Keyword Sales from RealNames / Verisign

Explorer only

[tedster]

This has apparently been cooking for a while, but it's the first I noticed it. Wondering if anyone here has been using the service.

October 12, 2001

Under a deal announced between VeriSign and RealNames Corp., companies registering their Web site names [with Real Names] will also be able to select and register keywords, giving their customers the convenience of typing fewer characters to reach their Web sites. The RealNames keywords will only work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. So far, about 1.5 million Web sites have been signed by RealNames to use keywords with Internet Explorer browsers.

Article [cnn.com]

Earlier information [www5.cnn.com]

[Drastic]

A couple comments here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Would love to hear more experiences.

[WebGuerrilla]

I haven't used realnames in quite some time. It never really seemed to be of much value. What would make RN worthwhile would be a deal with AOL, since their interface combines the address and search box into one.

I'd also love to hear from anyone who is getting some decent traffic from RN's.

[rcjordan]

By a fluke (looong story) I have a free setup in RealNames for one of my main sites. On a page that gets up to 65k uniques per month on the search and type-ins, I see maybe 10 or 20 referrals from RN. Maybe this article sums it up best

VeriSign's keyword partnership with RealNames fails to address RealNames' fundamental market problem: The current Internet domain naming conventions are good enough for most people.

Commentary: RealNames' real problem [news.cnet.com]

[Rumbas]

Just witnessed a situation here where a local RN/Internet Keywords registar had registered *a lot* of local language generic and company keywords and pointed them to appropriate companies websites. Then they contacted these companies and showed them how this would work, just by typing company name into the IE browser.

Lot of companies didn't buy into it though, often with this answer: Why should we pay for something that already works?

Swoos! The boomerang flew rigth back in their face.