Chinese bought my alternative domain and now they have very high search results !!!?

[Frank Petronio]

I own my own domain in my name as a .com, as in frankpetronio.com. For a few years I also owned frankpetronio.net but I let my ownership expire last year because I had no real practical use for it.

I like to keep track of my search engine results since clients will find me that way, or maybe they will check me out? If I see anything negative I try to chase it down and remove/resolve it, seems like common sense and good business practice.

Checking my name with a search engine producing this interesting result - someone, obviously Chinese, purchased my .net domain and populated it with random popular clickable text links to other text based pages that look to be part of the same origin. By being so search engine friendly, this page now ranks higher than all but my primary website (Third out of hundreds of results!), yet the page has nothing about Frank Petronio in it, other than using my name in the text and code. I've translated it and it is all fake and pointing to other bogus pages generated on the fly. There is no real content or useful purpose.

What do you think this means? Is it some sort of scam that Chinese hackers will use to extort American businesses to resell them their alternative domain names back to them at inflated prices? Does it mean everyone with a business that wants good search engine results will have to preemptively buy every possible alternative .biz, .edu, .de, .ca... etc... hundreds of alternative suffixes?

Or is it even more devious than that, some sort of hacking bad guy activity? Or some new way to create spam, or perpetrate fraud?

Will ICANN or some authority put an end to this? Can they?

Will the search engines figure out how to filter these bogus sites out?

I'm not up on the tech, I am not sure of the reasons, the issues, or solutions but even if I did buy up my alt .net domain, what's to stop them from doing the same thing with some other suffix? So I buy back myname.net, they'll just buy another suffix and do the same thing all over again, right?

It's not a big issue but it is troublesome and annoying, and if I were a major web presence it would be a more serious matter. Even for the end user, they don't want bogus sites cluttering up their searches. What do you think will happen and is there anything at all I can do?

I've seen a lot of old domains go to China and sit unused, but I thought it was just speculation so they might sell some marketing name for a high price - remember domain name speculation was encouraged by GoDaddy and such. How much is it costing them to purchase millions of empty domains? I bet it's not $7.99 each.... How do they make any money from doing it, i.e. what is the business model?

74946

[Brian C. Miller]

Major web presences buy up all of the alternate endings, mispellings, and assorted hyphenations. And they don't let them go, ever. You let yours go, and one of the bottom feeders picked it up, for a year. They can do this because it costs them pennies to register huge batches of names. It's the 21st century, after all. IIRC, somebody at Microsoft let the hotmail domain expire, and some nice guy picked it up, pointed the domain back at their servers so they didn't lose traffic, and dropped them a note.

Today that name would have wound up being owned in Russia or China.

BTW, the Chinese registrar's systems seem to be screwed up, because it currently returns a "1" for the entire page content. Just wait a year, and they'll drop it and you can pick it up again.

[Frank Petronio]

But how did that site rise in the rankings so highly if it doesn't have any real content?

And what is to keep them from just doing the same thing with .biz, .org, etc. until all the search results are bull$#it?

[Brian C. Miller]

This is one of the ways that the Google search rankings operate. Your name was found in a domain name, which counts very highly in the ranking scheme. Other ways to goose the Google rankings is have a lot of pages with your name, or other search term, which points back to your page as a source.

What is displayed on the Google page is translated as, "The main drift of the forefront of fashion nowadays which star is most popular, the most famous star. The star concerned about how the stars are fashionable, Ben Wang a clean sweep."

The text has NOTHING to do with you or your photography! It's all automated!

The way it works is that there is a registry of dumped domain names. The bottom feeders have scripts which automatically pick up these domain names and register them for a year. If you didn't also do .org, .tel, and all the rest, then of course the bottom feeders didn't pick those up, because you didn't register them, they didn't get dumped, and nobody's looking for them.

If you are paranoid about your page rankings, buy up all the domains, keep them forever, and then fill the alternates with content that mentions you and points back to your main page.

[Leigh]

Does it mean everyone with a business that wants good search engine results will have to preemptively buy every possible alternative .biz, .edu, .de, .ca... etc... hundreds of alternative suffixes?
Not Possible.

ICANN recently released control of top-level domains. Now you can use any combination of letters.
They also abandoned the use of the ASCII character set, allowing ISO characters and foreign alphabets in URLs.

In the past there was a limit on the maximum number of characters in the URL, which is why you have
shortened top-levels like .co.uk rather than .com.uk, but that limit no longer exists.

The number of domain names that include your name as the second-level is virtually infinite.

- Leigh

[Frank Petronio]

Ah got it, thanks. So once you buy a domain, you want to keep up with it... forever. Damn!

Oh well a few Chinese characters in my results looks cosmopolitan doesn't it? How Zen....

[jonreid]

They'll probably drop it after a year Frank. I'm sure Google could do something about this if they tried harder. It's obvious their algorithms can be tricked relatively easily as you've shown.

[patrickjames]

If it makes you feel any better Frank I doubt anyone that is interested in you will click on a Chinese link.

[Old-N-Feeble]

Yep... if you want to minimize that sort of thing you have to buy and keep all the possible (dot) domains. Not only that but all the possible variations such as frank-petronio and frank_petronio. Internet scam bastards that take advantage of honest folk really piss me off.

[SamReeves]

The dot net owned by the Chinese will probably turn into spyware links and shitty porn over a while. Yeeech.

[Old-N-Feeble]

The dot net owned by the Chinese will probably turn into spyware links and shitty porn over a while. Yeeech.

Yeah... surely so. You're screwed, Frank. Damned internet bastard commie mo-fos!!

[Alan Gales]

What is displayed on the Google page is translated as, "The main drift of the forefront of fashion nowadays which star is most popular, the most famous star. The star concerned about how the stars are fashionable, Ben Wang a clean sweep."

The text has NOTHING to do with you or your photography! It's all automated!

I don't think anyone is going to get it confused with the real Frank Petronio. I have seen a picture of Frank. The photo and the fact that he drives a Volvo clearly show that Frank has no fashion sense! :D

[paulr]

"The main drift of the forefront of fashion nowadays which star is most popular, the most famous star. The star concerned about how the stars are fashionable, Ben Wang a clean sweep."

At the very least, be sure to add this to your reviews.

[Old-N-Feeble]

I star am. Argue you not with them advisers at. Incredulity not am I for one is never not without criticism and dead flowers.

Like it or not... they've got you by the testicles.

[Mike Anderson]

Not Possible.

ICANN recently released control of top-level domains. Now you can use any combination of letters.


They didn't release control of them, they took applications (at $185,000 each) for generic TLDs. And they keep the fee even if they deny you the name. ICANN is taking measures to somewhat discourage rampant speculation, squatting, and other profiteering shenanigans with this expansion of internet names.

[Mike Anderson]

The pictures are better at frankpetronio.com, but the writing is better at frankpetronio.net:


Introduction: What is the end of practice large breasts actress Yang Jinhua vindictive, how can the same time stimulated the ice soul and soul inflammation? Cold night laughed, thinking the the Oolong child reputation, but also help to melt plastic so a good sword out, even told his North the offerings Mogong no harm, the current sidewalk: "I by chance come into contact with the North offerings Mogong ... cold night just here, that Oolong

[Mike Anderson]

The way it works is that there is a registry of dumped domain names. The bottom feeders have scripts which automatically pick up these domain names and register them for a year. If you didn't also do .org, .tel, and all the rest, then of course the bottom feeders didn't pick those up, because you didn't register them, they didn't get dumped, and nobody's looking for them.


Hmmm. I guess this makes sense, this drag-netting of dumped names, because a dumped name might have some links to it.

[Joe Smigiel]

...By being so search engine friendly, this page now ranks higher than all but my primary website (Third out of hundreds of results!), yet the page has nothing about Frank Petronio in it, other than using my name in the text and code...
74946

䷆

"An army must set forth in proper order. If the order is not good, misfortune threatens."

[Leigh]

They didn't release control of them, they took applications (at $185,000 each) for generic TLDs.
I was trying to keep the explanation simple.

This is a photography board, not a geek board.

- Leigh

[Mike Anderson]

Don't forget to lock in your Cook Islands domain name.
75010
Cost a little more than most but totally worth it.

[Frank Petronio]

And don't forget the Pen Island site.

[Jason_1622]

I've had friends lose their domain names to unsavory folks before. Just be glad it is being used as an SEO farm and not a porn site!

[Steve Smith]

To be fair, you don't lose your domain name or have it stolen. You give it up by not paying for the renewal.


Steve.

[Leigh]

To be fair, you don't lose your domain name or have it stolen. You give it up by not paying for the renewal.
True. It used to be that domain names became available for issue immediately upon expiration.

Now there's a 30-day grace period for renewal, at least with some registrars. I don't know if that was mandated by ICANN or if some registrars just hold the names as a courtesy before identifying them as expired.

- Leigh

[Steve Smith]

Now there's a 30-day grace period for renewal, at least with some registrars.

That makes sense. I have a few domain names registered with 123reg. They usually send out 60 day and 30 day reminders. With one domain which I have they sent a one day reminder only and I first saw it three days later. They still accepted my payment for renewal though and I did not lose it.


Steve.

[Old-N-Feeble]

At my age and in my health... I don't need frustrating worrisome complications. I'll surf the web but will never be at it's mercy. I'll burn my PC first.

[Scott Knowles]

Two reasons I see, as noted. First, many Website hosts buy up temporary domain names for bulk e-mailings. They're entitled to use them for a year before they officially register them as permanent domains, or it become available again. This way they can simply cycle through the list and let the old ones die.

Second, anyone can reserve an existing domain or its variants by name or suffix, and they look for successful ones, like yours, and simply wait to see when it expires and grab it. They can also get the variants which they use for search engines to steer to other Websites. You can petition ICANN that the ones with your .net or .org are fulfilling the agreement for the use of the suffix, but that takes a lot of time and likely the other Website will disappear.

