WordDial co-founder poised to start dedicated numeric domain forum and association: domains registered

Dean Kilworth, a co-founder and director of New Zealand-based WordDial, recently became the registrant of several domains that imply that there may one day be a forum and industry association for numeric domainers.

The domains in mention, Numericdomainersforum.com, Numericdomainersassociation.com and Numericdomainassociation.com, were registered earlier this month via Dotster on December 12 and 13. Although the domains - seven in all including .net and .org tlds - are parked, there is one thing we learned about the WordDial folks: they've bought more domains than perhaps any entity on this earth and they don't register domains for no or little reason. These domains were apparently registered for their intended purpose.

Is there a sufficiently large interest group out there to take advantage of a dedicated numeric domain forum or association? The discussing and posting of sales listings of numeric domains already takes place daily on various domain forum websites including DNForum.com, however serious analysis of the industry only occurs here at Jamptap and at Numericdomains.com run by Scott Smith, a numeric domain name investor and blogger. From our perspective, there are two categories of numeric domain investors: those who hold dotcom wordnumbers and those who own numeric domains that don't spell common brands and generic words (often these are NN.tld, NNN.tld, and NNNN.tld domains). Potentially these two types of investors may be in large enough numbers that a centralized forum - where discussion is centered on news, issues and most importantly buying, selling, trading and also appraising numeric domains - would be worthwhile.

The idea of an association for numeric domainers, however, is even more interesting. Think power in numbers. If the constituent 'forces' came together within the numeric domain industry, which comprises investors and internet companies like WordDial and others whose existence depends on the successful uptake of the wordnumber idea, perhaps they could break down the walls of resistance. Mobile users, wireless carriers and internet companies might be convinced to shed their addiction to lengthy web addresses (e.g., URLs requiring tapping 10 or more times for the combined 2nd and 3rd level domains) and instead take advantage of numeric domains if all numeric domainers were on the same page. For instance, press releases and other communications could be coordinated within a cohesive strategy of marketing the idea of wordnumbers (including dotcom wordnumbers) and the ease of its application to the mobile web. Membership dues could be put towards advertisements on mobile content news sites and blogs. The association could serve as a trusted third-party for overseeing contracts, negotiations and disputes for lease and partial ownership deals between companies whose numeric domain portfolios are far from complete and numeric domain investor members.


Data from website ranking company Compete shows that WordDial, which has waited a very long time for the market to ripen, is experiencing declining unique visitor counts since this past summer. In light of this disappointing statistic, perhaps WordDial's decision to seek new alliances is a step in the right direction. Collaborate and together numeric domainers will find success.

3663 for thought

If you have eaten out in Britain lately, you most likely ate food delivered by 3663. The company 3663 First for Foodservice is the largest foodservice distributor in Britain. Popularly known as just '3663', the company supplies raw materials to restaurants, pubs, canteens, and even the Queen - the firm holds a royal warrant for delivering "groceries and frozen goods" to Her Majesty. Some of their 10,000 products are fresh, high-quality ingredients and others are processed foods destined for the deep fat fryer of local fast-food outlets.

What is special about this highly successful yet discrete firm is that 3663 spells "food" on your telephone keypad. And that's no coincidence. That was intentional. According to their website, which is located at www.3663.co.uk, "3663 (three double six three) spells 'food' on your phone keypad. " In Britspeak, customers refer to it as "Three Double Six Three".

3663 is owned by a South African company, The Bidvest Group Ltd., which belongs to a growing group of Southern Hemisphere organizations that are pioneering the concept of the wordnumber.

DigitURL hack #1

When you thought that it couldn't get any easier, think again. DigitURL gives mobile users a way to create tiny, easy-to-tap numeric codes in place of long web addresses. These numeric codes are tiny-urls that are signficantly easier to type out on a phone keypad than the URLs for web destinations such as youtube videos or myspace pages.

