Stupidly High Domain Prices

[GreyWing]

Hi

Thanks for your comments, I wasnt aware of the "Exact" match on google keywords. I always had it set to broad which was default.

Don't worry about it mate, I didn't realise it for a few weeks and made a few mistakes on it. When I searched yours and saw the 2million searches, I thought "bloody hell" because even if I clicked on exact I still expected around 30,000. But it dropped to zero I was equally surprised, i haven't seen one drop that far before.

Yes if you put time into any name and input efforts into developing it then yes their is no doubt you could build value in it.

Not sure about people pm'ing you with names, suppose it just depends what they are trying to sell you. Hard to tell but if you have cash in your pocket right now then you are king when looking for a name.

Personally I don't think you need the .com version, I think for what you need and the UK market you have everything you need and won't lose any traffic. That being said 8k is not a bad price for the amount of people it would open up for you in the USA / worldwide.

All the best
GW

 

[markb]

Hi,

I was considering creating a US version of the website, but not at that expense. I suppose it was my fault when I created the website, I should have registered a name where both the UK and COM websites where available. Nevermind, I will remember that next time I develop a website.

I Just hope some of the 300+ domains I own are worth more than reg fee.

Thanks
Mark

 

[dw1973]

I've only been a member on here for a few months but I've learned that the value of a domain name is a very subjective thing.

I'm in a similar position to you mark, in that I'm more interested in a domain's development opportunity and potential income when thinking of it's value.

I own 2 domains for the name of the area I live in, which has a population of around 10000. A few months ago someone I know owned the .com as well but let it drop and someone else snapped it up. I got a standard email from them asking if I wanted to buy it...overs over £800.

The 2 domains I currently have earn about £100 per year only because of the large amount of work my wife and I put into the forum running on them, so paying £800 for the .com was never an option.

So to me that .com isn't worth £800 but it now seems to have sold to someone in Asia (not sure how much they paid) even though I can't really think of another use for it other than the area I live in (it's not a name shared with anywhere else in the world)

But if someone is willing to pay that amount, then that's what the market says it is worth.

 

[markb]

I've only been a member on here for a few months but I've learned that the value of a domain name is a very subjective thing.

I'm in a similar position to you mark, in that I'm more interested in a domain's development opportunity and potential income when thinking of it's value.

I own 2 domains for the name of the area I live in, which has a population of around 10000. A few months ago someone I know owned the .com as well but let it drop and someone else snapped it up. I got a standard email from them asking if I wanted to buy it...overs over £800.

The 2 domains I currently have earn about £100 per year only because of the large amount of work my wife and I put into the forum running on them, so paying £800 for the .com was never an option.

So to me that .com isn't worth £800 but it now seems to have sold to someone in Asia (not sure how much they paid) even though I can't really think of another use for it other than the area I live in (it's not a name shared with anywhere else in the world)

But if someone is willing to pay that amount, then that's what the market says it is worth.

Yeah its very annoying from a developers point of view, i thought domain names where actually there to be developed, not to be bought and sold purely for profit and not used, but thats the way things are going nowadays. People seem to sit on domain names with no interest in developing them, then when a developer makes an offer, it usually gets rejected with a counteroffer which is 10 to 20 times as much. Even when the domain only cost the owner the registration fee. Seems people want a cut of any future profits people could make with all their hardwork. I think for a developer the best way forward is to get an obscure available name which is brandable and work on that. Even if you paid a lot of money for a good domain name which just contains the keyword your after, there is absolutely no guarentee you will ever rank for that term anyway, as you may have competitors who have been working on their websites for years.

Mark

 

[rob]

Yeah its very annoying from a developers point of view, i thought domain names where actually there to be developed, not to be bought and sold purely for profit and not used, but thats the way things are going nowadays. People seem to sit on domain names with no interest in developing them

there are lots of domain owners who are intending to develop the domains out but are limited to 24hrs per day.

to the outside that would look no different

Even if you paid a lot of money for a good domain name which just contains the keyword your after, there is absolutely no guarentee you will ever rank for that term anyway, as you may have competitors who have been working on their websites for years.

If it is a top end one you would get the benefits of a keyword and some type in traffic, so that would close up the gap on compeitors a little

Cheers,
Rob.

 

[Edwin]

Even if you paid a lot of money for a good domain name which just contains the keyword your after, there is absolutely no guarentee you will ever rank for that term anyway, as you may have competitors who have been working on their websites for years.

Absolutely incorrect. An exact match domain name for the topic you're trying to rank for WILL help with SEO. My recent study demonstrated this.

