Initial Valuation Criteria

NameBoy believes the TLD (top level domain) of a domain name is very important. The TLD determines the memorability of the domain, and better TLDs convey a more professional and experienced business name. COM, NET and ORG are currently the most credible and well known TLDs. The familiarity and credibility of newer TLDs will likely increase with time.

The number of characters in a domain affects the value of that domain. Shorter domain names are more valuable. The fewer characters a name contains, the easier it is to type in and remember.

Hyphens generally detract from the value of a domain. Digits in a domain name, as in horses4sale.com decrease the value of a domain.

Market Based Appraisal Criteria

The number of words in a domain affects the value of that domain. Names with fewer words are considered to be more memorable, and therefore more valuable.

NameBoy uses major search engines to determine how much content exists on the internet with your keywords. The internet frequency of these words is a good way of determining the current buyers market for individual terms and the level of industry-specific activity. This element of your appraisal score is very time sensitive. The popularity of a given term may fluctuate often as the market changes and new fields grow.

NameBoy uses the index of the search value of your keywords to determine the value of your domain in a sellers’ and advertising market. The NameBoy.com search frequency allows us to rate the words we find in your domain against our own proprietary list of searches. This is a very good indication of what’s hot in the industry right now.

NameBoy.com uses internet market value and frequency tables to estimate demand for a particular proper name and adjusts your appraisal accordingly.

Appraised Dollar Value

As you can see a number of metrics go into a NameBoy appraisal. We think our appraisals are the best, most objective, and most intelligible domain name appraisals available. Our valuations are more realistic than others, and on occasions these are sometimes as low as zero dollars.

In evaluating Nameboy’s suitability as a potential appraiser we submitted around 200 domains that had recently been sold (mainly by auction) and where the sales were publicly recorded in the media. We then added up the total sales figure for all domains sold and compared with their Nameboy valuations. Although the figures on occasion differed widely for individual domains, on a packet of 198 domains the two figures were respectively $1,244,361 being the total recorded for actual sales, and £1,224,144 being the total values as appraised by Nameboy. To see the actual domains chosen and their respective values please click here.

Finally, valuing domains is not, and never will be an exact science. The thing to bear in mind is that every domain name, like every phone number, is unique – and that once it’s gone it is lost forever unless its owner fails to renew the annual fee. Prices that may seem high today but in many cases will be considered cheap in the not too distant future. Often NameBoy valuations are wildly wrong in that the appraisals give a valuation that is a fraction of the domain selling price at auction. Here are just three examples: