Lessons on Domain Name Squatting

Abe Olandres December 28, 2007 · 1 min read

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For months now, Marc has been joking that he’ll sell me a domain I should have owned years ago. So yes, I really intended to get the domain abeolandres.com last month, and I thought I already did (along with several other personally branded ones).

I’m supposed to start my photography blog today. Imagine my utter surprise when I checked the domain a few minutes ago:

Domain Name: ABEOLANDRES.COM
Registrar: ULTRARPM INC. DBA METAPREDICT.COM
Whois Server: whois.ultrarpm.com
Referral URL: http://www.ultrarpm.com
Name Server: SK.S1.NS1.NS180.CNOMY.COM
Name Server: SK.S1.NS2.NS180.CNOMY.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 24-dec-2007
Creation Date: 24-dec-2007
Expiration Date: 24-dec-2008

Okay, all along I thought I already had that domain. Dang, and I thought somebody else using “yugatech” on Twitter was enough name-jacking. Either these guys think I’m gonna buy back that domain for a premium or maybe get some nice traffic and monetize the landing page.

I know, it’s my fault. Should have gotten it way earlier.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

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75 Comments

Jacqualine Kiner · 14 years ago

great issues altogether, you simply received a new reader. What might you recommend in regards to your publish that you just made some days in the past? Any positive?

Ð¡ÐµÑ€Ð³ÐµÐ¹ ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐ°Ð½Ð´Ñ€Ð¾Ð² · 17 years ago

ÐÐ½Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ · 17 years ago

Marc · 18 years ago

abeolandes.com, abeolandrez.com, abeolandtes.com for sale :)

JALANI C. MONTILA · 18 years ago

Its because sir Abe was famous. :P gusto nilang binta ang domain ng mas mahal. :P

otoy m. reyes · 18 years ago

how about yugababeh.com hehe

Riz · 18 years ago

Hahahhaha. :) Happy new year to you abe. LOL. (I should start buying domain names of popular pinoy bloggers. Hmmm.) :P

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 18 years ago

@rd, you’re right! It’s available again. So Andre was right, it’s just domain tasters. They let it go after a week.

rdja · 18 years ago

hey Abe, i just checked ABEOLANDRES.COM on goddady.. available pa ata ah.. also checked on domaintools for the whois.. la naman info… might want to double check…

Kiven · 18 years ago

naunahan ka din sa olandres.com, brother abe?

ambibilis talaga. buti nga me grace period expiring name kung hindi baka nawal isa ko ding domain lol

Shutter Box Philippines · 18 years ago

Hayaan mo na Abe. 1 year lang naman yung registration nila.

dotph nalang kunin mo ;-)

nina · 18 years ago

Tough luck indeed. I’ve long since given up trying to get ninafuentes.com (though if I *did* succeed in getting it, I should be so lucky because the domain is pretty popular heehee)

CallCenterVet · 18 years ago

May mga nagtatatrack talaga ganyan… Palagay ko they have a way of tracking entry searches by other people in sites like godaddy. For example, somebody posted here na available pa yung olandres.com. The squatters may have caught on the person who queried olandres.com at a domain registrar and registered it. Ganyan din kase nangyari sa akin. I queried olympicblogger.com if it was available 3 months ago and the next day after I queried nakaregister na ang domain na yon. It may be too skeptical a theory but that’s the only scenario I can think of.

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 18 years ago

Damn, sino ito???

Domain Name: OLANDRES.COM
Registrar: SCHLUND+PARTNER AG
Whois Server: whois.schlund.info
Referral URL: http://REGISTRAR.SCHLUND.INFO
Name Server: NS57.1AND1.COM
Name Server: NS58.1AND1.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 28-dec-2007
Creation Date: 28-dec-2007
Expiration Date: 28-dec-2008

quezacolt · 18 years ago

so si marc nga ang may ari?

