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Overview with Q4 Highlights Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced the release of their 2009 Market Study CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced the release of their 2009 Market Study, which includes never before released fourth quarter trends. The company saw strong growth in full-year sales in domains bought and sold on their global marketplace in 2009, versus 2008. Sedo represented 64 percent of the top 100 public sales in the domain industry, with the next closest competitor coming in at 8 percent. This growth was also fueled by impressive quarter over quarter results, with a 5 percent increase in domain sales in Q4 of 2009. In addition, Sedo accounted for 11 of the top 20 biggest sales industry-wide, compared to only 5 of the top 20 sales in 2008. This included a surge in geographical and descriptive domains, including the sale of Fly.com for $1.6 million, Russia.com for $1.5 million, Call.com for $1.1 million, and Brazil.com for $500,000.

The study further revealed that the .com extension continues to be the most popular generic top level domain (gTLD), accounting for 44 percent of all domain sales on the Sedo marketplace in 2009. In looking at its place among other gTLDs, the .com remained the most wanted. The extension accounted for 72 percent of all Q4 2009 gTLD sales and 74 percent of 2009 gTLD sales. In contrast, the second most popular gTLD, the .net extension generated 11 percent of 2009 gTLD sales, and only 6 percent of all domains sold on the Sedo marketplace last year.

“Sedo’s continued impressive growth in 2009 demonstrates the tremendous stability of the domain market, as evidenced by its ability to weather the economic downturn,” said Jeremiah Johnston, Chief Operating Officer of Sedo. “We expect to see ongoing demand for premium virtual real estate in 2010, with geo, descriptive, .org and .com domains leading the charge, as domain investors and marketers representing organizations of all sizes continue to leverage domains to meet their business goals.”

In terms of the best-performing extensions for average sales price, Sedo’s study saw the sharpest rise in .biz domains. This growth can be attributed in part to the growth in sales of one character .biz domains, which first became available through the .biz registrar in September 2009.

There was also a significant four percent growth in the number of fixed price domains changing hands in 2009, as compared with 2008. This figure will likely grow this year, as domain owners apply fixed prices to appeal to more buyers. Meanwhile, the top selling domain categories of 2009 included software, employment, services, regions, country and cities, tobacco, insurance, three-character domains, hardware and casinos. Overall, Sedo’s marketplace scored some of the biggest domain sales of the past decade, such as vodka.com for $3 million.

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By Jeremiah Johnston, COO, Sedo.com — Hotels, February 8, 2010

More than ever, travel companies are exploring new and creative ways to reach customers. With more consumers turning to the Internet for the best deals and the most convenient service, it isn’t surprising to see these travel companies starting to invest in descriptive and generic domain names to draw in new business.

According to Forrester Research, online leisure and business travel spending will reach $158 billion by 2013. Owning the ideal descriptive domain name — or a portfolio of these domains — can help travel companies tap into this huge revenue pool.

Descriptive or generic domain names present an excellent opportunity for travel companies to expand their reach and ultimately bring more customers to their doorstep. That’s because more and more consumers are bypassing the search engine and typing in terms relevant to their searches directly into the web browsers, which is also known as direct domain navigation. Descriptive domains generate tremendous natural type-in traffic that can be redirected to a company’s primary Web site.
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