The Public Interest Registry (PIR) will release 94 previously restricted domains to the public in a project called Project94. To take part in the auctions it is necessary to qualify or in the words of PIR: "the addresses will be made available through an allocation process to companies and organizations who respect the attributes .ORG has become known for – namely, trust and well-intentioned"

The auctions will be held through a partnership with Go Daddy and eNom.

It is currently unclear how restrictive PIR will be when it comes to accept bidders for the auctions of these 94 domains, therefore it is very difficult to estimate how far the actual price for the domains will reflect the proper market value. 

We have preappraised the end-user prices for the names to provide orientation in the process. Few names are not part of this list because we have provided estimates for our customers earlier.

Domainindex.com, the domainindustry's leading benchmarking, TLD analysis, rating and Domain appraisalservice, has announced today that it has changed its rating for .co.uk from AAto B

 

 

Domainindex.com, the domainindustry's leading internet domain name benchmarking, rating and appraisalservice, has announced today that it has changed its rating for .co.uk from AAto B. The step has been taken after the release on October 1, 2012 of a three-monthconsultation by Nominet, the not-for-profit manager of the .uk infrastructure,into a scheme that would introduce .uk as a top-level domain (TLD). Aftergetting feedback from Nominet meetings held in London on Nov.7and 9 Domainindex.comdecided to change the .uk rating

Currently, over ten million UKdomains are structured as www.anybusiness.co.uk; under the proposal, a competingstructure would be introduced: www.anybusiness.uk. Domainindex has also issued anInvestors Warning for co.uk and .uk TLD, and believes the introduction of the.uk TLD would massively destroy the value of existing .co.uk domains and infact Nominet´s announcement already inflicted harm to the value of .co.ukdomains and the aftermarket as well as the investment climate in the .uk TLD.Our analysis of the proposal, which Nominet defends as a move to increaseInternet Security, would have several adverse effects:

 

·       The auction of .uk sites would preferentially favor trademarkholders instead of existing domain holders, thereby representing anunprecedented expropriation ofdomain registrants and website of whom most do not own the trademark for theirdomain name.

·       The higher costs of the .uk TLD are in effect an Internet tax for businesses in the UKand especially to domainers as it will raise the cost of holding an inventoryby 800% and will lead to drop of many .co.uk names that until recently haverepresented significant value.

·       The move will create more bureaucracyand red-tape.

·       British companies would have massive rebranding costs.

·       The proposal will create months or years of uncertainty as the issue is litigated in the courts.

 

We will closely monitor the progressof the Nominet consultation and may issue further rating changes accordingly.

 

Domainindex also announced thefollowing rating changes in November:

·       .me up from A to AA(because of the good performance of the TLD)

·       .eu down from AA to A(because we expect the TLD to suffer from nTLDs and weak economy in the Eurozone)

·       .info down from AA to A(because we expect the TLD to suffer more from nTLDs)

·       .mobi down from A to B(because we expect the TLD to suffer more from nTLDs)

·       .tel down from AA to A(because we expect the TLD to suffer more from nTLDs)

 

 

Domainindex.com is a domain appraisaland benchmarking service. It provides automated and manual appraisal ofindividual domain names and portfolios. Domainindex also provides indices tothe domain industry, tracking the value of each TLD and benchmarking theholdings of large portfolio owners with respect to the markets. Additionally,Domainindex provides ratings for 60 TLDs, rating them by economic, legal andtechnical criteria. Domain ratings are used by large portfolio owners to judgetheir risk profiles and exposures in the various TLDs as well as by lenders todomain owners.

Many people inthe domain industry are asking which new TLDs will be the best. Although manylists have been compiled and published in response to this question, we thinkit is much more interesting to identify the best domains being registered in all the new TLDs. To do so, we’ve hadto analyze and appraise billions of possibilities. Our efforts yielded a set oflists, each containing 10,000 of the most valuable domains for one of the 1,928proposed new TLDs. We then combined all of our lists into a huge Master List ofthe most valuable new domain names.
We acknowledgefrom the get-go that our lists are not perfect. For one thing, they contain manydomains that cannot be registered because of trademark policies or otherrestrictions. Nonetheless, the lists constitute a very powerful resource forthose who plan to register domain names in the new TLDs.
Complicating ourassessments are the uncertainties surrounding the new TLDs:

·      It is too early to discern thequality of each new TLD.
·      Reliable estimates of marketingbudgets for each new TLD are not available.
·      There are differentregistration restrictions and general policies across the universe of registriescontrolling the new TLDs.
·      We do not as yet have a pricingforecast for the different TLDs.

Given theseinherent uncertainties, we have adopted a strategy to form our appraisals basedon an arbitrary number of 100,000 domains in each of the new TLDs.
To provideaccess our compiled lists, Domainindex.comhas created a new TLD Tool , available below. The first ten TLD lists are open to the public;to access the rest, you’ll have to subscribe– it’ easy and only takes a minute.

Domainindex Tool Confirms Weakness of Domain Sales in 2012
Domainindex.com has just released a new statistical tool to track domain sales. The tool indicates that 2012 has so far has been a very weak year for the sale of domains. This confirms anecdotal evidence regarding the falloff of published deal sizes, and point to 2012 as the worst year in domaining since 2006.
We believe there are three reasons explaining this year’s dismal performance:

1) New top-level domains (TLDs) have hurt demand and therefore prices are weak. The nTLDs are considered risky by potential buyers, who are sitting on millions in investment funds. The resulting price weakness has discouraged large domainers from offering great domains, as they wait for the market to eventually rebound.

2) The current utility of new domains is low compared to other investments. With funding tight, buying domains is not currently considered a requirement for planning a new venture.

