Are You Missing The TOP?

Every morning at 9 AM in the Eastern time zone Michael Sumner at NameBio releases the daily domain name sales report.  I, and probably most serious domain name investors and analysts, eagerly check the report each morning.  I find that Micheal puts just the right amount of detail into the report, making it an informative but quick read.  The purpose of this thread is to warn you to not base your perceptions of what is selling only on the daily report.  Let me explain.

The NameBio Daily Report

The structure of each daily report is the same.  It starts with a title giving the total sales volume for the day along with the name and price of the top domain name sale.  After that there is a brief summary that repeats that information and  also gives the number of sales, and the comparison of number and total dollar amount with the previous days. A bit later will be a summary of  those  domain names  that had sold perviously, giving  the year and amount of the previous sale for each, and the percentage increase or decrease.  Then the complete sales list, typically about 220 sales, is given in order of decreasing sales price. For each the domain name, price and sales venue are given.

The monetization of the NameBio daily report depends on promotion of some auctions and sales, so that information is usually embedded somewhere in the daily reports. That information can also be valuable for those expanding their domain portfolio with new acquisitions.  I also like that Michael provides archived reports in an easy to access fashion.  For example I recently used the last 100 daily reports in an  analysis looking at which domain extensions were in first place most often.

Where Are The .TOP Sales?

When I did a search using the NameBio database the other day, I was surprised that the database showed 17 sales of .TOP extension domain names during the previous week (Aug 5-12, 2018), even though I believe only one of them had been on any of the preceding seven NameBio daily domain sales reports. These sales were significant, ranging in price per domain from $638 to $51,187, with an  average sales price of $4549.  In total they accounted for over $77,000 sales in .TOP in just that week. The sales venues were predominantly Jiangsu Bangning, the .TOP registry, but also included sales during this one week period at Alibaba Cloud and NameSilo.

So why were the .TOP domain sales missing from the daily report? I believe the answer is that naturally each daily report can only include sales reports received by the time the report is assembled, so venues that report sporadically or from other time zones are often excluded. Although this bias is of course not deliberate, if you base your impressions only on the NameBio daily report they will be skewed. In particular there is bias against trades in the Asian domain markets, and extensions like TOP.  Of course everyone realizes there are other biases related to which venues report to NameBio, and the fact that domain name sales under $100 are not publicly reported.

So What Did I Miss?

I present the TOP sales in the NameBio database for the week of Aug 5–12 in the table on the right (click on the table if you need a higher resolution view).  Not only are the total number and value significant, but there are some noteworthy individual sales.

The two letter domain name bg sold for more than $51,000, and several 3 letter domain names sold as well. I was interested in the sales of a number of animal names: koala, frog, dolphin and zebra, which each sold for more than $1000.

Conclusions

While I urge you to read the NameBio daily report each morning, make sure you remember that sometimes sales do not make it into the NameBio database in time to make the daily report. This is particularly true for venues that only report sporadically to NameBio and those from venues located in the far east time zones.

Some may say 'I don't really care if I miss the odd ngTLD sale'.  This perception bias if you look only at the daily report can be very significant.  For example, in the period considered here the missing .TOP sales equalled the combined  number of sales in that period for .CO, .DE and .INFO (16 in total), almost equal to .IO sales in that period (19), and represented about 50% the number of .NET sales (32) during the period. 

I am not sure how much effort this would  entail, but one way around the issue is to include at the bottom of a daily report recent database additions that were not shown  in a previous daily report.  But all each user needs to do is to periodically do a NameBio search to make sure that they are not missing sales of interest to them.  The time frame setting for previous week and month make this easy to do.

This is a good time to acknowledge the amazing service offered to the domain name community by Michael and NameBio.  Their database currently has more than 614,000 sales representing over $1.6 billion.  The oldest sale recorded in the database is from 1997 (for you trivia fans, it is business.com which sold for $150,000 in a 1997 private sale.)

Any sort of significant domain name analysis would be impossible without NameBio.  That Michael makes it freely available to us all, in such a powerful and user friendly format, is indeed wonderful.  Thank you! A day without NameBio is a day without domain name sales data!

Links:

• NameBio Daily Reports
• NameBio database
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 16, 2018.

Disclosure:  I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. My portfolio of domain names is mainly ngTLDs, as well as a number of .co, .com and .ca (and a few other country codes). I do invest in the .top domain extension, along with many others.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make that use data from this post.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Average Sales Prices on Sedo for Different Extensions

Sedo is conducting a special end of summer premium domain name auction for which they are dropping the normal application fee (other charges still apply).  In describing the sort of domain names they are looking for, Sedo use the wording "The domain extension (TLD) of the domain is considered premium and has a history of high-value sales (such as .com, .net or .de),"  Now it is likely they mean extensions such as these, rather than those three being an  exclusive list (I asked Sedo to clarify this via a Twitter message, but had not yet received a reply as of time of posting).

The statement prompted me to look at what the average sales price of domains sold on the Sedo platform was for some common extensions.  Fortunately, with NameBio it is easy to do searches just on certain extensions and venues. These are the results I obtained.

• com $4776
• co $4426
• io $3889
• tv $3516
• de $3449
• org $3305
• all ngTLDs $3106
• net $3086
• info $2243
• biz $2096

It isn't surprising that .com is in first place, as most domain name experts would have predicted.  I am surprised that .co is almost at the same price level, and higher than .io in average price.  It is also somewhat surprising that the new domain extensions (ngTLDs) taken as a group have a higher Sedo average sales price than .net (although the difference is slight).  I was not surprised that .info and .biz were somewhat lower in average price than the others.

While sales volume is certainly different in the various extensions, it turns out that if one looks at the prices that domains typically sell for there is relatively little difference between many extensions.  It will be interesting to see what  domains make it through the selection process for the Sedo summer auction,  If they were going to give three example extensions, it would have seemed better to me to say .com, .co and .io, based on the Sedo average sales prices.

I would emphasize that these are average prices for all time in the NameBio database.  If one looks at all venues then the average prices are lower in all cases, and the ordering is not exactly the same. While using only a single venue, even one as important as Sedo, significantly reduces the size of a dataset, one advantage is that it gives typical end user prices, as it is assumed that the vast majority of sales on Sedo are to end users and no to other domain investors.

The Sedo Auction will run from Aug. 23 through Aug. 30, 2018. Those submitting names agree to exclusively list them with Sedo for the period of the auction and for up to 60 days thereafter. Proposed names are submitted through the owner's Sedo account, and decisions are given by email and it is not possible to appeal a decision.  The complete description of the type of names being sought by Sedo is shown below.

Links:

• Sedo Auction Schedule
• NameBio database
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 13, 2018.

Disclosure:  I have not submitted any names to the Sedo auction, nor  do I intend to.  I have not, yet, been a Sedo customer, and  have no association with the company.   I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. My portfolio of domain names is mainly ngTLDs, as well as a number of .co, .com and .ca (and a few other country codes).

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make that use data from this post.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Which Extensions Are Growing in Actual Use?

 Ultimately a domain extension will only be successful it it gains, and maintains, actual real world use.  Yes, an extension can get attention through land rush adoptions and early registration momentum, but if a significant  fraction of those domain names don't actually get used, the extension will lose value.  In this post I take a look at both levels of use and trends for different top level domain (TLD) extensions.

The Data

For this analysis I used data from W3Techs.  If you have not used their site, I urge you to give it a try. They provide a wealth of frequently updated statistical data. In our case we are going to look at their data regarding use of different extensions in actual websites - the direct link to the TLD annual table I used for this post is here.  I outline their methodology in the next paragraph.

They start with the top 10 M websites using Alexa data. The Alexa database has critics, but is probably the most widely used source for site popularity.  The W3Techs.com site aggregates any subdomains into a single combined number (e.g. all of the Blogger sites would be added to have one large use number for blogger.com, and would count as a single website).  As a result, they actually start with a number of sites somewhat less than ten million. W3Techs.com do not include redirected traffic in their data. The analysts at W3Tech compute a three month rolling average for the numbers that are reported here, although the data is updated daily. You can read about their methodology at this link.  One final point with respect to their methodology, prior to 2013 they used the Alexa 1M rather than the Alexa 10M as their starting point.  This may cause some bias when comparing statistics over the years.

COM is King (but trending down)

The first thing obvious from the data is the huge dominance of one extension, .com. It accounts for roughly half of all significant websites. The table below shows percentages for the main extensions, .com, .net, .org, .info, a few other global extensions, including some of the more popular country codes.  To a large degree, any particular other extension is almost lost in the noise.

Website use by different extensions.  Data from W3Techs.com. Consult website for up to date data.

While the data clearly shows that while .com remains dominant, the trend is definitely downward.  Website use of .com peaked in 2011 at about 55.2% of websites. As I write this in early August 2018 it is at about 46.5% use.  While the new global top level domain (ngTLD) introductions may have hastened the decline, it clearly started prior to the new extension introductions.

Challenging Times for NET and INFO 

There has been frequent discussion on NamePros forums about .net and .info struggling in sales numbers and price levels. NameBio data support this, although the change is not dramatic as some domain investors believe.  The extensions .net and.info are also struggling in web use. The .info extension actually peaked in web use in 2011 at about 2.0%. It is currently at 0.9% use.

For .net it was highest in the first year shown in the W3Techs data table, 2010, when it had 6.8% use.  Now it is down to just 3.9% use. It is interesting that the decline of both .net and .info preceded the introduction of the ngTLDs. The introduction of the ngTLDs may well have weakened the use of .net and.info, but they did not start the decline in either extension.

