Sedo Predicts Ten Most Effective New gTLDs
Posted in: Domain Names at 20/06/2012 14:19
It's open to a lot of debate, but Sedo has come up with a list of ten generic Top Level Domains they believe will be the most effective of the 1409 that were applied for and the 1930 applications submitted.
According to their statistical analysis Sedo predict the top 10 most valuable domains being sought are:
- SHOP
- WEB
- SITE
- MUSIC
- HOTEL
- ONE
- BLOG
- ECO
- SPORT
- LOVE.
This correspondent has long thought that the city and regional TLDs for ccTLDs with large numbers of registrations, such as .DE and .UK, and larger cities and regions, will be the more successful gTLDs. But it was most definitely not statistical and I do not have any of the qualifications of Sedo. So time will tell - will my gut be better than Sedo's brains?
The Sedo analysis was calculated by economist, researcher and domain pricing expert, Thies Lindenthal. In addition to serving as Product Manager for Domain Pricing Strategies at Sedo, Lindenthal is also the creator of IDNX, the first scientific-grade domain price index.
"Many factors make domains unique and difficult to compare side by side, but analysing hundreds of thousands of domain transactions on Sedo's marketplace - and applying real estate pricing methodologies - has provided significant insight into the factors that determine domain value," said Lindenthal. "New gTLDs are actually not that new, they're really just traditional domain names on steroids. We should evaluate their fundamental strengths in a similar way to how we traditionally price domain names."
Sedo says that in addition to providing insight for companies competing to manage new TLDs, this ranking also gives end users a better idea of the domains in which they should invest their time and marketing budgets once the new extensions are launched.
The ranking to predict new gTLD effectiveness is derived from a formula of five criteria that typically affect a domain's value. Those criteria are:
- Number of applicants for the new gTLD
- Number of Google searches for keywords or terms within the new gTLD
- Expected Cost-per-Click of online advertisements that include the gTLD as a keyword
- Number of registered .COM domains that include the gTLD at the end of the keyword (e.g. MyShop.com as compared with My.Shop)
- Number of preregistrations according to UnitedDomains.com.
The first indication of which factor matters the most comes simply from counting the number of applications for each gTLD. If there are a lot of investors trying to secure a particular keyword, it's a strong indication that the word will be a valuable top level domain. For example, thirteen applicants paid at least $185,000 trying to win .APP, indicating a high valuation.
For others extensions, competition is not as strong. Only Google and Microsoft stepped into the ring to acquire .DOCS, for example. The fact that most companies expected these heavyweights to vie for this TLD will have deterred their own application, suggesting that an exclusive look at total applications will be a misleading factor. However, statistical analysis overcomes this difficulty.
Exploratory research helped derive weights for each of the five factors by means of a regression analysis. Technically, the number of applicants per domain is explained by the TLDs' scores along the other four dimensions. Using these weights, each new gTLD was ranked according to its fundamental strength. Using these estimates and the data collected in each category, a ranking of the intrinsic quality of each new extension is created.
