Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

A little over a month ago I posted about how a domain name that I own received 2,500 WHOIS queries at the Registrar, Fabulous.com

In a nutshell, Fabulous.com keeps track of the number of WHOIS lookups for domains registered with them and lists those numbers alongside the domain’s expiration date, inside your account control panel.

It’s obvious that domains that are looked up the most are usually monitored for pending availability by third parties and are entered into a number of droplists.

My little experiment so far has piled another 450 WHOIS queries to the original 2,500 – all while the domain expires in 15 days from now. Originally, I planned to wait almost 3 months before posting an update here but I thought it’d be better to keep track of this milestone as well.

The bottom line: vultures are always out there checking out your best and most valuable domains; it’s great that Fabulous.com provides this type of information that can help you gauge the value of your domain names – and a reminder to renew them well in advance!

One of the benefits of using Fabulous.com as my primary domain registrar is the ability to instantly track the number of WHOIS queries a domain receives.

With the proliferation of aftermarket services, domains are often polled and queried; that’s an indication of popularity that can be used as a secondary measurement of traffic.

When domains approach their expiration date, such WHOIS queries increase; domains that are “due to expire” begin to appear in pending droplists of drop-catching services.

To put it plainly, the vultures are watching.

Thus, it’s good to be able to see what the vultures are planning and to be able to gauge the popularity and selling potential of your domain names.

I just sorted my list of domains that expire in March at Fabulous by the number of WHOIS queries and I was amazed to find that one of them has had 2,500 WHOIS queries with 55 days to expiry. I’ve seen numbers in the upper hundreds *after* expiration, but nothing quite like this.

I can’t imagine what the number will be with 30 days to go or even past expiry, but I think I will play a game with the vultures, just to experiment a bit with their food.

I will let the domain expire for at least 2 weeks before I renew it, to maximize the WHOIS query stats and I’ll post the results after I renew it.

See you on the same topic in three months from now

Surprisingly, there are 13 LL.com domains that are about to expire. How soon? Well, in less than 40 days.

Generally speaking, it’s good to renew your valuable domains for several years in advance; the benefits are multiple:

• Registration security until a future expiration
• Taking advantage of the current prices
• Google likes domains with long life-spans
• You show disregard to the 2012 doom and gloom!

Without further ado, here are the 13 LL.com’s that expire in 40 days or less; let’s hope their owners take notice.