Google Teams Up With GoDaddy Domain Names

Great News For Small Businesses

If you are willing to take the time to start building a website by yourself for your small business, Google has a feature called Google Apps for Your Domain Name. Google announced Friday the additional service of anyone being able to register a domain name directly through Google.

For 10 dollars annually, a person can register a domain name privately and start using Google Apps for Your Domain Name. The Google Apps for Your Domain Name includes the features such as a custom start page, web page design, or using the Gmail application with your own domain name.

You can pick any combination of Gmail, instant messaging, Google Calendar, web page design and hosting tools, and the start page. For example, maybe you just want email. Or if you’re happy with your existing mail solution, you can select only calendar and instant messaging tools. Or maybe you want it all — it’s up to you.

Prior to Google partnering with several domain name registrars and offering private registration for your own domain name, it was BYOD, Bring Your Own Domain name and setting up the proper DNS settings for email and hosting at the domain control panel of whatever hosting provider a person was using. Google still provides the DNS information necessary if someone already has a domain name registered with another provider and wants to use the free Google Apps for Your Domain Name, but now it is easier than ever before for someone to register a domain name through Google and be online immediately or just using the free custom email services, free calendars, instant messaging, with free multiuser accounts.

It is important to understand that the free yet extremely powerful service provided by Google is great for email, calendar, online voice or instant messages with others in the corporation and assigned users, and other internal web apps. However, the Google Page Creator is rather simple in its approach to website design. An example of Google Page Creator can be seen at Creating A Web On The Internet. That isn’t to say that the website is not professional, it just means that the provided templates are somewhat of a standard simple format with the abilities to change some of the colors and backgrounds. This can be great for a small start-up business that does not have the funds to invest into website development and would like to get started online ASAP.

Google Page Creator We believe that creating and publishing simple web pages should be quick, easy and free. Google Page Creator lets you choose from a host of templates and customize them with your organization’s content and images, all within a simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get online interface. When you’re happy with how things look, publish your pages to the web with a single click.

Google is coming out next year with a premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain Name. I am not sure at this time what additional features will be included in that service nor has the price been announced. A representative from Google, in a recent webcast did mention that the pricing for the premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain Name would be competitive with other hosting services.

Here is one feature that I would like to see. Google recently updated their blogging service to the New Blogger service. The New Blogger service has some pretty cool features in and of itself for building professional blogs. It would really be cool if the Google Aps for Your Domain Name could include the features found in the New Blogger. It would also be nice if several blogs could be built or used off the main domain name as a file name or as a subdomain to the URL. Right now, as far as I can see, there is no way to have hosting by Google Apps for Your Domain Name and also have a blog under your domain name. Maybe this will be one of the features in the premium service for Google Apps for Your Domain Name.

Professional Web Services is an Internet marketing services company with the emphasis on establishing for B2c and B2b businesses, more online search engine exposure, online advertising strategies, search engine optimization, and web branding solutions for both B2B, Business to business and B2C, Business to consumer organizations. Contact us today for a free internet marketing evaluation and/or professional website design.

How We Snatched Our Domain Name

Good domain name news.
Yay, we got our ProfessionalWebServices.net domain name!

I thought I would share this story with everyone about the case of registering an expired domain name.

Just to give a little background information, it is important to understand my thought process in picking the name of Professional Web Services, Inc. in the first place. When I first got involved with Internet marketing, I felt it was important to portray in our name the type of company that we consider ourselves to be. That is, we always take a professional approach to everything we do online and with our customers. Sure, we have some websites that are fun and have a Fridays entertainment value to them, but when it comes to the business of Internet marketing for our clients we honor their trust they place in our services by always giving 100%, to not only publishing the best website possible for them, but also in the ethics aspect of Internet marketing.

So, you can see how we got the first word, “Professional.” The second word made sense from the Internet standpoint. The World Wide Web is all encompassing and growing steadily. I was one of the early pioneers of forging online. So, it was logical that the second word would be the “Web.” Then, the third word just fell into place naturally with the “Services” provided by: Professional Web Services, Inc.

