Three letter domains?

[patches]

Why are the three letter.com names priced so high? It seems they would be harder to remember than words that mean something. (For instance) If I heard an advertisement on TV or radio about sweet Vegas deals (when I got to my computer to look up the web site) which would I be more likely to remember? SVD.com or SweetVegasDeals.com ? I’m confused as to what makes a good domain name. Thanks to everyone on this forum for some great information for newbies .

 

[primacomputer]

I mean, does anyone really believe what they are being told in television ads, anymore?

A recent MACS poll showed that 67.3% of people surveyed would believe anything provided it was supported by irrelevant made up statistscs.

Calculations such as, "46656 - 17576 - 1000 = 28080 possible 3 character (which contain a mix of letters and numbers).", may be statistical, but do these calcs really enter into the area of statistical analysis, where the real manipulation occurs?

There's no disputing the numbers but there's plenty of room for discussing their interpretation and presentation. Some believe that the limited number of possible 3 chars coupled with the fact that they are all taken shows that they have some inherent value. I believe it shows that a bunch of speculators are hoarding crap names because they are believers in the first theory.

Anyways, prima, exchanges, like the one that we have been having, have the effect of compelling me to do my homework, to think more deeply, and to, hopefully, expand my horizons, so, for that, I am appreciative, and I offer you my Tx.

I couldn't agree more. A thread with a healthy debate benefits everyone more than a thread of 50 regfee appraisals.

All of my mixed 3char names signify a meaning or have an interesting attribute or hook.

I'd say these are good names that happen to be 3 char. There certainly are good ones out there. 1x1.us is nice. There are plenty of 3 chars I'd love to have. 4x4.com, b2b.com, p2p.com, mp3.com.

I was also inspired to do my homework. To get a quick indicator of what 3 chars are being used for I compared the 74024 name servers listed for 3 chars in the .com zone file against a list of known name related services: name-services, sedoparking, smartbuy, afternic, fabulous, this-domain-for-sale.com, pool, ultsearch, etc. Some people might object to putting Ultimate Search in this category, so I'll make the offer right now to make a special cybersquatter category for their 202 3 char .coms.

The results were almost a perfect 60/40 split. 60% of 3char .coms are parked at some domain-ish site, 40% are “unknown” Granted there are plenty of smaller parking services I missed, people who use their own DNS or HTML redirects, etc. Still I was expecting a wider gap.

I'll have to amend my estimate to 80% of all 3 chars .coms being owned by speculators

 

[Grrilla]

I'll have to amend my estimate to 80% of all 3 chars .coms being owned by speculators

1:4,- not a bad estimate- about what I would have guessed. It would also be interesting to see the % breakdown by tld.

Have you researched, made projections, or run across any figures/stats on the % of parked names at sales/ppc sites, the % of names that are inactive, and the % of names on private servers, relative to the total of all names regged? -or- the same breakdown by tld?

One area we didn't discuss, is the 3 char drop stats. I haven't been hunting 3char B/Os for awhile, but a few months back, .coms were being picked up as fast as they dropped. I know of one registrar who, during the week or two that I was watching, was grabbing all 3 char .com's as they dropped. Wonder what that was all about?

 

[jaikini]

so what abt the 3letter us domains? are they also valuable?

 

[primacomputer]

Unfortunately I don't have enough resources to maintain complete zones for every TLD. I wish I did, it would be an awesome power to have. I've also got the .net zone though. I'll run it through the same scripts. I'm not sure what to expect.

I only broke name servers into two categories. You could go further. Say everything with sedo name servers is PPC, everything with godaddy is parked. It's not really accurate but a nice ded reckoner. The only way to be 100% sure is to dig into the content of each site, FTD.

I have a script that makes me a list of “interesting” names that drop each day Believe it or not this includes 3 chars. Nothing's dropped since early Feb, which was an isolated incident. Not much happened between now and August last year they were dropping like flies. Pardon the pun.

I've done all kinds of charts and tables to try to make sense of this and other things. I'd like to say a lack of 3 char drops indicated confidence in the domain market. But August 2004 wasn't exactly a low point. I think there just aren't enough names or players to draw any meaningful conclusions. Some guy decides to get out of the business and wham, there's 100 names on the market. By the same token one guy decides 3 chars are great and he'll snap up every one that drops.

 

[primacomputer]

The breakdown for the 3char .net name servers is 45% parked and 55% other. You could draw just about any conclusion you want from that. It would be interesting to see how many were owned by the same person who owns the .com, but this would require serious whois raping.

There are also a lot unregistered so comparing .com and .net percentages can be deceiving. There are roughly 18,000 registered .nets vs 28,000 .coms. Again, you could twist numbers to say anything but it's a pretty good indication that the .net 3char name space has a lot more “real” users and a lot less speculators.

so what abt the 3letter us domains? are they also valuable?

Any decent 3 letter is bound to be worth something some day if not today. Not to endorse cybersquating, but I'd concentrate on names registered in other ccTLDs giving preference to those that might want a future US presence.

 

[Grrilla]

The breakdown for the 3char .net name servers is 45% parked and 55% other.

That is a very interesting piece of information. Thankyou.

it's a pretty good indication that the .net 3char name space has a lot more “real” users and a lot less speculators.

I'm a little unclear, here. Is this a comparison between the .com namespace and the .net? ie more .net "real" users than .com "real" users -or- a %/ratio within .net?

 

[primacomputer]

The 55%:45% is of registered 3char .net names, not of the total name space. I really should have broken it down as %parked, %unknown and %unregistered. This would make it easier to compare to the .coms. It would be something like 45:35:20.

I’ll have a look at that next Monday after I have recovered from the week of rugby.

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

1. Name length does not guarantee, or in many cases, have any bearing on the value of a name.

16 years later and this comment hasn't aged well.

 

[Moneta]

ehh 3 letters would love to own one