Of course, if you buy the domain and expect your site to be teleported to the top of the search engines without putting any effort into it, that's another story - but the right domain name combined with an effective on- and off-page SEO strategy will get you a lot better results than the same SEO efforts on an irrelevant domain name.

Yeah its very annoying from a developers point of view, i thought domain names where actually there to be developed, not to be bought and sold purely for profit and not used, but thats the way things are going nowadays.

Just because you're arriving late to the party doesn't mean it's just started. People have been trading .com domains since around 1995-1996 or earlier (i.e nearly 15 years ago) and there's been a strong trade in .co.uk names for MANY years. The market for domain names globally is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year - that's not some flash in the pan idea that somebody cooked up to make a bit of cash, but a well-established industry with 2 real (paper) magazines covering it, about a dozen global tradeshows a year, and several huge firms offering aftermarket services (Sedo, Afternic, etc.)

 

[markb]

Absolutely incorrect. An exact match domain name for the topic you're trying to rank for WILL help with SEO. My recent study demonstrated this.

Of course, if you buy the domain and expect your site to be teleported to the top of the search engines without putting any effort into it, that's another story - but the right domain name combined with an effective on- and off-page SEO strategy will get you a lot better results than the same SEO efforts on an irrelevant domain name.



Just because you're arriving late to the party doesn't mean it's just started. People have been trading .com domains since around 1995-1996 or earlier (i.e nearly 15 years ago) and there's been a strong trade in .co.uk names for MANY years. The market for domain names globally is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year - that's not some flash in the pan idea that somebody cooked up to make a bit of cash, but a well-established industry with 2 real (paper) magazines covering it, about a dozen global tradeshows a year, and several huge firms offering aftermarket services (Sedo, Afternic, etc.)

Yeah, I didnt say it wouldnt help in rankings, it does to some degree, but if you have a site that is considered by google to be an authority site for that keyword and the site has been around for a long time, it would take years of SEO work to topple it.

Thansk for the otehr info, yes im new to domain names, yes I understand its a well established industry now, it reminds me of the car registration plate industry, where you can buy a reg for the registration fee and then sell it on if you get a good one for a high price.

 

[foz]

Yeah its very annoying from a developers point of view, i thought domain names where actually there to be developed, not to be bought and sold purely for profit and not used, but thats the way things are going nowadays. People seem to sit on domain names with no interest in developing them, then when a developer makes an offer, it usually gets rejected with a counteroffer which is 10 to 20 times as much. Even when the domain only cost the owner the registration fee. Seems people want a cut of any future profits people could make with all their hardwork. I think for a developer the best way forward is to get an obscure available name which is brandable and work on that. Even if you paid a lot of money for a good domain name which just contains the keyword your after, there is absolutely no guarentee you will ever rank for that term anyway, as you may have competitors who have been working on their websites for years.

What gave you that idea. Nowadays? It's been in existence since day one.

Why must you assume they only paid reg. fee for a domain.

 

[MattUK]

Absolutely incorrect. An exact match domain name for the topic you're trying to rank for WILL help with SEO. My recent study demonstrated this.

It will help, but having a keyword in the domain name is only a moderate factor in ranking, many other factors outweigh its importance.

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

 

[Admin]

It will help, but having a keyword in the domain name is only a moderate factor in ranking, many other factors outweigh its importance.

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Very useful SEO study. I will analyse some of my sites based on this as the weight of each factor is very good in helping me see what is important when I have so many sites to manage the SEO on.

Thanks!

Admin

 

[markb]

It will help, but having a keyword in the domain name is only a moderate factor in ranking, many other factors outweigh its importance.

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Great document and it just shows that having keywords in your domain name is not the most important thing that counts.

Ive noticed that keywords in the domain or an exact keyword match is one of the main things that most people use to value their domain, plus how much per click google is charging in adwords. This therefore means that the person selling the domain is working out how valuable it is on the pretense that the site gets to number 1 for that keyword and how many visitors and money it could make.

In 99% of the time, the new owner of the domain would not have a good chance of getting to number 1 for that keyword. For example take the keyword 'Cars for Sale' which google says gets exactly 450,000 searches per month. The website "www.carsforsale./co/.uk" would be a perfect match for this keywords and therefore many domain sellers would value the domain by working out how much it could make by being number 1 for that keyword.

I think this is totally wrong, firstly you probably wont get much type in traffic with a .co.uk domain. Plus you would have to compete with thousands of other cars for sale websites which have been around for a long time and I think it would be virtually impossible to get a head of the leaders for this keyword which are exchange and mart, and autotrader which are well established brands that everyone has heard of. Plus the fact that recently google has been putting more emphasis on brands and ranking the better known brands/websites higher than ones that just use the same keywords.