Things Are Good in ORG

The one major global extension that is doing well over the 8 year period is .org, which went from 4.6% in 2010 to 5.1% use currently. The extension has recently got a lot of use by blockchain and cryptocurrency related companies and organizations, but it is not just that factor that has sparked the increase in use of .org, as the extension has increased fairly consistently over the whole period.

Not Great for BIZ

The one extension that seemed most directly impacted by the ngTLD introductions was .biz. Use of the domain name extension peaked around the time of the first big ngTLD introductions and has continued to drop in use since then including during the past year.  At time of writing it represented about 0.27% of web use, still more than even the highest of the new extensions covered in the next section. However, the trend for .biz is definitely negative, and it was at almost 0.40% in global use just a year ago.

New Extensions Well Down List

Even the highest of the ngTLDs are well down the list, with .xyz having about 0.18% use. The trend for .xyz is largely constant since shortly after introduction. Other extensions including .club (0.15%), .online (0.12%), .site (0.07%),  .top (0.08%), and .win (0.05%) make the list but again with modest website use. Most are, however, showing an upward trend (e.g., the .win extension has grown by almost a factor of 4x in website use during the last year - see the graph below).

Data provided  by W3Techs.com. Consult their website for most current data.

An optimist would point to a slight increase in ngTLD use in actual websites, at least taken as a group. A pessimist would say many of the new extensions have now been around for three years and  in total or individually they are still down around the noise in actual website use.

Incidentally, one nice feature of the W3Techs is that you can get additional data on any particular extension. For example, at this link for .xyz you see a temporal plot of its use. Another plot shows how it compares to some other extensions in amount of use and in how popular the sites are that do use the extension.   It also gives you the names of some of the more popular sites using the extension, as well as a random selection of other active sites using the extension.

What about IO?

You can use the W3Techs.com site to study other TLDs.  For example, .io has shown steady growth over the last year, although it still only accounts for about 0.28% of web use in significant sites. The .io extension is much more important in domain name sales than it is, yet, in actual website use.  It is significant, though, that while total use of .io is fairly low compared to the legacy extensions, when it is used, the websites tend  to have higher traffic sites than .net, .com or .org.

The .io TLD is used in fewer websites than the legacy extensions, but when it is used the site tends to be more popular. Consult W3Techs.com for most recent data. 

The Long Term View

At current trends, I project that by about the year 2290 .com and .xyz (and actually a number of other new extensions) will have approximately equal website use! We ngTLD investors better take a long term view or find a profitable niche!

Conclusions

I summarize what I regard as the key takeaways from this analysis below. Keep in mind that the reference set is the 10 million most popular websites in the world (from a total of about 1.9 billion global websites currently). This is a snapshot in time, and you should consult W3Techs.com for the for the most current statistics.

1. The .com TLD dominates actual web use, with about 46.5% of total use.
2. While remaining dominant, the percentage of websites that use .com has been trending downward since 2011, with a decline of about 0.17% per year on average.
3. The .net and .info extensions have been falling in use for a number of years.  In both cases the decline began prior to the ngTLD introductions.
4. The .org TLD has been growing in popularity over the past decade in website use, and is now at about 5% of global website use. 
5. The .biz extension seems most strongly hurt by the ngTLD introductions, with a drop from about 0.9% in 2014 to less than 0.3% currently. Several of the ngTLDs will probably pass it in use during the coming 12 months.  
6. Most of the other places in the top 25 TLDs by use is taken by country code extensions, some of which are trending up and some down.
7. The new extensions are all well down the list in website use, although most are trending upward. For example use of .win has grown 4x during the past year, well above its growth in registration numbers over the same period.
8. The most used of the ngTLDs are currently .xyz (0.18%), .club (0.15%), .online (0.12%), .site (0.07%),  .top (0.08%), and .win (0.05%). 

Some domain name investors argue that sales data is all that matters.  I respectfully disagree.  Good prices will not be established or maintained if there is not significant use of a domain extension.  By looking at the trends in TLD use in actual websites, it may be be possible to predict which domains will increase in value, and therefore which warrant maintaining. This analysis suggests that .io and .org both fall in this category.   

Original post Aug 4, 2018.
Minor edit Aug 4, 2018. Missing .xyz data added in point 8 of conclusions.

Links:

• W3Techs main page
• W3Techs data used in this report (note updated daily so will be slightly different)
• W3Techs methodology
• Alexa database
• NameStat (statistics on registrations, use, etc.)
• nTLDs site (statistical data on new extension registrations)
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you.

In a few cases there may be affiliate links will on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  As disclosure, I do have a domain portfolio that is predominantly ngTLD domain names, although I do also own a number of .com, .ca, .co and a few other country code extension domains..

The text of this posting is ©R.L. Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.