Domain Market in Europe » Domaining

How important is it to have keywords in a domain name?

Daniel Dryzek — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:30:36 +0000

Question answered by Matt Cutts - the head of Google’s Webspam team. This is a new video from March 7, 2011.

Short .DE Domains Released: HR.de, E.de, G.de and more

Daniel Dryzek — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:58:38 +0000

On 12 January 2011, 10:00 CET, the central German registry DENIC released nine short .de domains for registration which were previously blocked due to temporary injunctions: dw.de, e.de, f.de, g.de, hr.de, sr.de, x.de, y.de and z.de. Domains are now assigned to new owners.

Registration was based on “first come, first served” basis but while usually such domain landrushes are organized through EPP protocol, this time it was based on old school fax technology..

I can’t see any dropcatchers on the list except one: Michau Enterprises Limited (they snapped x.de) – European registrar and dropcatcher for .pl, .eu, .de and .sk domains. I am looking forward to see x.de being auctioned at Aftermarket.pl website.

List of all nine short .de domains and owners:

dw.de	Martin Steinkamp
e.de	Felix Köhler
f.de	Patrick Federhen
g.de	Hans Lackner
hr.de	HR STAFFING CORP
sr.de	Martin Steinkamp
x.de	Michau Enterprises Limited
y.de	Edit Stein
z.de	Martin Steinkamp

Some of the names listed above are worth well over 50-100k EUR. It will be interesting to see who will acquire g.de or e.de. It is also good to see that HR STAFFING CORP from the US managed to register hr.de. The more end users use short .de domains, the better.

Source: DENIC

Daniel Dryzek

Bido.com For Sale! Make Your Offer

Daniel Dryzek — Wed, 05 May 2010 01:32:42 +0000

So here it is: the TOP story of the day – “Bido is ceasing operation as of May 5, 2010. All transactions and accounts will be gracefully finalized and closed.” End of quote from Bido website.

I will not deliberate on why Bido failed and if I liked it or not – you can read other domainers opinions on other websites like DomainNameWire or you can just think for a moment on your own attitude to Bido auction platform. The only thing I really see popping out everywhere in comments to this news is that Bido was to complex. I have similar feeling about it.

But let’s get back to my post title.. I found an interesting comment on DNW.com made by Jarred Cohen, COO of Bido.com:”[...] Since we made the announcement this morning, we had some significant offers come in. If anyone else reading would like to explore acquiring the Bido.com brand, list, and technology, get in touch with me soon. This is a time sensitive opportunity.[...]“.

So it looks like there’s one and only chance to acquire Bido.com and the price is probably not so high taking into account the fact that they just wanted to close it down and didn’t even think of selling Bido. I believe there are at least couple of companies that may be interested in acquiring Bido. Let’s see what future brings. If you would like to contact Jarred Cohen please email him: jarred@bido.com.

I wish all the best to Sahar and the Team, and I am sure they will surprise us with new interesting stuff in coming future!

Daniel Dryzek

.COM & .NET Prices To Increase July 1, 2010

Daniel Dryzek — Mon, 03 May 2010 23:19:55 +0000

“On July 1, 2010, VeriSign, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%. The increase will be passed to registrars like Go Daddy and then, unfortunately, to consumers like you.”

So I got an email from Mr Bob Parsons today and you probably got it too. Next paragraphs of the same email:

“As of July 1, we will be forced to raise registration and renewal prices for these two popular top-level domains.

If you wish to avoid this price increase, you can renew your domain names by June 30 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings.”

7% and 10% (for .com and .net respectively) is a HUGE growth in price. The registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.86 to $7.34 (+ $0.18 ICANN fee) and the registry fee for .net domain names will increase from $4.23 to $4.65 (+ $0.18 ICANN fee). It is getting expensive..

I am not a heavy investor in .com nor .net domain names, so I don’t really care so much about this increase but those of you who have thousands of .com and .net names in your portfolios – I would definitely get “uncomfortable” with these fees increase.

I am more experienced with ccTLD domain markets in Europe than with the .COM market. So the standard price for an average European TLD would be somewhere between €2 – €5, which equals to $2.6 – $6.6 per year. This is pricing for popular ccTLDs such as .de, .nl, .fr, .es, .eu. I invest a lot in .pl domains and €10 renewal fee is really expensive as for European conditions. But the price was €15 back in 2008, so the trend is right – domain fees are going DOWN.

It is the other way around when it comes to .COM and .NET fees – they go UP. So what will happen if they will go UP by 7% (.COM) and 10% (.NET) for the next 10 years each year?

