Wants Patents for Announcing Domain Registrations on Facebook — Go Daddy

Domain name registrar files two patent applications for promoting newly registered domain names.

The Go Daddy Group, parent firm of domain name registrar GoDaddy, has filed a pair of patent applications related to announcing a fresh domain registration on social networking sites such as Facebook.

The patent applications are 12/561408 for “Social Website Domain Registration Notice” and 12/561439 for “Social Website Domain Registration Search Engine Feed”.

The basic idea is that clients who register a domain name can announce the registration on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The client would allow the registration to be published following a set period of time (perhaps giving the registrant time to get a web site up at the address). When it is published on the social network the traffic from the link would be tracked and the domain name registrar might suggest another product to boost traffic.

The registration announcements could be posted to a Go Daddy page and/or the clients page on a social networking site.

Interestingly, the patent application suggests that one use of this would be to drive visitors to a parked domain name:

If a domain name registrant chooses an option on the control panel to immediately generate traffic, via the published link, for the parked domain page (illustrated in FIG. 4 and described in detail below), a metric, such as a pay-per-click model or click-through traffic based on 301 redirects, described below, or any other metric for measuring additional traffic may be monitored to gauge the success of the parked domain page. A registrant may have the option of keeping the domain a parked domain page to generate traffic and revenue, or may keep the domain a parked page only prior to completion of the final hosted website.

I suspect Google would frown upon that.