Domains Won at Sedo Auctions are Out of Compliance — Most .mobi
A review of auctions won at first .mobi domain auction shows most are out of compliance.
When mTLD, the registry for .mobi domains, hooked up with Sedo to auction off premium domains, they probably had no idea how successful it would be. Successful, that is, in terms of sales prices. But there’s another side of the coin, and that is compliance with mTLD’s auction rules.
Participants in the auctions are bound by a number of rules, counting:
The Website may initially consist of a dotMobi-compliant parking page; provided, still, that You agree to:
– Use Your best efforts to create, launch, and operate a live website related to and primarily containing content relevant to the commonly held and widely shared understanding of the meaning of the Domain Name to replace the parking page within six (6) months of the transfer of the Authorization Code by mTLD.
– Achieve and maintain a mobile readiness score of at least 4, as measured by the ready.mobi test then available at http://ready.mobi/.
When the winner* of the over $1M of domains at the most recent auction stated he bought them solely for resale, it struck me as against the spirit of the auction. I went back and reviewed the top 25 sales of the first Sedo .mobi auction (held over 2 months ago) and found that only 4 of the domains were compliant. Below is a list of the 25 domains and how they resolve as of Tuesday afternoon:
Hosting.mobi does not resolve
Bank.mobi does not resolve
Download.mobi does not resolve
Currency.mobi does not resolve
Insurance.mobi does not resolve
Chat.mobi Prompts me to download chat.mobi
Traffic.mobi Prompts me to download traffic.mobi
Books.mobi Prompts me to download books.mobi
Free.mobi goes to network solutions parking page
Loans.mobi compliant parking page
Marketing.mobi does not resolve
Creditcard.mobi does not resolve
Rent.mobi compliant parking page
Creditcards.mobi does not resolve
Voip.mobi forwards to VOIPgate.com
Webcam.mobi does not resolve
DomainName.mobi does not resolve
DomainNames.mobi forwards to EUROdns.com
Advertising.mobi parked page
Downloads.mobi non-mobi compliant web page
Credit.mobi compliant parking page
Atm.mobi non-mobi compliant web page
Payment.mobi non-mobi compliant web page
Index.mobi non-mobi compliant web page
Cricket.mobi compliant parking page
Reselling a domain doesn’t absolve the original buyer of the requirements. They must make the buyer enter into the same agreement with mTLD.
The big question: will mTLD enforce the rules, or will they just count their cash?
*The auction has been voided and will be rerun in January.
