Web Host & Domain News- Words More Valuable Than Characters?

Anonymous writes "The secret to a valuable domain name just became a little clearer, as Zetetic releases the findings of their July 2004 secondary domain name market research. Zetetic finds that domain names with fewer words are more valuable than those with fewer characters.

Based on the results of Zetetic, 405 secondary domain name market transactions collected in July 2004, Zetetic finds that word count is nearly eight times more significant than character count when determining domain name value. Zetetic incorporates analysts to manually parse keywords within each domain name, ensuring higher word count accuracy than that offered by most automated systems.

â€œWhile most people know that shorter domain names are more valuable, most assume this means fewer characters,â€ Zetetic Founder Keith Pieper said. â€œWeâ€™ve found that while fewer characters are somewhat important, a domain name with fewer words is significantly more valuable.â€

The company also finds that the average domain sale increased by four percent to US$2,690, a slight rebound from June 2004 (see chart). Zetetic also releases the median sale value for each month from September 2003 through July 2004, uncovering a median sale price that hovers around US$1,000 (see chart). The range of sales collected for the period was US$60 to US$39,500, excluding two sales transactions over US$100,000. Zetetic excludes outliers, which often number only one or two, from the data set to provide an accurate reflection of market conditions.

Additional market data, including historical research, is available at http://markets.zetetic.com. Get the latest secondary domain name market trends and statistics via email each month through our free Tip Sheet at http://tipsheet.zetetic.com. Learn more about our services at http://www.zetetic.com."