CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - (Business Wire) Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced that the domain market saw strong growth in the third quarter of 2009. The company saw a 5.5 percent increase in the number of sales this quarter compared with Q2 2009. In addition, Sedo represented 75 percent of the top 20 public domains sales in Q3, with $4,903,127 of the industry’s total sales of $6,501,547. Sedo’s top selling domains of the quarter included Call.com for $1.1 million, Server.com for $770,000, Christian.com for $600,000, Brazil.com for $500,000, and Jets.com for $375,000. Despite the introduction of new Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) extensions, the .com gTLD remained the most popular, accounting for more than 45 percent of all sales on the Sedo marketplace and approximately 80 percent of all gTLD sales. Meanwhile, the .de and .co.uk extensions remained the most popular country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) at Sedo.
While there was little change in the percentages of ccTLD sales compared with Q1 and Q2 2009, there was a slight three percent increase of .co.uk domain sales, along with a four percent decrease in .de domain sales in Q3 2009. However, despite the decrease in quarter over quarter sales, .de retained its clear lead with 56 percent of ccTLD sales. Other ccTLD extensions such as .fr, .es and .eu have seen significant increases in their average sales prices.
The third quarter report also analyzed the main ways in which domains were sold on the Sedo marketplace. Offer-counter offer sales remained the most prominent sales type followed by marketplace auctions. Additionally, there was a slight increase in the number of domains being sold at a fixed price in comparison to the first half of 2009. Sedo expects this trend to continue to grow in the future as buyers, particularly first time buyers, tend to prefer fixed price domains.
“Sedo’s impressive results this quarter demonstrate the strength and stability of the domain market, despite the slow economy,” said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer and general counsel for Sedo. “We anticipate continued momentum in the fourth quarter and in 2010, as the demand for premium domains continues to increase.”
Also noteworthy, with Sedo’s new auto categorization tool, Q3 saw a variety of new popular categories on the company’s marketplace. The top ten most popular categories this quarter included regions, countries, cities, employment, hardware, email, consultants, insurance, jewelry and fitness.
Sedo’s complete report can be found online at:
http://www.sedo.com/press/Q3_09_Market_Study.pdf
About Sedo
Sedo, an acronym for "Search Engine for Domain Offers," is the leading domain marketplace and monetization provider. Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Sedo has assembled the world's largest database of domain names for sale, with more than 15 million listings. The success of Sedo's model has attracted a global membership base of more than 900,000 domain professionals. Sedo is owned by AdLINK Group (ISIN DE0005490155 / German WKN: 549015), which is part of the German United Internet AG (ISIN DE0005089031/ WKN 508903). Sedo offers regional versions of its site for the UK (Sedo.co.uk), France (Sedo.fr), Germany (Sedo.de), and Spain (Sedo.com). For additional information, please visit www.sedo.com.
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