Reglikedomain industry desk

Names are in demand? A buyer broker speaks. — What domain

Bill Sweetman analyzes his 500 most recent buy requests.

If you want to understand what type of domain names are in demand, a good person to talk with is someone who buys domains on behalf of clients.

One of these people is Bill Sweetman of Name Ninja.

The prior week he posted data on the 500 most recent domain names clients have asked him to acquire. The numbers were pretty telling:

  • 84% of requests were for .com domain names
  • 9% were ccTLDs (not counting domains like .co that have become more like gTLDs)
  • 2% were fresh top level domain names

50% of the requests were for one-word domains.

68% were for what Sweetman calls generic terms, such as Robot.com or RobotParts.com. 15% were for invented words, and 6% were phrases. Acronyms and surnames were 6% and 5% respectively.

Keep in mind that, by the time someone reaches out to a buyer broker like Sweetman, they probably have a decent-sized budget and the domain wasn’t easily available to obtain through a registrar sales system. So this skews the results.

Still, this gives a good idea where the money is.

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.

FDomain SalesFor $1.5M, over $4.5M in domain sales at TRAFFIC auction — Cameras.com sellsSedo for tourism auction — .NYC choosesDomain SalesSedo for tourism auction — .NYC choosesQuickly sort through crappy domains on domain name forums — How toDomain SalesQuickly sort through crappy domains on domain name forums — How toIDomain SalesInternet Real Estate Group articleWDomain SalesWhat domain names GE and others bought the prior weekEnd user domain name sales — 17 latestDomain SalesEnd user domain name sales — 17 latestNDomain SalesNames Burberry and 14 other users bought — What domainNearly triples sales in second quarter — Domain HoldingsDomain SalesNearly triples sales in second quarter — Domain HoldingsGDomain SalesGoDaddy joins SedoMLS network