GolfArizona Staff Reports

For GolfArizona.com

Today, the AGA's online presence is in chaos as their web carpet has been pulled out from under their cyber feet. The AGA's most accessed and popular domain name, Arizonagolf.com was recently reclaimed by iTravelPartners, thus causing a "web" of confusion for thousands of golfers and amongst AGA officials themselves.

AGA members who have book-marked Arizonagolf.com are now forwarded to Players Choice Golf, a top travel package site, when they attempt to log onto the AGA's former "dot-com." Furthermore, the leading search engines on the Internet such as AltaVista have hundreds of links pointed to dead arizonagolf.com links.

Despite their continuing web presence at Arizonagolf.org, the non-profit association appears to be reeling from their substantial flat tire on the Information Superhighway.

Arizonagolf.com was one of three domains that the AGA used to market its popular web site. Las Vegas Internet Partners (LVIP) used the domain name in conjunction with Azgolf.org and Arizonagolf.org so that all sites would point to each other. Both "dot- orgs" are officially owned by the AGA while the valued Arizonagolf.com was always owned by LVIP.

However, Arizonagolf.com turned out to be wildly successful and received "a tremendous amount of hits," according to AGA officials. Hundreds of pages were setup as many search engines ranked and catalogued these pages for readers to find under keywords such as "Arizona Golf Association" as well as "Arizona" and "golf".

Despite the AGA's robust web presence at Arizonagolf.org, the organization actually promotes its Azgolf.org site, which is a shell of the web featured at Arizonagolf.org, more aggressively. Meanwhile, dead pages from many of the sites each riddle the search engines when golfers type in relevant keywords.

LVIP, now owed by iTravelPartners, designed and ran the old AGA web site (Arizonagolf.com) in exchange for marketing considerations. In the process of switching to Rhino Productions, Inc. for web design, Azgolf.org has been gutted of past pages with at least 200 dead links left behind on search engines as confirmed by GolfArizona.com staff. According to AGA Director of Marketing James Waitt, the new site is supposed to be launched at the end of this month.

"It would irk me to no end to get a new site and have this happen and suddenly lose it all in one swoop," said Waitt. "At some point, there was a mix-up in our office and it got pointed to the dot com. 'Dot com' is not even in our vocabulary."

Waitt said the domain loss could deal a "serious setback" for the AGA, despite the fact that "dot-com's" are not integral parts of non-profit organizations operations since they use the "dot-org" domain names.

"It's the general confusion that concerns me," added Waitt. "Our (published) magazine may not be around in the future. It may be all Web."

Not only is there current confusion to the general public, but AGA officials contacted by GolfArizona.com initially did not know that they had a web site located at Arizonagolf.com. Both Waitt and Russ Christ, director of communications, were not aware of the existence of an Arizonagolf.com website, learning of its former existence only after being notified of hundreds of search engine placements and past media stories tying them to the lost address. Both Christ and Waitt were put in charge of the AGA web site by their board of directors. AGA officials including Ed Gowan, executive director, all agree that iTravelPartners is the rightful owner of Arizonagolf.com.

Records archived by GolfArizona.com show the association using Arizonagolf.com as far back as September of 1997. Waitt even admitted to reading an AGA memo inquiring about the possible purchase of Arizonagolf.com.

Industry experts say the AGA could suffer long-term damage for the domain mishap.

"This is a devastating mishap to have happen to an association," said Larry Coulson, owner of a Colorado Internet firm who also specializes in sports domain consulting. "Readers will have to wade through bad links for years. It will literally take years for this golf association to recover readership and prestige lost."

"I find it hard to believe, however, that these guys at the AGA were not aware of the prominence of this domain name. Arizonagolf.com is a prime domain name. You can't fault LVIP, it's their name. It's definitely a case where they (the AGA) failed to realize the value of what they had. They should never have allowed a Web firm to market them under a domain they don't own."

Waitt said that he will ask the iTravelPartners to link from Arizonagolf.com to Azgolf.org and will also take the matter to the AGA board. Waitt added that he plans to "work things out" with the domain owner. Gowan, in a contrary opinion to Waitt, dismissed the importance of the Arizonagolf.com domain altogether.

"(The) Arizona Golf Association (SIC) has no interest in that site... We do not wish to "reclaim" our identity, since they have owned it from the beginning," stated Gowan in an e-mail to GolfArizona.com.

CEO Brian McKinley of No Borders Internet, a web firm who netted big profits by selling domains such as Ireland.com, said Gowan's attitude to their cyber presence is "cavalier" and that the 300 member AGA golf courses would suffer a "needless" loss of profit.

"Many of these courses relied on the AGA for their web presence only to be severely letdown. Today, you have a lot of golf courses stranded in cyberspace losing tens of thousands of dollars worth of bookings."