DigitURL also doubles as a jumping-off platform to the mobile internet; all you need to do is type out the numbers on your keypad in place of the letters of the URLs for most web destinations. You can do this at the DigitURL website or via its free downloadable application. You don't even need to bother typing in '.com.' Try visiting DigitURL and enter in 6977223, which is MySpace in numbers. Press 'Go' and you're one click away from MySpace mobile!

There's a nifty hack we learned to make typing in 'wordnumbers', or the numeric spellings of a words, even easier. When typing in medium-length wordnumbers, like 466453(Google) or 92466(Yahoo), simply enter the first 2 digits and press the number 1 at least three times. For longer wordnumbers, such as 6977223(MySpace) or 9688823(YouTube), just enter the first 3 digits and at least three 1's.

So, Google would be 46111. And Youtube would be 968111.

You can actually replace the '1' with any number. There just needs to be 3 of any number. (This is where life gets really easy.) You can even hold down the last number in any sequence three times - for instance: 968888(youtube) or 46666(google). It is important that you make sure you entered in 3 extra numbers.

For rather long URLs like Slashdot, you have to enter the first 4 digits then 3 of any number. Wikipedia requires the first 5 digits then 3 numbers. Craigslist requires the first 6 digits followed by any 3 numbers.

So, instead of spelling out an entire wordnumber, in most cases you just need to spell half of the wordnumber and add three wildcard-numbers. Especially for the longer wordnumbers, this hack makes life easier.

The above hack, however, only works for domains that are listed on the Short DigitURL list.

Users will stumble upon their own shortcuts in time that will rival even this hack.

Ymail.com bought by Yahoo, Inc.

Ymail.com is now the quicker gateway to mail.yahoo.com.

It is even mobile friendly.

Maybe Yahoo is getting sick of the fact that the easiest way to mobilly access Yahoo is via WordDial or WordDial or WordDial, etc... I can't imagine how much the content partnership with WordDial (aka Domain Numbers Ltd) will cost Yahoo in the long run with all of the portals that Yahoo has paid to get listed. Yahoo execs must be thinking, 'There's got to be a Yahoo-owned domain property that will get our users to yahoo mail in a similar number of taps as search.' Yahoo - w/o the .com - is 12 taps. Ymail.com is 11 taps w/o the dot, which is a huge savings compared to mail.yahoo.com's 20 taps w/o the dots.

Okay. So 11 taps for Ymail, 12 taps for Yahoo search...not too cumbersome.

Now just wait, watch and see the Alexa web rank for ymail.com to drop from 11 million down to a few hundred.

Did you mean...Were you looking for...

It was too good to be true. DigitURL's 'were you looking for' wordnumber translator is not anything like Google Number Search and it appears that DigitURL's webmaster is using a manually created database. We assume they downloaded a list of the most popular 1 million or so websites accessed in Australia (which includes many non-Australian web destinations too). Then they parsed out and translated the SLDs (second level domain; the brand name before the .com or ccTLD) into wordnumbers, sorted the wordnumber-domain pairs, and put the database up on its server. So, when you search using wordnumbers consisting of 2 or more digits via DigitURL, the wordnumber in your search query is being matched against the wordnumber translations for the brands of the top 1 million or so ranked websites based on Australian usage.

How is this not Google Number Search? GNS, first of all, operates in conjunction with a search engine not a database (and it helps that Google operates the top ranked search engine). Second, whereas DigitURL provides shortcuts to a finite number of web destinations, GNS provides the ability to use wordnumbers to substitute for any search term, including phrases and names and so forth, to 'Google' all pages on the internet. There is an infinite number of combinations of wordnumber search terms that will generate meaningful results. GNS accomplishes this with a very high success rate of wordnumber translations. In a nutshell, GNS is Google search but via an 'invented' shorthand for typing search queries. There still is no comparable webservice out there. The only caveat is that GNS is still linked to an outdated lexicon (from about the year 2000).

Creating such a database that DigitURL has put together may be simple enough. Website ranking companies provide free and not-free lists of the top 100k or million most popular sites. The not-free companies also provide ranked lists by geography (country).