Dark Knight · 18 years ago

what do you mean elmer? clan? as in buong pamilya ni abe? “:)

elmer · 18 years ago

Hey Able olandres.com is still available…hurry you could sub-domain with all your clan’s name i.e abe.olandres.com .olandres.com .olandres.com, etc..

Andre Marcelo-Tanner · 18 years ago

Looks like it was just registered, by the look of their name, maybe they are domain tasting, so give it a few days, they might let it go, but sucks to just notice it now. Best thing to do is signup at pool.com, snapnames.com, namewinner.com and maybe a few others and put the domains you want all there then just wait and one day you’ll get your personal domain back.

Also probably you’re known as Abe Olandres in the public so if people dont know you they just type abeolandres.com into the browser and expect your website to come up. I dont know how profitable those ads would be for if its a parked page. Just shows that your name is important :)

Jehzeel Laurente · 18 years ago

hahaha sayang yung domain! weeeeeeeeeeeeee! pero ok lang yan.. wala paring tatalo sa original :P hehe

Noemi Dado · 18 years ago

That’s just so bad of them. I i registered my noemidado.com to point to my blog because I noticed my customers often complained their domain names got hijacked from them.

Jeric · 18 years ago

I was able to snatch http://www.justjeric.com. Hahah I was lucky that the previous owner let go of the domain so I registered it right away.

Dark Knight · 18 years ago

hehe.. masyadong mahaba pare. dalawang beses akong na-wrong spelling sa pagta-type ng buong pangalan ni yuga.

marhgil · 18 years ago

available pa ang abrahamolandres.com. :)

kates · 18 years ago

kaya ako. pinaka unang binili ko yung pangalan ko. who knows, baka sisikat din ako. hehehe

Karlo.PinoyBlogero · 18 years ago

Ooo.. tough luck. I’m thinking of buying my name too soon.

CallCenterVet · 18 years ago

About domain squatting, We can’t erase the fact that the squatters get some good business out of what they do. If I had the money now, I would also get into this domain buying business but definitely not by “stealing” other people’s potential domain.

CallCenterVet · 18 years ago

Ang bad trip pa nun the domain will expire August 2008. Even if I get that domain, it will be less useful kase tapos na ang 2008 Olympics by that time. I was hoping I can forward my blog domain http://www.olympicblogger.blogspot.com/ to http://www.olympicblogger.com.

Maybe he thought I’d contact him to negotiate. But now I’m perfectly happy with my blogspot subdomain. The blogs essential “usefulness” is only till August 2008 anyways so I won’t bother. I just maximize the earning potential of my free hosted blog domain about the Olympics. Haha!

Dark Knight · 18 years ago

so Yuga… how much are you willing to shell out to get your Domain Name?

-from the ULTRARPM INC. DBA METAPREDICT.COM representatives

8)
hehe. no really.. abe, how much is your domain name, with own name, to you?

deuts · 18 years ago

Well, I guess, just make it a USD 10 loss for them…:)

RNHalawi | TEAMPILIPINAS.BLOGSPOT.COM · 18 years ago

In my case… Im running a blog http://teampilipinas.blogspot.com then when im ready to buy teampilipinas.com ouuucchhh… it was already taken… and it was a copycat of my blog … good thing it will expire by Feb2008 hopefully di na nya ma|Renew un… =)

boddah · 18 years ago

Cybersquatters.. madalas nilang gawin yan especially if you have a popular name. And you really have to be quick coz they use softwares to track, monitor, and automatically register an expired domain. Iba talaga pag sikat :)

CallCenterVet · 18 years ago

This is true. In my case, I started out with my Olympic Blog http://www.olympicblogger.blogspot.com/ on blogspot and planned to buy the domain olympicblogger.com a few weeks after. But low and behold, somebody from Burma or Vietnam snatched the domain already. The funny and curious thing was the guy who got the domain registered it 1 day after I took the blogspot subdomain. I wonder how they do that? Maybe they got some software scanning domain names. Ha!