Site Visibility and SEO

[zourtney]

Um...ok!

So, since Cody has been uploading vidoes which were actually viewed    I was thinking again about making a little "made by Randomland" clip to toss at the end of our videos. Something in the 2-5 length, probably. Back in the day (though it seems so recent), we filmed the ridiculous OH NO! video, but I did a terrible job green-screening it.

We could just flash a big Three Trees and "randomland.net" or something, too.

Any thoughts?

[Nick]

Look up 'Bad robot' for a good example of one of those. Cody should be familiar with that animation

[zourtney]

Ah yes. Eve and I are well acquainted wit the Bad Robot as well. And yeah! Something like that

[Nick]

Randomland.com will soon be back into the public domain.

Do we want to pay $20 to put a 'backorder' on it? Or take our chances once its back into the open pool?
I think we have a good shot of getting it once its back in the pool.

Also, randomnets.com, .net, .org and dot whatever seem to be available if people think there is a good need to get them.

Sadly, upperarm.com is not available   It is for sale though. For $1200.  
(.net is, and so are many others. Not that just making upperarm a subdomain wouldn't be adequate if ever we were inclined.)

Man, why are there so many top level doamins? Was there really a big need for creating 50+ of them? All it does is create confusion when some guy has a site with the same name as a .com (everyone just assumes the .com address is the one they want anyway)
It just makes it so you can go broke trying to defend your namesake.


Incidently, GoDaddy suggested that 'gunmanwounds.com' is available Just as a side note.

[zourtney]

Lol, gunmanwounds eh? Of all the things, I wonder how it came up with that!

Anyway, I'm comfortable sitting of my hands (figuratively speaking) until .com is publicly available. And if/when it does, let's go for it!

I'm less sure on the the others...though I always thought it'd be fun to do stupid things like: randomland.net.randomland.com/, com.randomland.com/, etc. Of course, we could play such games already.

[zourtney]

Oh yes, and "ICANN haz monopoly on tlds lolz"

[Nick]

So, sometime last night randomland.com went back on the open market. It was probably available to register for all of 200ms before getting snatched up by some automated system. So... another year without that most respected of TDls, the .com.

Google would respect us more more if we had it, but we don't really need it. It expires April 12 2012. It was registered at 11:53:11 last night. Had I had ANY way of knowing when it expired, I would have been on it. Not that it would have likely helped. The registrars all know the schedules of the others, so we didn't really have a change of beating out an automated system that spams the registration servers (I don't know why that is even legal, let alone tolerated by the registrars.)

So yeah. Why does anyone want it again? It was a low value domain that has never had anything on it of substance. Never, as far as I can tell, made anyone any cash. So why are they snatching it up like that? In the hopes that the .net or .org-ers will be willing to pay $600 for it? Crazyness.

Evil has stuck again, and another injustice has been purveyed onto the commoners by the modern day snake-oil salesmen; Domain squatters and highjackers.  Taking by brute force what they have no stake in, and extorting those who have legitimate stake in the name for thousands of dollars. Or setting on it for a year for no good reason.
If we could show in court that they only bought it for the intent of selling, and their for had no good-faith reason to own it, we might be able to take it. Its been done before. But that was for corporations, where we are nought but lowly peasants. But legal battles are work, and it really does not matter that much.

So. Pooooot.

Edit:
Alternatively, we could abandon the name. And go with a whole set of TDLs under the randomnets monicker. .com, net and org. Thought there is already a randomnet.com.
As a humorous aside, KillerChickens.com is available for $500, but the .net and .org counter parts are free.

[Brad]

If you are looking for good available domain names to snap up the following are currently available in the .com variety:

ChickensRevenge
thesearenotmypants
Robotzilla
Cannibalhobos

[Nick]

So is AngryNewts.com and KillerNewts.com. But I think I kinda like CanibalHobo...

[zourtney]

You could spring for a few of these, too!

• pootermobile.com
• fiveironyfrenzy.com
• thecakeisaliewasalreadytaken.com
• seymorewasmyfriend.com
• hobobmobile.net (the .com is taken )
• httpwwwdotcom.com
• raptorsbiteback.com
• youatemydonut.com

Sady, iwasthefirsttoregisterthisdomainandalligotwasthislousydnsentry.com is too long. But you can still snatch up leftfender.com (for when you start your country band) and atomicdrummachine.com (for...whatever that's for!).

There, now I just gave the squatters some fodder¹.


This would be an edit: on the slightly less ridiculous topic of registering up the randomnets, I think that might be a good idea (since that's the username I've been registering things under).

[zourtney]

We've been awfully popular with the spambots lately on the main site. I seem to get 1-3 new account requests per day. I cleared out a bunch of this junk recently. Just FYI, I guess.

Can we turn off the automatic CYK Image Gallery creation? There were a lot of those...

[Nick]

Yeah. We should definitely add better captcha. Perhaps get rid of the gallery stuff. Also move to sevens.