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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Why you should register your domain name

If you have even the teeny-tiniest inclination that you may want to run for office someday, and you haven't registered your own name as a website address ("FirstnameLastname.com," etc.), then you're a blooming idiot.

Further proof of my theory that you really can find anything on the internet

Once your name becomes even slightly recognizable, it's too late and someone will quickly capitalize on your delay. There's no excuse - registering a domain name takes just a few minutes and costs about $10.00.

The latest person to learn this painful lesson is former Utah Governor and newly-declared Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. Huntsman has registered "www.jonhuntsmanjr.com" for his campaign.

Why jonhuntsmanjr.com? Well, it turns out that www.jonhuntsman.com was already taken...and, ouch, it's not very helpful to Huntsman's presidential ambitions.

Whoever created the site (the whois domain registration is set to private) has posted a letter from Huntsman to Obama (click image to enlarge):


Adding to the zing of this love letter to Obama is the pink heart background and this cutesy little logo, making a heart out of Obama's "O" logo:


Adorable, right? Heh.

Not the best friend to have in a Republican primary...
...just ask Charlie Crist.
What's not so adorable for Huntman's campaign is his poor internet presence. Most people, when searching for a candidate will type in "JohnDoe.com" and then if that doesn't work, run an internet search. Well, today, within hours of Huntsman's press conference officially announcing his candidacy, here's the top search results on Google for "jon huntsman:"
  1. The "Jon Huntsman, Jr." Wikipedia page
  2. A TIME article that's over a month old
  3. A Daily Beast article that's nearly two months old
  4. Erick Erickson's RedState article titled "Why I will not support Jon Huntman. Ever."
  5. An Economist article titled "Jon Huntsman: The perils of hype"
  6. The website for the current Utah Governor, Gary Herbert
  7. An ABC News article about today's campaign announcement
  8. www.jonhuntsmanjr.com
So his official website barely cracks the Top 10, the top two articles are old and losing relevance by the day, and the next two are negative. Yeah, whoever is managing search engine optimization for this campaign needs to put in some overtime this week.


(Hat tip re the jonhuntsman.com valentine site to and @JonahNRO)

[Cross-posted at The Minority Report Blog and Indie Politics]

3 comments:

  1. He may be able to take control of johnhuntsman.com through ICANN's dispute resolution process. Precedent does favor him winning such a case.

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  2. True, he'd probably win based on past cases. But in the crucial opening weeks of his campaign, the current cute pink valentine website is up.

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  3. Maybe he could enlist Al Gore for help. After all, Al invented the internet!

    Think of where we'd be today if it weren't for Al. Why, we'd still be getting our porn from TV, or worse, magazines! Ain't technology great?
    -unabashed liberal

    ReplyDelete