By: Raymond Hackney
Forbes came out with an article this afternoon that really had some misconceptions about domain investing and some plain out and out lies.
The author who specializes if Personal Finance especially for seniors took a cheap shot at Rick Schwartz calling him a squatter. This statement should not really be coming from someone who writes for Forbes of all places.
Rick Schwartz pointed out in the comments that Steve Forbes himself spoke at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in 2007 and even made a comment about those who call domain investors, "squatters".
The comments are starting to fill up and Shane Cultra and Adam Strong left some good comments, my comment was the following:
One would come to expect more from Forbes, but then if we are talking about an industry on the decline that would be the magazine business so maybe it makes sense.
Calling Mr. Schwartz a squatter is factually inaccurate, are there those that use the term when they want a domain for $10, that was taken 18 years ago ? Sure, one would like to think that a writer for Forbes would not fall into that trap.
There are names that sell that are never reported, try the whole Chinese market which has very few sales reported to US or European outlets.
The very notion of someone checking FoolsGold.com for registration in 2013 tells me the person writing the article certainly has no credibility in the area of Domain Names.
I do want to say that for comedy this quote was hysterical "Your domain name is far less important than it was a decade ago,” says Weston Anson, owner of CONSOR Intellectual Asset Management, a San Diego firm that does valuations of intellectual property. Search engines are much smarter so the domain name doesn’t matter as much as the meta-tags embedded in your website, he adds."
That was worth the price of admission, Meta Tags, Too bad Matt Cutts from Google said the following about meta tags, "Google explained that it doesn't use keyword meta tags, disregarding them completely. The reason, Google says, is because meta tags are subject to abuse. It's far too easy (and common) for a webmaster to inject oft-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing them, so Google has been ignoring them for "many years.""
You go to a source that talks about meta tags ? If you want to debate values and whether domains should have always been free ? Fine, but don't call someone a squatter who has spent millions on domains, and don't mention meta tags.
Read the article here
I loved your comment, this writer was obviously a novice.