Screenshot of JayLenoShow.com before Jay Leno.
A few days ago, the Boston Herald reported that a domain squatter from Katy, Texas, owned the domain name “thejaylenoshow.com”. Former domain owner, Guadalupe Zambrano was using the url to redirect traffic to his real estate website.
I can’t imagine how this would help conversions. Hard to see how people searching for Jay Leno, would be interested in going to a real estate website. The website at the url was not a typical domain landing page with links related to the search term (Jay Leno in this case). It was actually a full fledged real estate website.
When I first heard about this situation, I immediately thought the guy was a domain squattter who was trying to sell the url to the NBC show. Mr. Zambrano was acutally quite content doing business through this url and had no interest to sell the name, or at least, this was not reported. Judging by the website under the jaylenoshow.com url, I would tend to believe that the real estate genius from Katy, Texas, was not after money.
According to the Boston Herald report, The UN, World Intellectual Property Organization says the domain will have to be transferred to the comedian, Jay Leno.
Just a note to anyone interested in starting an online business, and you are considering what domain name to buy, talk to a trusted web developer with regards to issues like domain name selection. I will write another article soon about using brand names in your domains. Contact me for more at http://www.sgprofl.net/.