If there’s one thing that surprises me about web hosting companies, it’s that most of them do a lousy job of selling domain names. I find web hosts tend to treat domain names as an afterthought, rather than as a crucial part of their business, which is strange; after all, most everything a web host sells starts with first selling a domain name.

If you operate a web hosting company, try this exercise: enter a two-word query like ‘apple pie’ in the domain name search box on your website. If your site’s response is something like, “Sorry, you need to enter your query in the form of a URL,” there’s a good chance domains have become an afterthought to you, too. This is not to say that you’ve been negligent – very literal ‘yes/no’ domain name lookups have been the standard for years. But these days, people expect your domain name lookup to work like a search engine. Many queries are entered as keywords, email addresses or using extraneous characters like ! or &.

Moreover, it is no secret that increasing scarcity in the .com name space is making it more difficult for customers to find the name they want. The domain name search box tends to be the first step in your sales process, so making it difficult for customers to easily find a name means you’re turning away potential sales.

Because of this, I always encourage our resellers to optimize their domain search by using our multi-faceted NAME_SUGGEST API call. The NAME_SUGGEST call does several things:

• Keyword-based lookups: Entering ‘rocker@heavymetal.com’ will check the availability of all sorts of names, including rocker.com, rocker-heavymetal.com, heavymetal.com and more – all at once.
• Name suggestions: The call can also return results from our Name Suggestion Tool, which provides awesome suggestions for available names based on a variety of parameters.
• Premium domain names: Our premium names database has hundreds of thousands of names that are taken, but available for sale for a one-time fee, with no auction or escrow period required. Heavymetal.com might be taken, but heavymetalalbums.com is available as a premium domain name through Tucows.

To see all of this in action, our Technical Evangelist Joey deVilla built The Duke of URL, a demonstration site that takes domain name queries and returns availability for .com, .net and .org along with name suggestions and premium names.

The next time you look at your website, ask yourself: am I giving my customers every opportunity to find what they’re looking for? If not, it might be time to re-think how you treat domain names.

To find out more about how the NAME_SUGGEST call works, check out this entry on our Developer Blog.

The University of Toronto held a series of Career Information Days this week here in Toronto. Tucows was on hand for the information technology day to meet some of the next generation of computer science students looking for fast-paced and exciting career opportunities.

I sat out on the roof deck, video camera in hand, with Sherry Azim, our corporate recruiter, to talk about the event, and to provide a sense of the kind of people Tucows is looking for to add to our team. Have a look:

If you sell email from Tucows, you can expect to receive an email message  and/or a letter in the mail shortly about migrating to our new and improved email service. The message will direct you to a website to select an option for your migration. This site is chock full of information for you. It includes details about the features of our email service, documentation, information about how the migration is going to work and resources for you and your end-users.

We’ve been using the new email service here at Tucows for a number of months, and our team is confident it will exceed your expectations.

If you have any questions about email migrations, please contact your Account Manager or Support.

Bill Sweetman, our new General Manager, Domains Portfolio appeared on CP24’s Homepage with host Amber MacArthur this week. Bill was there to explain how to get online with a great domain name, and get started establishing an online identity.

Take a look:

The Mad Cows, our Dragon Boat team was in action at the 13th Annual GWN Dragon Boat Challenge this past weekend. Here are reports from team members Sheilagh Rennie and Maria Estepa, who are account managers here at Tucows:

Sheilagh writes:

On Saturday September 8th, the Tucows “Mad Cows” took part in our first Dragon Boat tournament. The event played host to over 5,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. Our team was racing in support of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Toronto and we raised over $1,000 for the cause. The Mad Cows took part in 4 races: 2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Sunday proved to be our better day, although we got off to a rocky start in our morning race. Our final standing was 3rd in our division, which we thought was quite an accomplishment for a beginner team which unfortunately did not get as much practice as we would have liked. Everyone had a great time and many family members and friends came out to support us. Most importantly, the Mad Cows stood out to others as a team with great spirit: our Tucows chants and our mooing could be heard from miles away! Thanks to everyone who came out to support us and for those who participated. I’m looking forward to racing again next year!

Maria writes:

As a first timer of Dragon Boat racing I found the experience to be quite exciting. Considering we had only minimal practice and only 1 or 2 experienced paddlers, we gave it our all and fared well against the competition. The victory in my eyes was us successfully finishing the race with lots of team spirit even though it included no gold medal. All weekend we laughed, practiced, ate, drank and mooed together like a herd of cows. We made up a wonderful chant that got us looks from different teams but we paid no attention. Saturday’s weather was wonderful and some of us got to enjoy the sun by sitting outside of our tent, walking around or playing volleyball in a circle. Unfortunately Sunday morning weather was muggy and drizzling with rain but we conquered it and managed to still paddle our hardest in the cold damp weather. All in all a fun experience and I’d be more than happy to try again next year! Thanks to Adam and Donna our team captains for making it happen.

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p align=”center”> Go Mad Cows Go! The Tucows dragon boaters.

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p align=”center”> The Mad Cows at practice. Look at those happy smiling faces!

In June, I attended the inaugural Toronto Girl Geek Dinner. Over thirty women in Toronto technology gathered to connect, share ideas and hear guest speaker Sandy Kemsley. When I returned from the event I was buzzing from exposure to so many passionate women from the Toronto technology community coming together in one place. It made for an outstanding night.

The idea for Girl Geek Dinners started in London and was brought to Toronto by social media dynamo, Maggie Fox. Providing a welcoming atmosphere to make technology accessible and interesting to everyone, particularly women makes a lot of sense to us, so we decided to sponsor the second Toronto Girl Geek Dinner on September 19. The speaker for the dinner is Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idée Inc. - who like us is passionate about technology and the potential of the ‘net.

For more details about the event, visit the official Toronto Girl Geek Dinner blog. To sign up, please visit the wiki. Students take note, there are 25 sponsored spots for female students to attend, network, mingle, connect, and of course, enjoy a nice meal!

Thanks to Rosie Sherry of the Brighton Girl Geek Dinners for sharing her awesome logo.

Earlier this week, we released Platypus 6.1, the latest version of our software package built specifically for ISPs and web hosts to automate billing, invoicing, and customer management.

In this version we’ve added ready-to-use support for the new and improved Tucows Email Service. We’re pretty excited about being able to offer Platypus customers fully integrated access to our email service. Platypus 6.1 is also a comprehensive maintenance release, and includes enhanced support for Microsoft Windows Vista.

With this release Platypus customers can:

• Integrate the creation of Tucows Email accounts into the account creation process
• Manage Tucows Email services from within Platypus
• Offer variable packages – choose to bundle email with some services, or bill for it with others

It also means your customers can use the self-help customer web interface to:

• Create and delete Tucows Email Service accounts
• Buy domains for use with Tucows Email Service
• Access their Tucows web mail with a convenient direct link

Current Platypus customers can upgrade to Platypus 6.1 through the Platypus support site. If you want to see what Platypus can do for your business, whether you’re a web host or ISP, a free 30-day trial is available. Current Platypus customers looking for more information on how Tucows Email Service could work for them can find out more here.

Today, Monday September 3, is the Labor Day holiday in the United States and the Labour (note the “u”) Day holiday in Canada. As a result, we’re operating on holiday hours today, which will affect the following departments:

Our normal hours will resume on Tuesday, September 4. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday!