Domain Evaluation
The criteria for assessing a domain name for purchase, resale, or development are fairly open to all. The keyword value forms one value. Monetary resale is always a goal. Various sites online work to produce an estimation value, although few can claim to be conclusive. Auction sales for domains work well specifically for this reason. Domains can go to the highest bidder according to independent valuation.
While one community of domain name buyers and sellers may quote assorted values from estimation sites, those members are never committed to accept those values as indicative of any redeemable or legal citation. The general value of a domain name still remains the value for which it can, and is sold. Other domain values are as spurious as yesterday’s news.
Some domainers prize traffic statistics, and some domainers work from the original sale price. Domain ratings systems can indicate the value of a domain, but cannot guarantee it will bring that price under the domain auction gavel. But an important component of many a domain names’ assessment is how the buyer or developer uses those metrics to go forward.
Typing a name into a category does not institute monetary value. Many keyword generics lie fallow in domain portfolios worldwide. The rationale for these to not be developed is that no development could renew the value the domainer has already invested and still reap the profit they have planned. These domainers are waiting for big-ticket auctions to vend their names.
Other names are still in the transitory period between acquisition and decision making. Maybe the domainer hasn’t had time to investigate the best of of “x” domain yet. Or perhaps they are waiting for a spike in related content or keywords to vend the name in a private sale or escrow process. Parking is a time consuming challenge to manage and keep up to date with. And the lack of development attached to a parked name always make me leery of its traffic.
A topical forum post caught my attention debating this topic. Yahoo has a domain rating system which declaims a domain as: Banned, Trademark,
Quality Control, Controversial, and Restricted are terms no domainer wants to see associated with their names. These names generally will little to no sale value. But one domainer’s name value authority can be another’s temporizing engine.
Where do the evaluation and assessment sites stand? Yahoo has a cloud over it (not a good one), and many domainers deride Alexa while still avidly utilizing it to assess their domain positoning ion te name marketplace. Valuate.com has many fans, and many banner ads. Estibot has some faithful fans, and assessment tools at Sedo, Pool, and Google Adsense can offer some additional metrics.
Since domainers are always looking to revalue and affirm their portfolio total, a trustworthy domain ratings site or evaluation destination tool is mush desired. A domainer cannot guarantee the originating site or evaluation engine for a domain name will still be in operation or still have the same integrity when the resale or auction decision is made.
Domainers need to avoid becoming emotional about their domain purchase choices. The most unsexy of domains can be the hardest workers, reaping affiliate revenues and growing traffic metrics while the big players spend a fortune promoting their varsity level urls. The traffic statistics going forward are what matter, and the business development the current domainer invests in the domain name is what cultivates domain value.
Domain names can be valued at one time ans the equally creditable estimation of that same domain name can be evaluated at another time and the value can be very different but extremely accurate. A domainer assumes risk when a big dollar domain purchase occurs and the lifetime of that value is not the same as the lifetime of the domain ownership. The joy of domaining is leveraged on what values the owner can bring to the name, and any other strategy sounds a lot like sour grapes.