You should have gotten a notice from your domain name registration about the .net expiration date, but some don't and assume the domain name owner checks the registration. You should have access to the actual domain name registration host than a third party so you can update the information and renew the registration(s).

As for some domain name hosts, read the fine print when you get one, as they often register it in their name for you so you can't move it without buying it from them, and they keep it if you fail to pay the bill so they can resell it without having to change the registration.

As for your issue, have you contacted them to buy it back? Or put in the notice to buy it when it expires again?

[paulr]

The pictures are better at frankpetronio.com, but the writing is better at frankpetronio.net:

Introduction: What is the end of practice large breasts actress Yang Jinhua vindictive, how can the same time stimulated the ice soul and soul inflammation? Cold night laughed, thinking the the Oolong child reputation, but also help to melt plastic so a good sword out, even told his North the offerings Mogong no harm, the current sidewalk: "I by chance come into contact with the North offerings Mogong ... cold night just here, that Oolong

This is fabulous. Does anyone know what kinds of algorithms they use for cooking up this text? I'm smelling a poetry project.

[Brian C. Miller]

Paul, you are looking at the results of the Google translation algorithm. The text on the page is probably grabbed randomly from various Chinese sites, and posted on the page. Then we happen along, and post the results into the Google translator.

The interesting part is translating that into photography. Pixies. I smell pixies, and they ain't from Disney...

[polyglot]

There are a couple of things going on here:
- frankpetronio gets good search rankings because of Frank's own website, so it makes a good place to put a link-farm site to generate revenue from ads
- they can drive search relevance up even higher by linking to it from their other link-farm sites
- once there is a little traffic on it, it can be revenue-positive from ads pretty easily. At that point, the domain can be sold to another spammer or link-farmer, or maybe back to the original owner

To get an idea of how easy this is, google for "domain tasting" sometime. Basically the registrars are generous enough to spammers (they want to sell lots of domains, after all) that they will hand over a domain for 3 days for no fee in which time the link-farmer can test the domain out and see if it's natively getting traffic, e.g. a popular domain for which the registration has lapsed or something that receives URL-typos from a popular domain. If it receives traffic, they keep it and build their link-farm out to it; if it doesn't receive traffic then they give the domain back to the registrar. Now imagine doing that with an automated process with several million domains at once and you realise they have a risk-free way to sift for spam-valuable domains and monetise them.

[Mike Anderson]

I was searching for "Katie Falkenberg".
75225
http://www.katiefalkenbergphotography.com/

(Apparently in Japanese.)

[Superbass]

Once you look in the co.ck domain, you'll have to be sure to get your .xxx

[Daniel Moore]

You can create a free account over at http://www.domaintools.com/ (http://www.domaintools.com/) and set up a monitor for any domain you like, when there are changes in it's status you get an email. I'm not sure you'll have a battle in acquiring it again but being there is a good start. When a domain expires, that's just the start. I can take up to 75 days to be on the block again. If you get any seemingly random notices regarding BIDDING for the name, it's your choice, if you think there's competition it's possibly helpful, but it's a vicious scam in my opinion. You can wind up bidding against yourself if no one else is in the pool.

[Mike Anderson]

Frank I'm doing a little research on the power of domain names in SEO. Do you have a rough estimate on when you released your .net name?

It's still there hanging in there in 4th place when I search for "Frank Petronio".

[JBelthoff]

Frank,

This is obviously a crappy spammy site that the link no longer works when I click on in from Google’s results.

While there is nothing you can do about the person operating the site you can and should contact google and explain to them the situation.

Google does not want sites like these coming up in their results anymore than you want them remotely associated with you.

http://www.google.com/contact/

[Ben Syverson]

It's frustrating, because while they do seem to favor previously registered domains that have lapsed (presumably so they can sell them back to you), there's nothing stopping someone from buying the names you opt out of and doing the same thing.

But how far are you willing to go to protect the brand? At this point we're talking about .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .us, .co, .cc, and the list goes on.

[Frank Petronio]

It seems to be dissipating and if we don't click on it, the lower it goes ;-p

I have enough photos of drunken, naked women to haunt me forever, they get reblogged and stolen all the time so it's not even my best work showing up. So after a certain point I just gave up and stopped worrying about it and stopped trying to chase down all the sleaze bags.

On the plus side, if you tag photos well on Tumblr, they rise in the search rankings rather quickly, helping to bury the crap.

[BradS]

..... Some sort of scam that chinese hackers will use to extort american businesses to resell them their alternative domain names back to them at inflated prices? Does it mean everyone with a business that wants good search engine results will have to preemptively buy every possible alternative .biz, .edu, .de, .ca... Etc... Hundreds of alternative suffixes?



bingo!

[Joseph O'Neil]

Well rink, you have one advantage, IMO. When you do a google image fo your name, your photographs show up. when I do the same for mine, all i see are photographs of some Asian actor. So in a backward fashion, maybe the Chinese took me over too.
:)