Domain Auctions

Many people use the automated appraisals shown on domain name auction websites as a form of valuation. I don’t always agree with the valuations shown, and I think these tools can be far off in their valuations. You may disagree with me about whether or not auction participants use these appraisals, but I think it’s pretty clear they have an effect on bidding when considering how auctions have changed since GoDaddy and NameJet appended valuations to auction listings.

There is some nuance to using the appraised values though. As I previously shared, a domain name will typically have a higher appraised value when there are multiple extensions registered for that keyword. This appraisal figure may be misleading if the original registrant that let the domain name expire had also registered additional domain names in other extensions. The appraised value may be artificially inflated as a result of the algorithm detecting other registrations.

eShop.com is currently in auction at NameJet and SnapNames. I think it has the potential to be one of the largest Pending Delete auctions on the Web.com-owned platforms in quite some time.

Prior to its deletion, eShop.com was most recently owned by Microsoft. Archive.org shows the domain name has not been used by Microsoft since 2010 when it was part of MSN Shopping. eShop.com had been created in 1994, and the domain name expired in January of 2021. Because it was not renewed at Com Laude, it went through the entire deletion cycle. The domain name was caught by a Web.com registrar, and it is in auction at NameJet and SnapNames. The new creation date for eShop.com is March 27, 2021.

Internet.com was recently put up for auction, but the auction process did not result in the sale of the domain name. According to a March 22nd update on the Internet.com landing page, there were quite a few parties interested in acquiring the domain name but a deal was not reached.

Here’s an excerpt about the number of interested parties extracted from Internet.com:

I received an email from Right of the Dot yesterday announcing the online portion of their domain name auction has been extended. The auction was originally supposed to conclude this week, but it was extended to March 11th.

In addition to the extension, some new domain names have been added to the auction and at least some of the unsold domain names from the live auction were reopened for bidding.

Below is an extract from the email I received yesterday evening announcing the news. If you have any questions about the auction, you should contact ROTD: