2009. I have watched hundreds slowly transfer over time between the two companies but thought I would mention this one.
Paypal Inc. has listed the 3 letter domain name NPX.com for sale, with the help of its brand protection service MarkMonitor. These large companies do not sell “cheap” as they are use to paying end user prices but they are also realistic for the most part. This isn’t X.com that they recently sold but still a decent domain. Paypal acquired the NPX domain when it acquired NPX Technologies LTD (Fraud Services) in 2008.
Regarding X.com and it’s sale to Elon Musk, I did hear some chatter from outside the domain industry in regards to the sale price. The amount is not confirmed by any means but it does appear to be realistic in regards. The price I heard was $8,000,000. Since Z.com sold for $6.8 million in 2014, that is why I mention that the sale price does seem realistic and I’m sure the Z.com sale was brought up in discussion when X.com sold.
ZML.com which I mentioned in an earlier article that had expired and was an ICE seized domain name, has been renewed by the government. I reached out for comment in regards to what happens with these domain names over time and will update with what I hear back.
WornDifferent.com was registered on June 13, 2016 by AirWair International LTD (Dr Martens brand). I mention this, because the company recently launched a new ad campaign around the term Worn Different. It is great that the company registered the domain name, because that was the right thing to do. Execution on the use of it though was overlooked IMO.
The ad campaign is running on the sub-domain worndifferent.drmartens.com (people get confused with sub-domains) with a dedicated page for the effort, yet the domain name WornDifferent.com (which is the easiest and less confusing way to direct people to the specific page) does a general 301 redirect to DrMartens.com/uk/ and not the Worn Different ad campaign sub-domain used? The UK page does reference #worndifferent on the very bottom of the page, so maybe they used the term in some fashion in the UK but I’m in the US.
A search engine search via Google.com for WornDifferent.com is also lacking, since the company didn’t use a Server Side redirect with the domain name. The server side redirect still allows the 301 redirect, but is much more powerful and also allows you to set a page title and meta description (to include your brand name and important keywords relating to the campaign) to rank the domain in a search engine. The Worn Different search term is covered with the sub-domain, which is good.
The little details can make big differences, so pay attention to them!
Thanks Jamie!