It's All Geek To Me - July 8th 2004

Domain name pointers are a glorious thing – ok, ok, - perhaps they are something only a geek could get excited about but with a bit more info you might think they are pretty cool too.

Ever notice that sometimes companies display different web addresses in different ads? Like good old http://www.dell4me.com – which goes directly to http://www.dell.com?

They use this other domain name – which is called a pointer domain – to track how many people are responding to the specific advertisements in which they use the pointer domain.

This is an impressive connection between the offline and online world – that yellow pages ad costing you several thousand dollars per year? Ever want to know how many people go from that to your website? Use a pointer domain just for the yellow pages, best $35 you can spend to enhance your ability to track and measure the results from the ad.

Pointer domains also help solve problems of confusion, spelling, and other issues. Take the experience of one of our clients as an example – Conklin & de Decker.

This company provides aviation information solutions and consulting – they are an industry leader and very well known. However - translating their name to a domain name – a bit of a disaster. The “&” character is not allowed in domain names; domain names only can have letters, numbers, and dashes – no other punctuation is allowed. When we first met them they were using the name www.conklindd.com – not easy to spell, simple to remember, or easy to say to someone on the phone.

Today the firm uses several dozen pointer domains for different specific purposes – for example they now have the name of all of their products. Here is one of them – nice and simple and easy: http://www.AircraftCostEvaluator.com

This allows for specific tracking as well as improving customer service and making it easier to get folks to the website. Here is a short list of names KISS uses:

kisscomputing.com
kisscomputing.net
kisscomputing.org
kisscomputing.info
kisscomputing.biz
kisscomputing.us
kisscomputing.tv
kisscomputing.cc
getkissednow.com
ebookonebooks.com
kissbox.net
kissclicks.com
keepitsimplesolutionsfortheweb.com

Allright, we've never had a TV commercial so perhaps the .tv one is a bit much, but we do enjoy life here on Cape Cod – so that .cc extension is perfect for local print ads. We could even use one name for the yellow pages, one for our chamber of commerce ad, one for our business cards, and another for the AAA guidebook.

If you spend any money on print ads or have any domain confusion issues – put pointers to work for you. Click here to search for available domain names on our website.

Tech Tip

by Michael McGrath I was reading a research article over the weekend about spam. I know it's been the subject of previous Tech Tips, but this is one of those topics that always needs more attention. The article suggested that a high percentage of spam is being generated by infected computers. Not to take professional “spammers” off the hook, please don't misunderstand me, but it seems that lots of people are inadvertently contributing substantially to the spam volume world-wide. Are you? If you haven't done all of the following, chances are that you may be. 1. Install an anti-virus program. You can pay for one (Norton or McAfee), or get one free (Avast! or AVG). 2. Keep your DAT files (definitions files) current by updating weekly. In the case of Avast!, for instance, that happens automatically. 3. Never open an attachment to an email unless you were expecting a file, and never open one if you don't recognize the sender's name. 4. As soon as you finish reading this Tech Tip, run a system-wide scan on your system for viruses. Clean your files, quarrantine and delete those that are infected. So, if you've felt helpless about spam, well, come to find out, there is something you can do about it. Follow these steps to stop contributing to the problem. If you're still stuck, you may want to sign up for our anti-spam email defense services. You can do so by emailing Ross, here.