Huckster: a seller of small articles, usually of cheap or shoddy quality - the latest in a series about the domain-name industry…

An email plopped into Media UK’s inbox the other day, promising a “prime domain” just for me:
Would Media UK be interested in purchasing our domain name OneMedia.co.uk?
Most of our clients are now finding that prime domains such as this pay for themselves within weeks rather than months by virtue of the extra business that they drive to their websites by means of type in traffic and greatly enhanced search engine positions.
I would strongly advise an early contact if this is of interest.

Sounds interesting. a “prime domain” - which drives extra traffic because of “type in traffic” and “greatly enhanced search engine positions”. I did a little research. In order to sell a domain-name, either people needed to be searching for it, or it had to be high on Google’s ‘pagerank’ (so it appears high in Google searches), or it needs high traffic figures.

Popping along to Google websearch, let’s search for “one media”, or without the quotes, just to see if it turns up. It doesn’t, not on the first page anyway (and who ever goes to the second page?). This possibly isn’t a splendid start.

Still, even if it’s not obvious, people must be searching for it, right? Next stop: Google Trends, which monitors what people are searching for. Punch in “one media”, which onemedia.co.uk should rule the roost in, and given it’s a “.co.uk”, select the United Kingdom as the region you want the data from. And, er, look. Not quite the best of starts. Nobody’s searching for “one media” at all.

Still, hey, there just might be loads of traffic there. Let’s see what Alexa has to say… oh, that’s not so good either.

Well, at least it might rank high on Google’s pagerank system, the magic number that has direct bearing on your search results. Media UK, and this website, are pagerank “6″. And checking onemedia.co.uk’s pagerank gives a slightly less impressive… 0.

Beware the hucksters. While this isn’t in any way illegal, this is an entirely worthless domain - a little research goes a long way.

Photo: Bruce Alderson. Used under licence. A different version of this posting appeared on June 16th, with the company named and shamed, which I removed shortly after posting. It’s not hard for you to find out who the company is, but it’s probably not too fair for me to do a frukt on them, and be their second hit on Google. Thanks to those of you who noticed it and urged me to repost it.