The problem with DigitURL's 'were you looking for' script is that it is a limited search tool. By having a database of wordnumber translations for a static - or even updated - ranked list of the top 1 million or so websites, then websites for smaller, upcoming, tech startups will nearly always be inaccessible by DigitURL during their infancy. If one thinks of the target audience of DigitURL, it would make more sense to get a ranked list of top websites for the Y generation or tech sites or of Web 2.0 properties, etc... Many of these web destinations will not be accessible until they reach some threshold of popularity. Many mobile phone users want to be 'better than that.' They want to be on the crest of the wave. Not watching the wave from the beach.

DigitURL takes on short wordnumbers

DigitURL now provides users with a near replica of Google Number Search translation for short wordnumber (numeric) entries. It has done this without the use - so it appears - of a manually created database of urls with their wordnumber translations.

Take for instance the string '222.' DigitURL returns every popular brand associated with that wordnumber. You get ABC. You get BBC. You get CBC (Canada Broadcasting Company). And ALL within 4 keytaps of opening the DigitURL app or bookmarked link. Compare with typing out BBC.com, an incredibly long 14 taps (w/o the dot).

This is precisely the type of search query that, of all available web-services, only Google Number Search could handle (until now). View, for comparison, what results GNS provides for the same search query of '222': http://www.google.com/search?q=num%3A222

What is significant is that both services provide results for short wordnumber strings that are meaningful - the results for 2 or 3 digit wordnumbers are ranked in a similar sort of way that search engines provide. That is a pretty difficult task considering that any 3-digit wordnumber, for instance, could be associated with 27 dotcom domains (more for the numbers 7 and 9 which have four letters assigned to them) - assuming that every LLL.com is regged. The situation gets even more complex when you think of all the other cc TLDs. There is significantly less competition for wordnumbers (including dotcom wordnumbers) that are four or more digits in length. Yet DigitURL does both just fine - most major brands with URLs of a medium to long length are represented by their wordnumber (6977223 is MySpace) and wordnumber search queries for brands with tiny URL lengths go to the popular brands you know.

The problem - and it may be intentional - is that there is a local bias that we're experiencing using DigitURL, which is based in Australia; Jamptap is based in the U.S. A trial of the wordnumbers for the 3 digit domains listed in Alexa's top 100 sites in Australia work perfectly - but those in the U.S. top 100 don't. For instance, several domains (of brands that are 2-3 digits long) in the Australian Alexa top 100 including go.com (#50), NSW (#52), VIC (#65), IGN (#70), qq (#76) and even HI5.com (#85) are represented in the results (assigned with accesskeys) when their wordnumbers are entered. This is not the case with the Alexa U.S. top 100 - the brands of many wordnumbers aren't shown in the results.

This begs the question, is DigitURL positioning itself as an internet company primarily targeting Australian consumers? This was the initial posture of WordDial, which began with a near exclusive New Zealand base of users, and since has been building an international clientelle and user base. Without knowing how DigitURL completes its wordnumber translations, it is difficult to suggest how its results could be improved. It is our assumption that DigitURL's algorithm is linked to a search engine with local bias for Australia - we could be wrong about this. If this was the case, then changing that association to a 'global' search engine would be better - at least if maximizing profits is the goal of their business. Certainly DigitURL could do their own geotargeting based on users' ip addresses and provide search results accordingly.

Update1: DigitURL's algorithm also works on some 4 digit or longer wordnumbers - the algorithm is easier to test (and more impressive) using 2 and 3 digit wordnumbers, of course. We found success with the wordnumbers for nearly every single major brand/website in Australia and also for generic words such as 'match', 'money', 'chat', 'love', 'mobile', 'ymail', and others that aren't mentioned on the Short DigitURL list. In sum, DigitURL has stumbled upon an early-stage all-purpose DNS (DigitURL Number System) made for Australians. What about the rest of us?

Mobile-savvy Slovakians on holiday - Undoing geotargeting of mobile users

A long time ago (in internet years), Google bought the domain 466453.com, which is the dotcom wordnumber for Google. Although Google didn't buy 466453 in other cc TLDs, typing in 466453.com within the internet networks of most countries will forward the user to the locally biased version of the Google homepage formatted for that nation/language.

