As announced in a press release today, Good Sam, a provider of products for the RV and outdoor recreation consumer  purchased RV.com for an undisclosed sum. The domain name was owned by Dometic Group, another supplier for the RV and Marine Industries.

The company is planning to develop the domain name into a new site by August 2013 and is hoping to benefit from 20,000 links the site currently has according to the press release. The site will cater to the “Good Sam Club” member base and offer information, access to new and used RVs, how-to videos as well as social components.

“The term “RV” defines not just a type of vehicle, it defines a lifestyle,” said Good Sam Chairman and CEO, Marcus Lemonis. “We strive to be the one-stop shop for everything in the RV lifestyle and integrating www.RV.com into our suite of Web-based services for RVers further solidifies our position as the leader in this industry.”

The whois of the domain has yet to be updated to the new owner.

[Hat tip to Mike of Domain Guardians]

Freshbooks just sent out an announcement from their CEO Mike McDerment to their clients – which include my own company (DomainCocoon). The company will become “Cloud Accounting” – there’s just one little snag. The domain CloudAccounting.com is already owned by an accountant in London. Of course he noticed the name change as well.

So here’s the news: from this day forward, FreshBooks is Cloud Accounting. We’ve taken notice of what you are saying and we’re changing the way we talk about ourselves so it is more consistent with how you talk about FreshBooks. We’ve also taken notice of how your needs have changed. And while we have a culture of “show, not tell” at FreshBooks, I will share that our transition to “cloud” will deliver against some of your emerging needs and reinforce the “accounting” component of our evolution.

Read the full announcement here on the Freshbooks blog.

Do you think Freshbooks should have attempted to buy the domain name first? At the moment it appears to be just a tagline (it was “online invoicing” before), but even then, should they not try to do the domain name? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Related articles

• FreshBooks now hosting on the Cloud
• FreshBooks Chooses Hybrid Hosting From Rackspace

Remark Media (Nasdaq:MARK) has completed the acquisition of Banks.com, Inc. (OTCQB:BNNX) as reported in a press release. The company sold look.com in 2011 for $400,000.

With this acquisition, Remark Media will expand its online personal finance ecosystem that will serve as the go-to destination for users seeking actionable financial advice. The hub of this ecosystem is DimeSpring.com–currently in beta–which offers original content and an interactive platform for consumers to share experiences and interact with the world’s leading financial experts.

Currently, Banks.com, Inc.’s web properties provide users with finance-related content and services. The advertising-supported website, Banks.com offers access to financial news, interest-rate tables and financial calculators. Banks.com, Inc.’s other properties offer access to related financial services, including: online tax information and preparation assistance through IRS.com; online tax extensions through FileLater.com; and online brokerage services through MyStockFund.com.

Remark Media will redesign and integrate Banks.com, IRS.com and the other newly acquired sites with DimeSpring.com, providing a comprehensive suite of financial content, conversation and services for users. Plans include: shifting the Banks.com websites onto Remark Media’s digital media platform; dramatically enhancing the content offerings and user experience; and adding new social features and interactive elements. The redesigned Banks.com sites, scheduled to launch in the fall, will offer new features including content recommendations and social tools, and newsletters that are personalized to individuals’ particular needs. Additionally, they will incorporate responsive design that allows content to be optimized on all devices.

[via Press Release]

After years of efforts by Google to de-emphasize the importance of domain names (i.e. by combining the search and URL bar in Google Chrome), the company is apparently now experimenting with highlighting the domain name for paid search results, as reported by Search Engine Land who got the tip from a reader.

The domain name of the advertiser is displayed behind the ad headline, separated by a “|” and written in all lower case.

[Update]: This is now an official feature on “select ads”, as per a post on Google’s Inside Adwords blog. No details have been published as to how eligible ads are selected. Lisa Shieh from the Inside AdWords crew writes:

In an AdWords ad, the display URL may be last, but it’s certainly not least. In fact, the display URL can be an important deciding factor in whether a user clicks on your ad.

As announced via email today, Francois Carrillo, operator of Domaining.com and Premiumdomains.com, has launched a public Beta of Valuate.com, a free automated Domain Evaluation tool. Shortly after he sent out the launch email however, it seems that the site was temporarily not responding, possibly due to a high load.

The estimated value of the domain name is based on recent sales and according to the site.

• Flying to Korea to track down a domain name [Elliot's Blog]
• Google using their network to target end users [DNW]
• Fabulous.com for sale? [DNW]
• National Arbitration Forum received 1,770 dispute claims in 2008l [Press Release]
• Act like a Cybersquatter to capture your long tail brand traffic [Search Engine Land]

DomainNameNews set out to collect information on domain newsletters out there. The following eight newsletters offer you domains for sale, but also domains available for (re-)registration. Find out about the 8 Domain Newsletters you cannot afford to miss after the jump. (more…)

Domain Name News was forwarded a copy of a 2007 Federal Court decision that seems to be a wake up call to after-market domain name buyers to be wary of who they are buying domain names from. The California Federal Court decision should make it crystal clear to would-be domain name purchasers that true ownership of a domain name is not based on what is in the whois records. (more…)

In international domain name news, Ho Chi Minh City police arrested a man for trying to bilk $1,860 from a Vietnamese business. The man who first tried to sell the domain name tonhoasen.com to Hoa Sen Group later built a fake company website on the domain name and was using the site to extort money from the company. More details on the story can be found at ThanhnienNews.com.