I just received an email from NuNames, forwarding a letter from someone else who wants to buy "denbeste.nu" from me.

For a porn site, no doubt. I am not interested.

I've prepaid for another year and a half. When I first got the name, back in 2001, I paid for 10 years. And through hard work, and nothing better to do, I've managed to get it to the point that even now it does considerable traffic, and it's linked up the wazoo.

I can see why someone who is less than savory might want the thing, but I don't want my name or my reputation connected to what they certainly have in mind. Not a chance.

I'm not even going to respond to the guy.

UPDATE: The guy's email included a link to a page about him. There's a part that lists his "specialties", and the second entry on the list is "search engine optimization".

Which I think makes clear that the reason he wants denbeste.nu is because Google thinks highly of it (I have a good ranking) and he wants to use it to link-spam his customer sites.

UPDATE: This really bugs me, and I've been thinking about it some more. There's a perfectly good email contact link on "denbeste.nu", but he didn't use that. Instead, he wrote to NuNames.

The various name vendors in the ".com" space keep waiting lists for high profile names, and if one of them expires (usually because the owner forgot to renew) then it'll be sold nearly immediately, at a premium price, to someone on the waiting list -- to be used for SEO or porn or something unsavory. It's happened a lot of times.

When I originally got a .nu URL, one reason was because NuNames doesn't do that shit, or didn't back then. I don't absolutely know for sure that they still don't, but I believe that to be the case. And I bet this guy wrote to NuNames because he thought they did have a waiting list, and he wanted to get onto it. NuNames forwarded it to me either because it's got another 1.5 years to run, or because they don't have a waiting list at all. Maybe both.

UPDATE: I just bought another 5 years. It's mine through April of 2016. So there, you vulture!!!

UPDATE: I just added this to the main page on "denbeste.nu":

Note to SEO vultures: "denbeste.nu" is not for sale.
The registration on "denbeste.nu" has been prepaid through 2016.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 06:33 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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