These were labeled the “new domains” to connote their relative newness to the well-established com/net/org trio that rose to prominence with the internet’s global adoption. Afilias, who manage the .info web address, just released their annual dotINFO report for 2010.

The report highlights very substantial growth for the .info web address for year 2010. The domain space grew 30% in 2010 pushing total registrations for .info to over 6.8 million. DomainTools‘ report of current internet domain registration numbers puts .info at over 7.3 million as of 12/7/2010.

The Afilias annual study announced that dotINFO currently ranks # 7 among 270 top level domains available worldwide. dotINFO has over 1.3 million live, active websites available to internet users at the present time. 

Also continuing along the same path as .info are the .biz (business) and .US (United States) web addresses each of which have continued to increase their global registration numbers and be readily adopted by local, regional, national and global companies.

To browse premium quality .info domain names, visit: PremiumDomains.US

Ron Jackson of DNJournal publishes a weekly domain name sales report, and I noticed that the last entry on his report was the sale of Oracle.info. Naturally, I wondered if perhaps Oracle Corp. had acquired the domain name. They did indeed purchase Oracle.info for a mere $1377. Quite a nice pick-up for the company who had also previously acquired “Oracle” in the .BIZ web address and also in the official .mobi (mobile) extension. In fact, the company have a fully developed .mobi complaint site in operation. Their .biz and .info versions are currently forwarding to the Oracle.com primary website.

As .INFO is one of the world’s leading web addresses based on sheer registration numbers (nearly 7 million), it is certainly logical that Oracle Corporation would obtain Oracle.info at such an affordable price. This rounds out their company domain portfolio quite well.

It should be noted that Oracle is a generic word typically meaning “a person or thing which acts as an agent of divine communication”. Consequently, Oracle Corporation would have no automatic trademark right to the word “oracle”. It’s good to see a company of their size using a legitimate avenue (aftermarket purchase) to acquire Oracle.info as opposed to misusing the UDRP in a reverse domain name hijacking attempt.

Menius Enterprises, Inc. recently acquired the premium domain, www.Condos.info. In researching general condo sites online, I discovered a pretty keen concentration of realty professionals across the USA using the dotINFO web address for major real estate portals.

The first site I noticed was quite impressive in its incredible depth of content, SouthBeachCondos.info, which is a perfect geo-targeted domain name for the South Beach Miami area.

Another Florida-focused .info realty site is BeauSoleilCondos.info which focuses on Winter Park, Florida. Contemporary condo designs and urban living are hallmark features of the Beau Soleil residences which range in size from 952 sq. ft. to 1768 sq. ft. Again, a logical & marketable domain name being utilized.

Even Canadian realtors are embracing .info as evidenced by Christine Louw’s CoalHarbourCondos.info which is a luxury condo site for Vancouver’s premier waterfront location, Coal Harbour. Located in British Columbia, Canada.

For the curious, condo sales have been on the rise for several months now in favored markets such as Manhattan, Florida, and metro cities along the west coast.

Of interest to domainers is their use of the .info web address as the portal to the Bank of America Corporate Center at 100 N. Tryon Street. The official website address is TheCorporateCenter.info and it contains essential facts and “information” about the facility.

The Corporate Center is a landmark in Charlotte standing above every other skyscraper and visible for many miles as one approaches North Carolina’s Queen city. The building weighs 300 million pounds. It was completed in 1992 and took the combined efforts of several architectural firms to finalize its ultimate design and plan of construction.

Bank of America is the largest bank in the United States. With its headquarters now in Charlotte, Charlotte is regarded as the second largest financial center in the USA behind only New York City.

The .info web address is ideal for business purposes as well as a good general purpose domain for city & state websites, specific subjects, and the hotel & travel industry. .INFO is an unrestricted domain and may be registered by anyone in the world. .INFO currently enjoys 6,817,548 global registrations making it one of the leading domain name extensions in the world. .INFO is managed by the Afilias Registry.

* Visit PremiumDomains.US to browse premium quality .info domain names.

Poker.org

Also of special interest is a post at DomainNameWire regarding Afilias. The entry reports that Afilias has requested approval from ICANN to release 1 and 2 character .info domain names from their reserved list. The Neustar Registry did something similar several months ago with the .BIZ web address resulting in a number of 5-figure sales for 1 character .biz domain names.

Lastly, consider this a public service announcement -> Avoid automated domain name appraisals. Like the ones you find advertised & sold on domain name registration websites. Sadly, I have noticed a new wave of people selling (pushing) automated domain appraisals, quoting them in domain forums, and referencing them in email inquiries.

Quality domain names in particular cannot be properly appraised using the simple metrics that automated appraisals employ. Those who sell automated domain appraisals are looking to cash in on the gullibility of new domain investors and buyers. An experienced domain professional will never make reference to automated domain appraisals as they are uniformly understood to be nothing more than a gimmick or toy.

There may come a day when automated appraisal algorithms are sophisticated enough to tap into real value and produce a defensible price range for premium domain names. At the current time, nothing comes close to doing this. All automated appraisals have enormous margins of error such that they consistently fail tests for validity and reliability.

The company is operating off of websites at Lockheed.info and Lockheed.com. Actually, the .com site is LockheedMartin.com and Lockheed.com forwards to that whereas Lockheed.info is a self-standing site on its own. Some of the links there track back to the LockheedMartin.com site particularly in regard to the jobs availability page.

The .info and .com sites appear to mirror each other. Lockheed Martin have also registered variations on their name in the .US, .biz, and .mobi extensions. Most likely to prevent trademark infringement by cybersquatters.

However, it is nice to see a multi-billion dollar global corporation actually using the .info version of their company name. Afilias.info are the official registry and overseer of the .info web address which currently totals 5,595,978 domain name registrations worldwide.

