Changes at WordDial

It appears that some changes have been underway at WordDial, the New Zealand company that is the worldwide leading owner of numeric domain names.

Several of WordDial's top, unused domains, including 262966.com and 6984637.com, the (dot com) wordnumbers for Amazon and NY Times, respectively, are no longer parked - as they have been for years - but rather point to WordDial portals that currently are under development. Other wordnumbers, such as 2226397.com (ABC/BBC News), resolve to their own portal that simply read: 'This portal does not currently contain any information. If you would like to see information listed here then please contact us and let us know.' Other wordnumbers, such as 2378289.com (BestBuy) and 66542.com (Nokia), resolve to WordDial portals that link to sites unrelated to their word-numbers.

Other changes at WordDial: the wordnumbers for Microsoft, 642767638.com, and its Live brand, 5483.com, are once again portals. They were portals in 2006, but then parked for many months and now back to being portals.

So, what's going on at WordDial? I'd have to assume that parking numeric domains is really unprofitable for WordDial (as it probably is for everyone else!) and so forwarding domains to unrelated or undeveloped sections of their website is better than nothing. As for the portals that are allegedly under development, such as 262966.com (the dot com wordnumber for Amazon), I doubt that partnership deals were really stricken and rather these undeveloped pages are designed to illustrate - by both demonstrating mobile capability and showing the actual word translations for dot com wordnumbers (i.e., spelling out Amazon on the 262966.com page) - to prospective clients how the WordDial system could work for them.

I kind of feel bad for WordDial that its click through rates for numeric domains are so unappealing that they'd rather display a page that reads 'this portal does not currently contain any information...please contact us and let us know.'

WordDial would get better results and more partnerships by creating better demos and also advertising more widely. Why? The majority of corporate executives don't even know about the numeric domain market, let alone the wordnumber concept. The dot com wordnumbers for Google and Yahoo haven't caught on in the least. If those companies won't do the marketing, someone has got to.

In March, Yahoo signed a partnership agreement with WordDial, which has owned its wordnumber, 92466.com, for several years.