Yahoo is a slightly different story. Yahoo bought 92466 in nearly every TLD - except for 92466.com, which is owned by WordDial - and also for a significant number of cc TLDs. All of those are forwarded to Yahoo's error page - 'Sorry, the page you requested was not found' - that eventually forwards the user to the Yahoo.com homepage.

Currently, no major search engine provides the capability for mobile users to easily conduct (mobile optimized) searches in a different localized portal than the one the cell phone user (his/her IP) is currently located. Let's say you're in the U.S. and want to search Google Greece on your cell phone. What to do? Certainly there are solutions, such as bookmarking google.gr or multi-tapping 17 times (w/o the dot) for that long url. In the opposite situation - if you were in Greece - you could use 466453.com/ncr (an url that forces a 'no country redirect' to go to Google.com, which is considered the 'global' Google). But there is an even easier solution. DigitURL now provides access to Google of nearly every available language and nationality with numeric-tapping access. Simply go to digiturl.com/466453, or better yet type in that Short DigitURL (466453) on their free downloadable mobile application, and choose the localized version of Google by the nationality you prefer. There aren't enough numbers on a keypad to enable accesskeys for each version of Google, but pressing the down button will get you to Google for many countries, including some that you probably never even heard of.

Google and Yahoo may not be seriously pondering that there are cell phone users who are thinking and researching in terms of global markets, or that a mobile user travelling by air through airports far away from home (i.e. in Iceland) would desperately want to surf on their favorite Google portal (i.e. Google Hungary). Google does provide a link on virtually every localized page (i.e. Google Canada) to go to Google.com, but that is not exactly the solution to our scenario(s).

Yahoo, owing to the fact it owns 92466 in many cc TLDs, has the capability to develop a local unbiased mobile solution to enable a user to 'break out' of 'geotargeting.' Unlike with Google, Yahoo could provide its users with the capability to access Yahoo in any geography by typing in 92466 and the ccTLD. Certainly Google could develop an easy solution (or buy up 466453 in every ccTLD) and most likely has a more commonsense solution in the works. Until then, DigitURL, preferrably via its free mobile software, is the easiest means for mobile-savvy Slovakians on holiday in Budapest to do some currency conversions the only way they know how - on google.sk.

Update1: At least one of Yahoo's 92466.[cctld] properties doesn't eventually get forwarded to Yahoo.com. 92466.cn redirects to Yahoo's typical 'Sorry, the page you requested was not found' error page in English, however suggests 'You may also want to try cn.yahoo.com' and after a considerable wait actually forwards to that url.

Jam-dial-url-word-num-tap

Isn't it funny how companies choose their names? The numeric-oriented companies we have been reporting on at Jamptap are no exception - their names convey the idea of pressing numbers on a phone keypad to get to web destinations. The name WordDial, for instance, implies that you can dial words (to get to web destinations) without multitapping - you can just use numbers like you do when you dial phone numbers (on your phone). DigitURL implies that you can get to URLs using Digits (Numbers) - same as with WordDial - instead of multitapping domain names and full web addresses. Jamptap is similar - we like the words Jam and Tap - Jamptap implies that it's jammin' to tap (just once!) on your keypad buttons although we're not a company.

A mobile tapping contest

Although they are apples and oranges in terms of their niche services, WordDial and DigitURL, two Southern Hemisphere internet companies, may actually be in stiff competition to lure in the average mobile surfer. WordDial, somewhat of a yellow pages or huge Yahoo directory for mobile web destinations, provides a much needed free service: aside from its thousands of themed mobile portals, it gives users quick mobile access to the email and search properties of the search engine giants including Google and Yahoo. And, now, so does DigitURL. Both give users the ability to do this via number-only keypad pressing, a method that rivals any other (method) of mobile web surfing.

At WordDial, the way to access Yahoo or Google mobile search is to enter 732724.com on your cell's browser and click your favorite search engine from the list. To access your email account via your mobile, WordDial's 36245.com page will take you to the most common free email services.

DigitURL, however, gives WordDial a run for its money. DigitURL, accessed via a mobile app or its mobile website (digiturl.com), will get you to pretty much the same destinations with arguably less effort. Whether via the mobile app or opening its site via your 'favorites,' a user can get to Google or Yahoo search by typing in either wordnumber (Google=466453, Yahoo=92466) and clicking options 2, 3 or 4 to choose your mobile page formatting preference, a service that WordDial doesn't provide. Gmail is accessed via its wordnumber 46245 and 924666245 goes to YahooMail. The problem is that DigitURL sends the user to a page that is viewed through Google's mobile optimizer unlike WordDial's links to true mobile urls.

So, who's the winner of the competition thus far? Let's be fair and only count the length of the wordnumbers used by these services to get to destinations. We're not taking into account most of the other tapping required: a user may or may not need to tap out the '.com' in the WordDial urls mentioned above (perhaps you've set a hot key to plug in '.com', or your IPhone has the '.com' button already there) and a user may be accessing DigitURL from its app or a bookmark. Perhaps a penalty on WordDial's side of the court is that it provides a set of results on its themed portals that aren't linked to with accesskeys, which DigitURL does use expertly. To get to Yahoo on 732724.com, the user needs to press the 'down' button several times and click 'go/enter'; that's a big penalty that we're not counting as taps in our 'tapping contest,' but something WordDial might want to rethink.

For search engine access, DigitURL wins by a slight margin (of about 1/2 click, on average). For email, WordDial is ahead, however if DigitURL creates a Short DigitURL of 96245 for YMail then it'd be a tie.

There is a shortcoming, however, with these companies' offerings: both fail to provide the user with the ability to easily access any and all mobile destinations using wordnumbers. WordDial hopes that you'll choose the category of your destination (email, 36245.com; search, 732724.com, etc...) and choose the result on their mobile-friendly listing. However, not every major brand or service is listed, only those that paid for listing (in most cases). DigitURL rivals WordDial in the sense that users don't need to brainstorm which category does a certain website fall under and prompts the user to simply enter the wordnumber. The problem is that its webmaster hasn't flushed out all the major brands and services as Short DigitURLs. True, bookmarking any mobile destination (i.e., bookmark > Gmail.com) would be quicker but the point of these webservices is to provide quick access to (nearly) any and all websites out there on the web. Think of all the web properties you'd like to visit on your mobile. These destinations are potentially (provided a webservice develops this potential) less than 10 taps (on average) away and don't require any tapping out of letters.

Jamptap feels that the 'winner' will be the service that is an one-stop mobile web surfing solution, a website that allows quick 'jumps' to virtually any mobile web property using wordnumbers. Even if we threw Google into the ring, it would probably place third. Any programmer could configure a mobile page with a search box that forwards the query (a wordnumber) to Google search using the operator allnum. This way a user just needs to type in a wordnumber, let's say 924666245 and be sent here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allnum%3A924666245&btnG=Search or a Google mobile optimized page with the same result. The user simply needs to click on the top search result. The problem though is that Google's allnum operator is linked to GNS (Google Number Search), which currently uses an outdated lexicon - the wordnumbers for most brands launched after 2000 won't be recognized. Try Obopay for instance.

We're not criticizing any of these above three webservices. They are thriving well so far in their own niches however, at present, we feel they don't address the overarching need of mobile users we outlined above. Apparently, they're all converging on the solution, in their own ways. The question is who will get there first.

Google homepage 411

Google Blogoscoped blogged about 'everything you always wanted to know about the Google homepage but were afraid to ask' yesterday and answered its own question, Is there a special mobile version of the Google homepage around?, with the following answer:

Yes, there is, and you might be automatically directed to it when accessing Google.com – or 466453.com (the numbers when you type “google” on certain hand phones) – though you can also view it on a desktop browser. Also, a special version of the mobile variant is available for the iPhone. (Though in theory, special mobile versions aren’t needed as HTML was designed to work across different systems... but that’s just the theory.)

Dotcom wordnumbers hit the marketplace

Over the past 2 days, rare sale listings of dotcom wordnumbers appeared at DNForum.com. One 'DNF Regular' offered up 417 four or more digit numeric domains - although only a few are wordnumbers for fairly (or very) common brands or generic words - at BINs in the $5000-10000(Cdn) range here and a 'Platinum Lifetime Member' tried to lure in a buyer for 2564.com, the dotcom wordnumber for 'BLOG', here for $3500.

Are these bargain prices? Or do these numeric domains don exorbitant prices? Jamptap has no idea. However, we would like to offer up something we recently read on a Chinese numeric investor's landing page:

If you do not decide at this time、 you may lose the best chance to own the good domain.

There is something that rings true with that punctuation-challenged statement. If you want some of the prime domain properties these investors are selling, don't delay. Like the sign I recently saw at a used car dealership, many of these numeric domains have had 'ONLY ONE OWNER' and if you do delay you may not see some of these domains for sale again until about 2015.

DigitURL

Most internet users know about the webservice TinyURL.com, which allows users to create url shortcuts to lengthier ones. Tinyurl web addresses consist of a random code, usually 6 digits in length, appended to the end of the domain http://Tinyurl.com (i.e., Tinyurl.com/dw2f9k). A new webservice to address the keypad pressing woes of mobile internet users has popped up. It's called DigitURL and its concept is pretty much the same. Like Tinyurl, it is a URL redirection utility. Accessed via its mobile-friendly webpage or its mobile app, DigitURL allows users to create a numeric code to represent a web destination (perhaps a youtube video address); the code is always a random set of 11 numbers. Obviously, using numbers instead of a letter-number combination, as used by Tinyurl, makes more sense from a mobile phone keypad point of view. The main difference between 'DigitURL' and 'Tinyurl' is that DigitURL doesn't expect you to type in a full url (i.e. DigitURL.com/466453). The expectation is that you will remember in your head (or copy and paste) the DigitURL, the 11-digit numeric code, and enter that code in the DigitURL mobile app on your phone or bookmark DigitURL's website and plug in the numeric code there.

Users are given the opportunity to create their DigitURL for whichever address they please, however the numeric code they get is always a random array of 11 numbers and never the wordnumber. For instance, I decided to create the DigitURL for Craigslist.com and got this http://digiturl.com/85834397256 and got this http://digiturl.com/39767443628 for Furl.com.

Clearly, the concept of creating a DigitURL is not for common brands/major websites. For those, the webmaster has complete control over the assignment of wordnumbers as Short DigitURLs. And, so we must mention the 'Short DigitURL' list. The website states:

Short DigitURLs are for major sites and correspond to the letters on the phone buttons. To obtain a short DigitURL for your website/blog and get it included in this list, please include a prominent mention of DigitURL.com on your site and then contact me.

The moniker 'Short' is employed because using wordnumbers for DigitURLs will result in numeric arrays that are most often - though not always - shorter than 11 numbers long. Furl would be 4 digits and TDAmeritrade would be 12 digits.

At the time of writing this, many major web destinations aren't listed on the Short DigitURL list including Craigslist.org, which we singled out for no particular reason as an example. Is the webmaster expecting Craiglist's CEO to post a prominent mention of DigitURL.com at Craigslist.org and email him to get Craiglist's wordnumber set up as the DigitURL to be posted on the Short DigitURL list? I'm guessing DigitURL has decided to already set up some of the most popular destinations since I doubt CNN, ebay, ESPN, etc... all jumped through the hoops since the website was launched in November.

It seems the smarter concept would be to assign all the wordnumbers for major websites right away as Short DigitURLs - and show ads on the launch page (known as the URL Preview page). This is what mobile users need most. Why? The greatest impediment to mobile web surfing is that walled gardens don't allow users easy access to all their favorite websites and those websites have incredibly long urls to type with a tiny mobile phone keypad. The vast majority of brand dotcom wordnumbers are held by a small number of investors and one New Zealand company called WordDial. Until those domain properties are recognized for their value, purchased or leased and set up by major companies, there is no easy way to access urls on the mobile web. If all major brand wordnumbers as Short DigitURLs were all set to go, then more users would frequent the site, business would boom and ad revenue would soar. These DigitURLs would be most often shorter than 11 digits and would not require memorizing or cutting and pasting from emails random DigitURLs (like the ones for Furl and Craigslist above). Wordnumbers don't require memorization; all they require is the rote pressing of the number on your keypad that corresponds with the letter. Google once had such a solution and Google could put the Short DigitURL List out of commission in a second if it wanted to relaunch a version of that mobile webpage.

Certainly problems will creep up with DigitURL. How will multiple brands vie for the shorter DigitURL wordnnumbers such as 222 or 3776 (esso, espn, etc...). Who will win out when ABC and BBC both want the DigitURL 222?

And this gave me chuckle
I seem to recall that you don't need a URL redirection utility to access Google on a mobile phone. Google owns its own dotcom wordnumber; Google = 466453.com.

'Spell with keypad,' Google says. And the mobile world awakes.

Google has breathed the first gust of air into its master mobile plan. It has spoken the simple, unassuming words ' spell with keypad ' and, without knowing it, millions of mobile phone users have been audience to Google's quiet initiation into the greatest technological revolution that the world has ever seen. What is so significant about those three words? On Google's cheatsheat page for GOOG-411, the free (ad-supported) directory assistance service launched by Google, it discusses the option for users to enter a business name or category by using the cell phone keypad. The exact prompt, after you call 1-800-GOOG-411 and utter a city and state and press 1, is:

To spell the business name or category using your keypad just enter one number for each letter. For example, to spell Taxi, you'd enter 8-2-9-4 and just leave out spaces and punctuation.

Folks, this is no normal text messaging. This is the world of wordnumbers. Google wants you to ' spell with keypad ' by pressing each key just once. Press the number equivalent of each letter you want to spell with and, tada! Google uses on its web cheatsheet the example of 'TOYS would be 8697.' In this case, the 8697 is the wordnumber for Toys. The actual domain 8697.com would be the dot com wordnumber.

So what's the big whoop? Firstly, Google is actively using its Google Number Search (GNS) technology in an active application (finally). Google Number Search was a mobile search experiment that enabled users to search the internet using wordnumbers. Google shut down GNS in 2000 after poor uptake of the technology but has kept the domain, 466453.com, which was the dedicated domain for GNS searching. GNS is what interprets numeric strings entered in the GOOG411 application into words that it matches against yellow pages directories. Google has for long maintained quasi-inactive applications of GNS, for instance the operators ALLNUM and NUM, which work in all Google search products - Jamptap was the first to report on the existence of those operators.

Secondly, Google is using an updated GNS lexicon for GOOG-411. The NUM and ALLNUM operators are still linked to a lexicon of common words, company names, etc.. that hasn't been updated since 2000 (i.e., the wordnumber for Cingular doesn't work with NUM or ALLNUM).


The real truth - so we think - is that Google is planning on relaunching its Google Number Search system. This ' spell with keypad ' mention is a rare one for Google. It indicates a whole lot. It means that Google is ironing out the kinks in its GNS and furthermore testing the waters to see if end users will take up the idea of a wordnumber - entering in numbers as replacements for letters on a mobile phone keypad - for mobile search. If Google sees - based on the data they record, keep and analyze - that users don't mind spelling out search entries with numeric tapping, then there is no reason to believe that Google won't start prodding mobile search users to do the same thing. That is where the revolution will happen since mobile search could one day capture a market many times larger than the PC search market and the advertising revenue potential is unthinkably large. The problem has been the fact that texting on mobile phones is very cumbersome. Google holds the key to solve that mobile search problem. It lies in three simple words: spell with keypad.

In case you may be wondering, the dotcom wordnumber for Toys is taken by Worddial.com