What's a good domain name valuation website?

Factual Questions
1

I’d like to bid on a domain name that is up for sale, but the various domain valuation websites I try offer wildly varying results (from 3 figures to 5 figures).

Is there one domain name valuation service that is the “gold standard” (akin to Kelly Blue Book for cars)?

2

The reason that KBB works is that they collect huge amounts of data. If you are interested in a 2003 Accord, they will have data on nearly every 2003 Accord sold, which is lots and lots of cars.

Valuing a domain name is more like pricing an antique; it’s one-of-a-kind and you can’t look at identical prior sales to determine value. It’s all about how it’s valued by the seller and the few potential buyers. The buyers want to conceal the true value of the name to them so the seller doesn’t take advantage of them. It’s all like buying a rug in a middle eastern market.

I suppose that someone with years of experience in the field could provide estimates based on expert opinion, but it’s still opinion until the sale occurs.

Generally a generic name, though, could be worth a huge amount; business.com sold for $345 million (although it’s not clear to me whether Donnelley was buying the business for its value as a business, or just to get the domain name).

3

I suspect that this is largely phantom value. What good is “business.com” to a real concern? Since when does anybody who has any money to spend not have anything more specific in mind than “business”?

4

I’ve commented on that before. People complain about all the good domain names being taken, but they really just mean that all the obvious names are taken. So someone has bank.com? If I were starting a brick-and-mortar bank, I wouldn’t just call it “Bank”; so why should I expect to be able to for an online one?

5

Those kinds of names were much hotter in the Web’s infancy when people would want a bank and just type in bank.com to see what would happen. I suspect that fuck.com was also a popular site :slight_smile: But in 2009 with more sites and search engines for finding exactly what you want, I don’t know that having the right domain name is quite as important as it used to be, though still important for establishing your company image.