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With about fifty days to go until Black Friday, competition online among the variety of “Black Friday” websites is fierce. There are a lot companies gunning for the top spot in the Search Engines, but DotINFO still leads the way in Google with http://www.blackfriday.info/.

Considered by many to be a weak extension, BlackFriday.info has proven otherwise that anything is possible. Kevin Ham’s Reinvent Media, continues to enhance BlackFriday.com – adding a countdown clock, creating a Facebook page, and much more.

Dotcom has been on the Page 1 of Google for weeks now, but hasn’t seen much movement beyond their current position. But going from a parked page and no placement in the search engines, to Page 1, shows how owning the dotcom can be a big pay-off.

BlackFriday.info, how’d they do it

How did BlackFriday.info get to the top spot in the Search Engines? Was it because they developed the name before any of the other top-level extensions got their website online? That can certainly help, but one thing that probably helped BlackFriday.info in past years was leaking Black Friday ads online and creating a feeding frenzy with internet deal-seekers.

The dotcom is going to have to rise to to top of the search engines the good-old fashioned way – not by leaking ads, but with a well-developed website and a killer extension. The story below is from 2007.

BlackFriday.Info Leaks Dozens of Black Friday Shopping Ads

BlackFriday.Info has done the unthinkable and leaked the Black Friday ads for some of the biggest retailers in the United States. You are not going to have to wait for the ads to come out in the papers next week for the biggest shopping day of the year.

Traditionally, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year. Many shoppers will get up at extremely odd hours in the morning so that they can be the first in line to snatch up the deals that can only be found on Black BlackFriday.Info Leaks Dozens of Black Friday Shopping Ads Friday.

These shoppers will also be the first in line to grab the Sunday paper the weekend before Black Friday so that they can plan their shopping routes so that they can take advantage of as many deals as they can. BlackFriday.Info has done what it can to alleviate some of that advance planning.

Currently, BlackFriday.Info has the Black Friday ads for Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Kmart, Toys R Us, Walmart, Old Navy, Sears, Macy’s, and many more. While the ads do not include pictures, they do include the products and the prices that will be offered for Black Friday. There are over fifty-seven ads listed for major stores across the United States…

You can check out the complete story way back from 2007.

The category-killer domain name Property.com that Rick Schwartz sold to Foreclosure.com for a rumored 8-figures (which he originally purchased for $750,000), is set to launch this month according to the Property.com website. 

As reported on Rick’s blog, Brad Giesen the Foreclosure.com, President and Founder, plans to build an online real estate empire. Over the past few weeks the Property.com landing page has changed appearance. Although most Coming Soon pages are usually more elegant than the current Coming Soon page, it really won’t matter, as the site will be launching any day now.

Here’s a snapshot of the Property.com Domain name over the years, taken from Archive.org.

Property.com – 1996

From the mid-nineties through 2005, The Dealmakers had an online website that evolved over the years, branding itself as the internet’s oldest commercial real estate online. In 2005, the site got a new look and feel after Rick Schwartz acquired the name.

Vision for the NEW Property.com Website

From Rick Schwartz’ blog:

Property.com will include all listing types, including those indexed the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), creating a database that could surpass more than 15 million homes, but not including distressed properties, which will remain the business of Foreclosure.com. The best part is that it will be totally free to search for potential buyers and visitors, and sellers will be able to upload and edit their own personal listings at no charge.  It’s a wide-open model that Geisen knows will create an invaluable resource for just about anyone interested in real estate

About Brad Giesen, Founder and President, Foreclosure.com

Ten years ago, Brad Geisen founded Foreclosure.com and built it over time to a company with more than 1.8 million foreclosure, preforeclosure, bankruptcy, FSBO and tax lien listings in one place, Foreclosure.com delivers America’s largest and most accurate searchable database of foreclosed homes and distressed property information to its customers and business partners. Based in Boca Raton, Florida, Brad Geisen and Foreclosure.com work with hundreds of top lending institutions and government agencies to list diverse property types on its Web site, including Real Estate Owned (REO); Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); Fannie Mae; and other government agency and financial institution properties; as well as listings from an extensive network of corporate sellers.

So you may of thought advertising exchange websites were fading away along with PPC, but following the sale of Admedia.com for $50,000 on Sedo recently and the buzz over the ad.com sour deal, ‘ad’ domain names nevertheless have been selling strong on the aftermarket.

The name AdFactory.com is still in the Sedo Transfer service, so the new owner hasn’t been revealed, but there are several candidates.  One candidate is The Ad Factory who runs their website on the URL: adfactorycs.com.  Chances are the Ad Factory name will be used for a company offering design services, which it seems better suited for, instead of ‘ad exchange’ services like DoubleClick, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Ad Domain Name Real Estate Going Up In Value

If you own a prime ‘ad’ domain name, your real estate might be going up in price. Several of the ad names that have been selling have been used for ad exchange websites.  With online ad sales down, 2009 could still turn out to be the strongest year ever for online ad sales according to The New York Times.  With ad sales continuing to expand, more players might jump into the Ad Exchange game of offering a platform for buying and selling ad impressions – and owning a prime “Ad” domain may help give their business a marketing edge over a competitor.

Other notable “Ad” domain sales

Admedia.com – sold for $50,000 earlier this month
Adbuy.com – sold for $5,500 in June on afternic
Adslot.com – sold for $9,000 in April on sedo