Afilias

Over the years, Afilias have occasionally used several promotions to boost .info registrations such as free first year registration and the 2009 .INFO Website Awards contest.

North America presently accounts for 61% of all .info domain registrations and European countries comprise 23%. The United States and Germany are # 1 and # 2, respectively, for registration numbers by country. Rounding out positions 3, 4, and 5 are the U.K., France, and Canada which demonstrate broad international appeal and global support of the .info web address.

A beautiful .info geo domain profiled here earlier in the year was Spain.info. There are many interesting and well developed .info sites across the internet such as PropertySlides.info, MutualFunds.info (owned by Time Inc./CNN), and Encompass.info.

Since .info represents “information“, the domain works extremely well for a wide variety of applications including many general topics, health & science, business & industry, and city or state websites. 

Having become the 7th most registered domain in the world, .info has established itself as a very significant player on the internet world stage.

$7,500 was awarded for first place to Thueringen.info (a travel site serving Germany). Second place, with a prize of $5,000, was awarded to GPS-Tour.info (a website where individuals can share and download outdoor GPS tours). In third place was Turkel.info, a travel & tourism marketing site, taking $3,000 for their efforts.

There are currently 5,428,453 .info domain names registered around the world. Fully developed sites and services are being launched on a daily basis due to the gradual adoption and popularity of the .info web space.

For those of you who are interested in the .info domain name, check out Spain.info. It’s a beautifully designed website & portal for the country of Spain that exemplifies the logic behind the .info domain name extension.

DevHub was created by Evo Media Group and its goal is to provide easy content creation (and editing) with less complexity than is normally required for custom html coding.

I have found that one can put up a basic, somewhat generic site with relative ease and which provides some desireable user functionality. However, you can introduce custom graphics and more sophisticated features if willing to invest more time in the development.

Development itself is a process which often evolves in stages. DevHub allows you the option of working effectively within time constraints since you can start off with a basic website that can grow. For a large portfolio owner, developing all of one’s domain properties can be a time intensive process.  Premium domain names deserve quality attention & development, but often must begin as a simple concept that will become more complete with future development.

Charlotte.US is an example of a time intensive website that takes many weeks to complete (even on the user-friendly WordPress format). By contrast, a website like Raleigh.info can be built with DevHub in about 5 to 8 hours. Below (and pictured right) are a variety of websites I developed in the last few weeks. All of them were done on DevHub. None of them are in their final stage …

More DevHub developed sites …

• NorthCarolina.info
• CaliforniaJobs.info
• AutoRacing.biz

I remember meeting Ron online around 2004, and bought a .US domain name from him several months later. Funny how time flies. He, myself, and a seeming handful of domain investors liked the newer top level domains in biz/us/info and assembled deep, high-quality portfolios in these newer addresses.

I have written for quite some time about the shifting tide having watched on several levels the growing adoption of .biz, .us, and .info domains. All of these have a substantial footprint not only in America, but also globally. They are growing as expected.

Each of these three offer a unique identity separate and apart from .com. I recently was negotiating on a high quality .com domain and the first question asked of me was did I have the .BIZ as well.

Small businesses have been using the alternatives for awhile. Now, larger businesses are looking to biz/info/us domains as illustrated in the Ford auto dealership example discussed in Ron’s blog entry for today. Ron writes that he’s glad he placed his bets years ago on the newer tld’s. I’ve known for a long time that biz/info/us would define a critical place on the internet, and watched the concentric circles of use get bigger and bigger with every passing year.

If you would like to read Ron’s thoughts on the subject and about his recent sales, check out the blog article here …

–>  http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2009/dailyposts/03-17-09.htm

Spain.info

The site is rich with colorful video, panoramic photos, interactive maps, deep content for avid readers, and all of the functionality needed to plan a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime trip.

It would appear that Spain.info draws considerable visitor traffic. The site enjoys a near top position in Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines. A Google page rank of “7″ and 76,537 incoming Yahoo links are more than enough evidence to conclude Spain.info is providing travelers with what they need. More stats indicate that the website drew between 40,000 and 100,000 site visitors per month over the course of 2008. Impressive.

Spain.info’s designers have adapted the site for four major languages: Spanish, English, German, and French. Some of the interactive multimedia functions, which really shine, require the installation of Quicktime (if not already resident on your computer). The install is free and effortless if you’re interested.

Afilias.info is the registry that manages the .info (information) domain extension. Additional, high-quality .info geodomain websites that may interest travelers are …

• Germany.info
• Austria.info
• Peru.info
• Dublin.info
• Berlin.info
• Rome.info

It is an excellent fit for the .info (information) domain extension since facts & information are at the very core of what makes the internet so powerful. Mr. Harald Ebert of Barcelona, Spain is the present owner and looks to make a nice return on his investment.

Facts.info would make a logical brand & online identity for a wikipedia type website, online encyclopedia, news aggregator, or research center for a major university. Online education and degrees are big business being so well suited to live streaming over the internet. I’ll be interested to see if this nice name is possibly acquired by a known educational institution, or is purchased by a domain name investor.

In 2005, the gross domestic product of Dubai was $37 billion. While initially constructed using oil money, oil now accounts for less than 6% of total revenues since the local economy has become diversified … significantly funded through financial services, real estate, trade, and tourism.

At this point, we can only speculate as to how Dubai.info will be utilized. Information on tourism and travel booking would be logical options considering the Dubai International Airport served over 34 million passengers in 2007 alone. That’s an average of over 93,000 passengers per day.

A premium domain name like Dubai.info leaves the door wide open for development and monetization. Geodomain names are a beautiful fit for .info, the internet’s official information extension.