3) Privacy issues have gained increased purchase this year. We have not published any of our deals of $10,000 or higher. Furthermore, we have been involved in domain bids of up to $1 million; all domains were sold yet none of the transactions were published. In addition to concerns over taxes, buyers realize that a domain that is sold in a published transaction is harder to resell at a substantial profit. In other words, publicity hurts flipping. This trend also existed last year, so it is valid to draw comparisons between the two years.

It looks like we will have to wait until 2013 or even 2014 to see the market bounce back. In our opinion, big gTLDs and ccTLDs will receive a boost independent of the success or failure of nTLDs:

If nTLDs succeed, the market will be perceived as generally strong and that will help sales of old TLDs.

If nTLDs fail, investors will simply return to old TLDs and ccTLDS.
 

Recently the IDNX, a index for  domain names, promoted and sponsored by Sedo has been listed on Reuters and Bloomberg.  Domainindex is publishing indices for the domain world since 2009 and I would like to share some of our concerns connected to this development.
Its great to see the domain industry to grow into the financial sector, something we are working on for many years now and we honestly congratulate IDNX to be included in Reuters and Bloomberg this is a big achievement.

However I want to share some of my concerns connected with this step I must say that from an investors perspective I am afraid the promotion of the IDNX might cause more harm then good.

There is in fact nothing wrong with the methodology of the IDNX itself, the problem is created by the set of data used for the calculation: Sedo´s sales data from 2006 to today. So the first and obvious argument against this is that the IDNX only looks at a very specific marketplace, it would be a little like creating an index for antiques by only looking at antiques sold on eBay.

Sedo has created a great marketplace, the best and biggest in the world for domains, however there are certain domains that are simply rarely or never traded via sedo, with a commission between 15 and 20%, an escrow fee 3x higher than escrow.com it attracts a very particular crowd that will purchase domains. It fits the names in the range of 100 to 10.000 usd and usually again to domainers or webmasters and rarely to "high end" endusers in this price range.

I have talked to many domainers last week and almost nobody has bought or sold any domain in a range over 20K ever on Sedo, but traded many below 10K on Sedo´s marketplace. So what happens is that domains are simply growing out of the Sedo market once they reach a certain value. Yes from time to time Sedo will broker a huge domain like sex.com, but most big deals are made without any of the marketplaces or brokers, most endusers will simply contact owners via the whois and so will most domainers and webmaster and lawyers acting on behalf of big buyers.

So Why does it matter ?

1) Over the longterm, the IDNX would suggest only a very little growth in value for domain names, for .com´s 20%, .net 20%,.mobi 15%, es 20%, so from an investors perspective domains would therefore represent a horrible Investment because this means only about 2% revenue/year but in fact what we look at is that Sedo has managed to keep their average sales price increase at inflation level.

2) What do we see in the IDNX ? We see what we see all over, if the economy is doing well and the consensus is bullish, people buy more, when the sentiment is bearish people buy less (in this case domains) and pay less for them on this particular market. This is the worst case for domains as an investment, because the main thing every professional investor will look at if it comes to alternative investments is the correlation to the market. If an alternative investment is correlated there is usually no point to invest in it because you are inheriting additional risk and reduced liquidity and if you can achieve the same goal by buying an established financial instrument you will simply buy an index.

These 2 issues will make it harder to promote domains as investment in the future because it will be benchmarked against the IDNX within the Reuters and Bloomberg systems (and all other systems using the data) from now on.

Domainindex.com, the domain industry's leading benchmarking, DNS analysis, rating and appraisal service, has announced today that it has changed its rating for the .com and the .net TLD from AAA to AA

SEATTLE, Mar 13, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) --Domainindex.com, the domain industry's leading internet domain name benchmarking, rating and appraisal service, has announced today that it has changed it rating for the .com and the .net TLD from AAA to AA. The step has been taken after the release of an official statement by U.S. authorities of its intent to continue seizing .com, .net, .cc, .tv and .name domains and forcibly redirecting .org (and probably .us) domains. Officially, over 750 domains have been seized in the last few months by the U.S. government, most of them from overseas registrars. The U.S. government claims that illegal activities take place on these domains. However, many of the domains seem to have been seized simply for linking to gambling sites or sites streaming sporting events on the web.

Domainindex.com considers these seizures a threat to any .com domain and the internet DNS in general, given the fact that seized domains can be resold for the benefit of the U.S. government even more. This increases the threat to any valuable domains within these TLDs. Therefore, we've had to rerate the TLD today and to lower its rating by two steps, from AAA to AA. While the technical infrastructure, business and economic environment still deserve the AAA level, the legal situation no longer supports this rating.

About 50 large portfolio owners consult Domainindex.com ratings for domain names portfolio risk management and investor reporting. Because .com is still the "king" of TLDs, we do not expect any changes in customer asset allocations. Nonetheless, the step has been taken to make clear that other ccTLDs are not affected and will keep their AAA levels. Note that no generic TLD currently has an AAA rating anymore.

We will watch closely how, in the future, the U.S. and other governments handle this issue. Hopefully, we will be able to upgrade .com again. However, we are pessimistic, as a change in this policy will require a substantial change in US politics and in the governance of TLDs.

Domainindex.com is a domain appraisal and benchmarking service. It provides automated and manual appraisal of individual domain names and portfolios. Domainindex also provides indices to the domain industry, tracking the value of each TLD and benchmarking the holdings of large portfolio owners with respect to the markets. Additionally, Domainindex provides ratings for 60 TLDs, rating them by economic, legal and technical criteria. Domain ratings are used by large portfolio owners to judge their risk profiles and exposures in the various TLDs.