Even if it was possible to get to the number 1 spot for "Cars for Sale" after 3 or 4 years of SEO, lots of money and hardwork, you wouldnt even receive a third of googles reported 450,000 visitors, probably not even a fifth of this number. This is because google puts paid advertisers at the top of the results and most people click these before the number 1 organic result.


Therefore I think giving a value to a domain based purley on the amount of times it is searched, is totally not the best way to go about it.

Mark

 

[retired_member6]

Great document and it just shows that having keywords in your domain name is not the most important thing that counts.

Ive noticed that keywords in the domain or an exact keyword match is one of the main things that most people use to value their domain, plus how much per click google is charging in adwords. This therefore means that the person selling the domain is working out how valuable it is on the pretense that the site gets to number 1 for that keyword and how many visitors and money it could make.

In 99% of the time, the new owner of the domain would not have a good chance of getting to number 1 for that keyword. For example take the keyword 'Cars for Sale' which google says gets exactly 450,000 searches per month. The website "www.carsforsale./co/.uk" would be a perfect match for this keywords and therefore many domain sellers would value the domain by working out how much it could make by being number 1 for that keyword.

I think this is totally wrong, firstly you probably wont get much type in traffic with a .co.uk domain. Plus you would have to compete with thousands of other cars for sale websites which have been around for a long time and I think it would be virtually impossible to get a head of the leaders for this keyword which are exchange and mart, and autotrader which are well established brands that everyone has heard of. Plus the fact that recently google has been putting more emphasis on brands and ranking the better known brands/websites higher than ones that just use the same keywords.


Even if it was possible to get to the number 1 spot for "Cars for Sale" after 3 or 4 years of SEO, lots of money and hardwork, you wouldnt even receive a third of googles reported 450,000 visitors, probably not even a fifth of this number. This is because google puts paid advertisers at the top of the results and most people click these before the number 1 organic result.


Therefore I think giving a value to a domain based purley on the amount of times it is searched, is totally not the best way to go about it.

Mark

There is no defined way of valuing a domain, as all will tell you, as they have done, prices are set by what the seller will sell for and what the purchaser will pay. Yes one way of valuing a domain is on exact keyword search but there are others, I reg names half the time just because they're catchy, now tell me how to value those, you can't. No one can. If I'd determined worky was worth £500, I'd have lost £4100 on that sale.

As for google, they change algorithms all the time, domain keywords are the only sure thing and they do have a basis not only for search, I don't believe in type in anyway as being wholly a mass base, as in user types exact keyword and domain, I do believe in keyword, plus catchy and memorable being of use and also domain type in through engine search. It was incredible when I found how people went to a site, typing the known domain into google, but seems most do this... why not the address bar?

You're trying to sum up domain value by appropriating search as the only value, there are many key factors and most who sell a lot, arrive at the amount they do either through knowledge they already have and a quick think or with about 30 minutes to an hours research upon price request. When i sold worky, I found out all the possible buyers and researched their plans and arrived at a price, as what you're also missing is the value attributed to how much business that client will do through the domain, among many other factors that may be I don't even use enough of.

I'll just add, keyword domains are highly generic for the multiple use/recall/association factor, not only to do with search engines.

 

[Edwin]

Mark, you can't argue these things by "hunch". Studies have proven that 20-45% of the traffic will go to the #1 search engine listing. That's something that's already been tested and verified to be true, even if you haven't come across those studies yet.

Everything being discussed here is very well established, factual stuff - no room for opinion (it's like trying to hypothesize the result of a chemical experiment without bothering to study ANY chemistry - pretty frustrating for the real chemists who have been studying their discipline for years or decades!)

 

[markb]

Mark, you can't argue these things by "hunch". Studies have proven that 20-45% of the traffic will go to the #1 search engine listing. That's something that's already been tested and verified to be true, even if you haven't come across those studies yet.

Everything being discussed here is very well established, factual stuff - no room for opinion (it's like trying to hypothesize the result of a chemical experiment without bothering to study ANY chemistry - pretty frustrating for the real chemists who have been studying their discipline for years or decades!)

Edwin,

This is not always correct, I am speaking from experience not by a hunch. I happen to rank number 1 and have done for a long time for many VERY popular keywords in google for some of my websites. On one of my website I rank 1st for a keyword which google says gets exactly 301,000 per month in the UK according to the google keyword tool. I also have google analytics installed to confirm how many people find my site using this keyword via google, which I can tell you in the past month is exactly 33,921. This works out at slightly over 1\10th and this is not my opinion, it is fact.

Another example I have just checked is where I rank 1st for a keyword in google which says it gets 823,000 exact searches per month. For this keyword I have had 9,795 visits this month.

