Insane in the Domain

Here are some things about domain names that I didn’t know that were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article this week featuring a “domainologist”:

1) There are roughly 47 million registered “.coms.” 2) The letter “a” when used as a word (like I just did) is the most common registered word. 3) The least-used common word is “consonant”. 4) Someone could actually pick the “least-used common word” from the English language. And finally 5) that “sex” is taken, oh, 257,000 times – no surprise there.

Unsurprising, too, is that today’s interest in domain names is as driven by profit motive as it is by etymological curiosity. I think most of us should have known that domains would be back in vogue as evidenced by their Superbowl ads in 2005. In case you were wondering if those racy spots were successful or not, about six months later GoDaddy overtook Network Solutions to become the largest domain registrar, so they certainly didn’t hurt.

I knew GoDaddy was big, but I didn’t have any thoughts about their reputation until I used them. GoDaddy essentially does business in bulk and lets you, the domain buyer, secure a domain at a very reasonable cost. The GoDaddy angle is to try and sell extras. Lots and lots of extras. Wisely, they use the domain business as an entry point for lots of business. On behalf of a ConductSearch.com client, I recently did a flurry of business with GoDaddy and was pleasantly surprised by their customer service representatives. Sure, they did try to sell me everything under the sun, but a) they weren’t as pushy as that virally famous guy from the AOL service center and b) when not offering this or that, they were knowledgeable and helpful.

Buying domains isn’t merely a function of thinking up names that people will want someday and securing it. Instead there is a large market in picking up expired domains. Expired domains mean traffic. Traffic means revenue. Therefore, there is no shortage of interest in the expired domain market. Adbuytraffic.com does very well selling the traffic from their business in expired domains. Testimonials from their site (sourced with what seem to be a variety of legitimate URLs) indicate satisfaction and a decidedly better ROI buying traffic from them than by using Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

And did you know that Google owns all of 520 domains? That’s all, according to Pronetadvertising.com who lists them.  It doesn’t seem like a big number to me because I alone own 20. That’s enough to learn that when someone is “squatting” on a domain you’d like, well, good luck. Companies like GoDaddy will gladly play the blind broker and anonymously flash bids and offers. What a rip that angle is. No wonder a company with a $120 billion market cap like Google doesn’t bother chasing down domain names; it’ll cost them an arm and a leg!