Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

I spent most of this week at the TRAFFIC Conference for domainers. Met a lot of great people and learned a lot about domaining. There is an obvious shift in the industry away from simply parking domains and relying on ppc revenue. More and more domain owners are looking to develop real web properties on their premium domains in hopes that their long-term value will increase with a real site. I think that's a wise direction to head, but the reason for this post is to mention that there were some big domain sales at the live auction at the end of the conference. Over $10 million worth of domains were sold at the live auction. They could have easily doubled that figure if some of the high-end domain owners would have been a bit more reasonable with their reserve prices. Regardless, it's good to see that the domain market is alive and well. There were some good names up for grabs today.

See the final sales prices on Moniker.com

It's also interesting to see Frank Michlick's list of sales prices and max bids for ones that didn't hit the reserve. You'll notice that even though only a few sold for over $1 million, there were a lot of others that got 7 figure bids, but they didn't hit the reserve so they didn't sell.

If you missed out on the action at the live auction, they've got an online silent auction going on until next Wed.

Now I'm off to sleep for 4 hours before I catch the plane home. Later.

Labels: domains