The details I have given above are all factual, if you have some of your own details where you rank 1st for popular keywords I would be interested to see how many visitors you get.

Thanks
Mark

 

[Edwin]

The data I posted wasn't based on a couple of examples but on the info AOL leaked about 100s of millions of web queries a few years back. Again, your example is like seeing 2 black sheep in a field and from that concluding that all sheep are black.

 

[retired_member21]

The google keyword tool (exact match too) traffic estimates are way off markb is right

I also rank/have ranked for some serious keywords p1p1 and don't get anywhere near what the tools say. Those tools are to entice adwords spend nothing more - don't take them as accurate.

Seen the stats on

'life insurance'
'estate agents'

Edwin the leaked AOL data is very out of date, and things have changed massively since then, let alone new Google services appearing on page 1.

With regards to your figure of 20-45% going to p1p1, yes fair enough probably about right, but as I said the numbers will be way lower than you imagine (e.g. 20-45% of a % of the keyword tool)

It's def closer to 20% on generic keywords

 

[markb]

The data I posted wasn't based on a couple of examples but on the info AOL leaked about 100s of millions of web queries a few years back. Again, your example is like seeing 2 black sheep in a field and from that concluding that all sheep are black.

I only gave a couple of examples, I have hundreds more which are all based on real world data which is very recent and up-to-date.

The google keyword tool (exact match too) estimates are way off markb is right

I also rank/have ranked for some serious keywords p1p1 and don't get anywhere near what the tools say. Those tools are to entice adwords spend nothing more - don't take them as accurate.

Seen the stats on

'life insurance'
'estate agents'

Edwin the leaked AOL data is very out of date, and things have changed massively since then, let alone new Google services appearing on page 1

Im not sure if they are overestimated or not. From my experience, as mentioned a lot of people wont click on the first result, they click on the adverts. And from my own experiences I do beleive where you have a popular keyword, where you have 100 or so websites all trying for top place, they will all be continuely searching for the keyword to see what place they are in, which will artifically inflate the number of searches by a large amount. Obviously your competitors wont be clicking on your website result.

For my websites brand name where I have no competitors, google keywords says it gets 74,000 searches a month. In my google aanlytics it says I have had exactly 72,973, so in this case it is pretty spot on. This is because my competitors wont be searching for my brand name, plus there are no paid keywords for it.

Many Thanks
Mark

 

[MattUK]

I think people 'tend' to see one word keyword domains ranking for a number of reasons, and not because of the name itself - it's where people misunderstand causation and correlation.

1. People that own great one word keyword domains tend to be a bit more serious about them and invest more heavily in SEO and marketing.

2. One word keyword domains overall already tend to be older, and more established with more links than competing generics - age and link popularity are probably two of the most important ranking factors at the moment.

3. It's also worth noting that the anchor text of incoming links is a huge help. So keyword domains benefit from people linking to Keyword.co.uk - Keyword Resources and Information., whereas brandable/generic domains don't benefit as much from people linking to Generic.co.uk

I agree with people here that attributing a value to a domain based on search volume is a bit of a wayward way of going about things. Sure for some low volume phrases you're going to find it fairly easy to rank with an exact match domain. But for higher volume phrases in theory it's not really any easier than your competotors to rank - though in practice what you're paying for the age of the domain and any established backlinks and rankings that it already has.

As you may have guessed by now, I would consider myself more of an SEO than a domainer, though if I was starting a venture you would happily pay £xx,xxx for a great generic/brandbale domain.

Why?

Because you can never underestimate the value of a brand. Great looking short names are your brand online, the same has having a shop at a huge shopping centre, or a dingy stall down a back alley.

I'm far more likely to take mortgages.co.uk seriously that I am get-great-mortgages-online-now.co.uk, one looks like a spam site, the other looks like it's established and sticking around forever. - Of course great site design and fantastic unique content also all falls into this mix as well and is just as important.

On the subject of search engine results page click through rates, you're correct that the vast majority of traffic goes to the results at the top, but people do tend to recognise the difference between paid and natural results.

We have clients that are in the top three results for good one word search terms, both for PPC and natural results. We generally find that there is a 70/30 traffic split, with most visitors going to the natual results - though this does vary slightly depending on the industry.

ComScore data from Jan '08

 

[spondishy]

Edwin is spot on with exact match domains. From my experiment it stands for .co.uk .org.uk, .com, .net and .org.

As far as testing traffic for a keyword its fairly easy to test. Get an adwords account and create an ad for the exact keyword.

 

[crabfoot]

Whatever, it is nice to see that our members can "agree to disagree" in a civilised fashion.