Before the 2011 Super Bowl Godaddy had been making a big push in the aftermarket with their premium listings. Unfortunately, for various reasons Godaddy did not include their Premium Listings in search results during the 2011 Super Bowl ad drive.   This meant that a user that was driven to the Godaddy site from the Super Bowl ad would not be able to see any of the Premium Listings in their search results, even for the exact-match domain.  Normally with a Premium Listing, an exact-match search for that domain displays the domain name as for sale and the price (see image at bottom)

DNN talked with Paul Nicks, head of Godaddy’s aftermarket, during the recent DomainFest in Santa Monica.  Nicks confirmed with us that the technical issues that prevented these aftermarket domain names from being listed last year had been addressed and that they are prepared for that traffic surge.

It’s exciting to think that the exposure Godaddy receives from their Super Bowl ads could actually lead to an individual making a sale through the aftermarket. If you like the possibilities of being able to say “I sold my domain during the Super Bowl”, you’ve got about 24 hours to put your listings in to the Premium Listings before tomorrow’s big game.

We were are remotely live blogging the auction results of the DomainFest 2012 SnapNames Moniker Auction.  One domain name has sold before the auction began, Marriages.com for $36,000.  Out of 60 domain names, 10 names had already met their reserve at the start of the auction. Please note that while we do our best to provide accurate results, we do not guarantee that these are the official results. Unsold names will remain in the silent auction until Feb 16th, 2012 at 12:15pm PT (3:15pm ET).

The total of sales according to our own tally was $393,450 USD for 23 sold domains out of 61 domains. The sale of qr.com will most likely not go, since the bidder was apparently thinking they were bidding on another name.

The top 10 sales were:

See the full results after the jump.

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According to industry sources, Keydrive S.A. will announce this morning that they have purchased Moniker & Snapnames from Oversee.net. Information about the sale has already been posted on the companies website and was also added to ICANNWiki yesterday.

KeyDrive S.A./Luxembourg includes the Key-Systems Group in St. Ingbert/Saarland (Germany), the NameDrive Group (Luxembourg/USA) as well as Moniker and SnapNames (Florida and Oregon/USA) with more than 160 employees.

After the takeover of Moniker in January 2012 the group ranks among the TOP 10 biggest ICANN registrars in 6th place; the group currently administers a total of more than 5.4 million domains.

Rumors about a potential sale of Moniker & Snapnames had been circulating for  a while. DNN expects an official announcement to be published shortly and will update this post accordingly. Keydrive was created by merging KeySystems and Namedrive.

Sedo, today announced a new partnership with Go Daddy. Domains that are listed at Sedo with Buy Now prices are now available to Go Daddy customers through the SedoMLS Network. This partnership between two industry-leading companies gives domain investors the ability to distribute their domains at Go Daddy, and end users the chance to purchase premium names directly at Go Daddy, via the only global domain distribution network, SedoMLS.

“Go Daddy wants to help small businesses grow larger, and finding the right domain name is the place to start,” said Paul Nicks, Go Daddy’s Director of Product Development for the Aftermarket. “Giving customers access to many premium domain names, including Sedo’s Buy Now domain names, Go Daddy can ensure our customers get the best domain name for their website or business.”

Listing domains in the SedoMLS Network already gives sellers access to both Sedo’s global audience of buyers and distribution across its partner network. With the addition of Go Daddy to the SedoMLS Network, domain investors now benefit from millions of additional end users who search for names at GoDaddy.com. In addition to receiving the widest available distribution, domain buyers can also purchase any name via an uninterrupted sales process directly at Go Daddy’s site, meaning increased sales conversion for domain name sellers. For more information, go to Sedo.com/PowerUp

“Our new partnership with Go Daddy speaks to the strength of both Go Daddy’s and Sedo’s reputations worldwide,” said Tim Schumacher, CEO of Sedo. “The SedoMLS Network provides registrar partners like Go Daddy with access to premium domains that are listed at Sedo, which in turn provides their customers with more purchase choices than ever. For any domain seller, we provide the reach that connects their domain listings to the greatest number of potential buyers across the globe.”

[via Press Release]

Disclaimer: Managing DNN Editor Frank Michlick is currently working as a consultant for SedoMLS through his company DomainCocoon.

According to DomainTools.com, a provider of domain name research and whois information, the number of .com domains under management by the registry has eclipsed 100 million domains. In a statement issued earlier today DomainTools claims that through their research they “calculated the current total of domains managed by Verisign to be over 100.2 million”

DomainTools’ points out that most counts taken on domain name totals use the zone files which are provided by the registry operator.  These counts, however, do not factor in several “classes” of domain names including those in redemption and pending delete status, as well as “dark” domains.

Domains held in redemption and pending delete are removed from the zone files as they proceed through the 35 day process before being deleted from the registry. The “dark” domains are not included in the registry because these domains have not been assigned a DNS entry by the registrant or may be suspended.

DomainTools conducted research on these 2 categories of names and estimates that there are 2.1 million domains in the redemption or pending delete status and another 400,000 “dark” .com domains. The current zone files as of the time of there release puts the size of the zone file at 99,837,548 with a gain in the total of nearly 22,000 new .com daily. The 2.5 million domains not estimated in previous counts brings the total .com domains under Verisign management to over 100 million.