Patent on “non-existent domain” analysis tools — Verisign wants
Firm files patent application related to NXD data analysis.
Verisign has made great strides in opening up its treasure trove of data related to traffic to non-existent domain names (NXD).
Now it wants to patent some of its methods.
The firm filed a patent application (pdf) for “Traffic Like NXDomains” in March last year. The application was just published today.
The application explains how its NXD tools benefit domainers:
Maintaining and interpreting records related to user requests for domains can be valuable for a number of reasons. For example, firms and individuals known as “domainers” regularly buy and sell domain names to earn a profit. These domainers generate income through domain parking and/or website development, as well as domain reselling, but typically rely on revenue generated from advertising click-through traffic. Thus, domainers desire NXDs exhibiting high Internet traffic in order to buy and register those NXDs.
Using current systems, domainers must blindly request and then review information regarding DNS requests associated with a set of NXDs in order to identify the high-traffic NXDs. Following reviewing the requested information, the domainer will purchase a subset of the NXDs considered high-traffic and establish a web site for each of these domain names. Once the domainer has purchased a domain name and establishes a monetization mechanism, such as a website, they are able to collect and analyze additional information related to the site’s positive traffic, such as unique visits, click-traffic, and other indicators of site performance. Using this information regarding a site’s positive traffic, the domainer can better identify valuable domain names and generate revenue from them by, for instance, placing advertisements on such sites.
Right now, still, no system exists that enables domainers to capitalize on the collected positive traffic information to find additional NXDs of value. Instead, domainers must repeat the process of blindly requesting and reviewing NXD information, purchasing a subset of the NXDs, establishing sites for the associated domain names, and observing the positive traffic for these fresh sites. Thus, domainers are right now unable to leverage the discovery of a valuable domain name to find additional NXDs expected to exhibit similar traffic patterns. Therefore, a need exists for a tool able to suggest NXDs with DNS traffic similar to an identified domain name.
The patent application then describes numerous ways of analyzing NXD data.
