Marchex's Secret Weapon: Coming To A Domain Near You
Last month the Daily Domainer reported on Richard Rosenblatt's Demand Media gearing up to dramatically enhance its portfolio of domains with a powerful Web 2.0 community software.
Publicly listed competitor Marchex, Inc. (MCHX) is getting ready to launch its own secret weapon, the Open List search and content aggregation engine, across more than 100,000 Marchex-owned domains.
Open List delivers product or service descriptions, ratings, expert third-party reviews, user-generated reviews, articles, awards, maps and other information to selected domains.
The Open List engine is already up and running on domains such as Remodeling.com, BostonMortgage.com, LockSmiths.com, LasVegasVacations.com and NewYorkDining.com, and Marchex recently announced that it had set a target date of June 30, 2007 to complete the planned integration.
Additionally, Marchex plans to upgrade its network of ZIP Code Web sites, which includes 10041.com (New York), 90210.com (Los Angeles), 94123.com (San Francisco), 02125.com (Boston) and 98103.com (Seattle), as well as another 75,000 ZIP Code domains from all over the US.
Marchex's utilization of ZIP domains is an extremely powerful and underrated approach to localized search. If they can gain the necessary mind share and convince consumers that the best way to perform localized searches is to simply enter the ZIP code of their current location plus .com, then they are sitting on a potential goldmine.
Notably missing from Marchex's offerings are Web 2.0 elements other than a basic "add your review" feature for hotels and restaurants. In an email to the Daily Domainer, Marchex stated that they would not add features just for the sake of adding features. Instead, their main focus is on developing the most useful, efficient and relevant content platform while at the same time providing merchants with highly targeted advertising opportunities.
Marchex was the first large scale mover in the direct navigation space. Their 2004 asset acquisition of the Name Development (Ultsearch) domain portfolio for $164 million attracted large-scale attention as well as several well-funded competitors to the domaining industry.
By way of comparison, Yahoo recently launched the first of a series of initially up to 100 vertical portals. Wii.Yahoo.com aggregates Wii-related user-generated content from a large variety of Yahoo services, including Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo Video and more. These portals feel more "alive" than Marchex's sites simply because Yahoo can draw from a much wider range of actual user-generated content. Meanwhile, we can catch a first glimpse of competitor Demand Media's future offerings at Photography.com and Deals.com.
I like Marchex because they were one of the pioneers who recognized the value of traffic domains. But what they're doing with these domains pretty much sucks. The design of these sites literally screams, "I'm an auto-generated lifeless page but my designer tried kinda hard to make me look genuine. Please click me so I can make money, please!" I doubt they make as much money as they did when they just put straightforward ads on the page.
I have checked out the above sites, they are very nice. I have names parked at TrafficZ and they are doing great with upgrading their system but nothing like these sites. and the Yahoo page example wii.yahoo.com is a good concept as well. with Photography.com I am very impressed, it does not look like a parked page and is a great way to get information, photos, maps, and content to the end user. Marchex is making lots of money and will continue to do so. They had enough guts to jump into a new and relatively unknown market and make the needed changes. They brought very big bucks to this industry and make the path clearer for the rest of us. If the above entry knew anything about the domain industry they would compliment and not use disrespectful words like "sucks". Marchex has brought new innovations to this industry and many will copy and compete with this model. Hopefully TrafficZ, because I don't have any names at Marchex. hey Marchex - if you're listening… Great Job… Thanks for your contribution to the Domain Industry.
Let me tell you something. This fucking company put all my employees out of work after buyoing out our domain, and turned around trying to sell it for $25,000…. Great company my fucking ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Industry? Innovations? Sorry but you're deluded, Crystal L. Cox from tenlakesrealty.com. This is not an "industry" at all. It's a bunch of unoriginal bottom feeding squatters. P'tooey. I spit on companies like Marchex. Coming up with new ways to skim pennies by puking ads at people who accidentally go down your virtual dead end street is not innovation. Domainers are just trolls under the bridge. How many other people out there could be living the American dream if a squatter wasn't sitting on their business or industry name and asking an outrageous price for it? Whoever is reading this… HIT THE BACK BUTTON IF YOU WIND UP AT A GENERIC MONETIZED DOMAIN — DON'T CLICK ANYTHING ON THE PAGE. And if a domainer owns a domain with your company name in it, SUE THEM.
There is so much hatred here, I am not affiliated with Marchex. But domainers are not all evil. Newspaper ads, commercials, pop ups from main stream sites, cell phone ads they are all obnoxious. The world thrives on advertising. The first thing you notice when you get to places like cancun is all the billboards. It's a part of life.
My Post here was simply to be Positive. I hope negativity and Cursing online gets you where you need to be.