.COM & .NET fees projection (ICANN fee included)

2010 $7.52 $4.83

2011 $8.03 $5.30

2012 $8.58 $5.81

2013 $9.17 $6.37

2014 $9.80 $6.99

2015 $10.47 $7.67

2016 $11.20 $8.42

2017 $11.97 $9.24

2018 $12.79 $10.15

2019 $13.67 $11.14

2020 $14.62 $12.24

VeriSign is in a position where they CAN increase the pricing. So why would they not do that? Domains is business for them as it is business for us. It is crazy that ICANN has accepted such an agreement with VeriSign allowing them to increase the fees each and every year. And they will probably prolong the agreement for the next period of time.

But aren’t you afraid of these fees increases in the future? Will your portfolios still be profitable when .COM and .NET fees double? I am asking all of the domainers investing in .COM domains. These are questions to you and for you.

Or maybe you are just fine with these fees increases and it doesn’t really influence your domain business at all?

Daniel Dryzek

Will You Renew Your .tel Domain Names? VOTE!

Daniel Dryzek — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:41:43 +0000

Most of .tel names are expiring this month. Will you renew your .tel domains?

I have only 10 .tel domains and I have just renewed all of them. There are some names for personal use and some for businesses. I am not a big fan of that extension but in some cases it can be useful. Renewal fee is about $10 / year.

Daniel Dryzek

Why is Domaining Still so US Focused?

Daniel Dryzek — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:54:59 +0000

It was always very interesting but also wired to me that domaining was so US oriented. When I was at my first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in Las Vegas in 2007 nobody, NOBODY was really interested in ccTLDs. COM was king and there was no doubt about it. This is still the case – COM is the most popular domain name in the world but this world is expanding very fast and COM share market is shrinking.

The truth is that in the European Union COM is usually the second or third domain name and ccTLDs are the kings of its markets. This is exactly the case in Poland, where I live and where are 1,7M .pl names registered. There are also 190,000 .eu names and only 170,000 .com domains. The same situation is in other markets such us .de (Germany), .co.uk (United Kingdom) etc. According to the lates VeriSign report there are 83M COM domains and 76M ccTLDs.

And don’t get me wrong – it is OK for me as I have less competition here in Europe and I can easily buy good ccTLDs cheap and develop ccTLD projects but it is always strange to see how ignorant some people are.

The same case is with IDNs. I mean IDN names not TLDs – just to give you an example: pożyczka.pl would be IDN for nonIDN version pozyczka.pl. The meaning for that domain is ”loan”. And YES, people in Poland start using IDNs a lot and in 2-3 years they will get more popular than nonIDNs. How do I know that? I see my IDN names statistics. For some pair of parked names – IDNs are getting more UV and revenue than nonIDNs.

But I have good news for ccTLD investors – good times for us are coming :) DomainSponsor has recently announced opening its subsidiary in Europe, DomainFest is coming to Prague in October 6-7, 2010 and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is coming back to Europe in 2010, this time to Milan (Italy) and Dublin (Ireland). In September 2009 we heard that Go Daddy expands further into Europe with new data center to ensure faster access for Go Daddy’s growing European customer base. More of such news will be announced this year – there is no doubt about it.

And world is bigger than only US and the EU. There are big markets in Asia, South America as well – great potential there for sure. According to Internet World Stats US has now ~ 220M Internet users, EU: 310M, Asia: 740M (China: 360M), Brazil: 70M. BBC prepared nice Internet map, where you can see Internet penetration and users in the years 1998-2008. There are 1,7 billion Internet users on our planet Earth.

BTW Check out Facing The Absurd blog written by one of the finest European domainers. You will find there things that you won’t read about anywhere else.

Daniel Dryzek

38,172 .eu IDNs during the first hour

Daniel Dryzek — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:59:14 +0000

Today at 11:00 CET EURid (.eu registry) released .eu IDNs. 38 172 domains were registered during the first hour.

Total number of .eu names has just passed 3,100,000 domains. In the first hour of IDN .eu landrush 10 domains were registered each second.

Most of the best names were snapped by Realtime.at – Austrian drop catcher specializing in .eu drop catching (they have around 50 .eu registrars). Snapped .eu domains will be auctioned on Sedo platform. Auctions start tomorrow and are available only for preregistered customers.

First 10 IDNs registered:

1. ärzte.eu

2. börse.eu

3. flüge.eu

4. bücher.eu

5. ferienhäuser.eu

6. reisebüro.eu

7. büro.eu

8. küche.eu

9. müller.eu

10. öl.eu

Which countries registered the most IDNs in the first hour?

1. Germany
2. Czech Republic
3. France
4. Luxemburg
5. Poland
6. Belgium
7. Great Britain
8. Greece
9. Sweden

Source: EURid

Daniel Dryzek