At first, with any name that you choose, it is important to also see what type of domain names are available. This is an area online that is continually evolving into what some might see as a War of Names.

Common names and common words are some of the more interesting stories involved with domain name ownership. The dot com names have been taken for the majority of words in the English language. This is also true for many of the combinations of logical two word English phrases. Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, and Web Marketing, are some of the more highly sought after combinations of online words. Other words like the words for the day of the week have also been registered by various individuals or company organizations. For example Fridays.com is owned by TGI Fridays restaurant chain, but Fridays.ws is owned by me. I actually use Fridays.ws website as our Thank God It’s Fridays fun day outlet. Now, TGI Fridays restaurant chain does not have the rights to every single instance the common word Fridays is used on the Internet or in a domain name. In fact, there is no confusion between our Fridays and their Fridays. Our site even has a disclaimer that we are not affiliated with T.G.I. Friday’s® Worldwide Restaurant chain. However, if we were to go into the restaurant business, and started using the name Fridays as our restaurant name and the domain name, that would be an entirely different story.

As far as the use of Professional Web Services is concerned, there were a couple of individuals that had the .net and the .com names. So, we decided that we would register all the other uses of Professional Web Services that made sense for us. However, early on, we thought that having to type out the long name Professional Web Services every single instance of usage would be exorbitantly long and tiresome. Also, imagine the long email addresses that you would have with both a name and the long domain name attached (InternetMarketingServices @ ProfessionalWebServices.Net). That is where it made logical sense to also grab pwebs.net, and use this one for the website to begin with.

This thought process actually worked out very well, but because of the physical size and amount of information at pwebs.net it also made sense to establish another website, with different information related to our business. We have a very generic placeholder website at pwebs.org which has a short synopsis overview. Not sure at this time, what we intend to do with this domain name for the long haul, but felt it was important for the future.

So, getting back to the story of ProfessionalWebServices.net. GoDaddy.com has a back-order service for monitoring domain names that are taken but if they ever come back into the pot and become available or change hands, this service lets you know by email and in the case of an expired domain name, tries to register the domain name for you automatically. Once this option was set in place, there was nothing more for us to do except wait.

It is important to note, that if the domain had many suitors it might have gone into an after market bidding area online. However, in the case of our name, since we are incorporated as Professional Web Services, Inc. and most of the other domain names are owned by us, we thought it would be unlikely that there would be any type of bidding on this name. Additionally, under domain name laws, U.S. federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, a person or company that tries to capture an already established domain name for some corporation or entity that is not rightfully theirs could be considered to be Cybersquatting. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

If the domain name had the potential to be in an after market bidding war, then there are other services online to try and secure a domain name. There was an excellent story by: Mike Davidson: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, in which he goes into great detail about his quest for a domain name.

Well, back to our story. So I knew that the previous owner of ProfessionalWebServices.net did not renew the domain name and the time frame for reintegration into the domain name pool was coming due. So I set up the GoDaddy backorder service and just waited to the drop date. It was on this drop date that we were hoping to here from GoDaddy that we had gotten the domain name. However, with a sad face I must tell you we did not get the name.

We’re sorry, but the following domain name(s) that you back-ordered was not captured successfully:

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

Changes made to a domain take at least 24 hours to update in the WhoIs database. If you perform a WhoIs lookup on the domain to verify registration information or the status of the domain before 24 hours has passed, the information may appear to be incorrect.

OH well, it was not the end of the world. But, it was not the end of the story either.

Four days later I get another automatic email with this message.

Congratulations! The following domain name(s) that you backordered was successfully captured: 

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

I am not sure how this happened, but I am not one to question good fortune. This was Great!

Our plans for the ProfessionalWebServices.Net website are to really share a little about website customization and website design. PWEBS.NET will continue to focus on the main foundation of what our company’s focus is on, which is Internet marketing services, ethical search engine optimization, Online advertising strategies, and Web branding solutions for B2C and B2B businesses.

If you have a B2B or B2C business that needs help in any of these areas, Professional Web Services is here to help you. Contact us today for an Internet marketing evaluation and/or quote for a customized website design with a built in content management and blogging software system.