Sunday, September 2, 2012

Checking Your Domain's Whois Counts - One Valuation Tool

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There are domains that have and don't have obvious value.  For everything else in between, domainers are forever looking for methods to valuate their domains.  Domain valuation is not a perfect science, so the more tools and metrics you have, the better you're able to determine your domain's worth.

External metrics are useful, because they don't rely on the domain owner's opinion, and they can tell you a lot.

Two examples of external metrics would be the number of domain inquiries or offers you get, and the type in traffic your domain receives.  If you've had at least one inquiry on a domain, then you know it has value to someone.  If it has value to one person, it likely has value to others.  If an offer price is included with the inquiry, then you have a baseline value of the domain - it could be worth more but a floor is set.  If your domain is getting type in traffic, then the keywords in the domain are known and have meaning to some people, which shows value.

A not so obvious external metric you can use is to find out how many Whois counts your domains get.  If your domain gets regular or a high number of Whois checks, then at least you know other people are searching for your domain, perhaps because they wanted to register it or they are thinking of contacting you about it.  If a domain didn't have value, then no one would be looking it up.  Some Registrars can provide the Whois information to you (see below how to find it on Godaddy).

I usually get a Whois count report on my domains at Godaddy a few times per year.  The report shows the counts for the current and previous day, week and month.  If you do this on a regular basis you'll likely see trends, such as which domains usually get the most counts, or no counts at all.  I just did a report today and was surprised to see higher counts on some domains than usual.  At least for me these counts are high, premium .com domains probably have monthly Whois counts into the 100's or 1000's.

A few of my high count domains for the previous month were:

GeocachingGames .com - 78

PrinceRupertHomes .com - 59

Scaryville.com - 58

SuperphoneGames .com - 47

HashtagBusiness .com - 34

ScratchingGames.com - 25

Plus .cc - 24

From my own reports, general trends I see are shorter .com domains (5 letters or 5 numbers, or less), get steady and higher Whois counts.  Some domains get count numbers I'm surprised at, others get no counts and that surprises me too.  One of my regular top Whois counts is for Plus.cc, which is strange to me because it's a .cc domain, but this domain has had a few inquiries in the past.  I only acquired it because I like the keyword.

I don't know exactly how Godaddy gets the Whois counts information, if it's from human searches and/or bot searches, but the Whois counts metric is still one tool that gives you some information on your domains value.

If you do Whois counts on your domains, what are your best monthly numbers, and what do you consider to be a 'high' monthly number?

To get your Whois count report at Godaddy, go to the 'My Account' section and launch the Domains.  From there go to 'Tools' in the menu, then choose 'Exportable lists' at the bottom.  Click on the 'Add new export' box to the right, select 'All my domains', then Next.  In this box, check the two 'Whois Searches' boxes on the far right, then Next.  Enter any name for the file then click Finish.  The file will show up on the resulting page within a minute or two, then you can download it and open it.

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8 comments:

  1. Glad to see such a post… as I have used this technique on a regular basis to asses my domains. As you have indicated, this is quite a valuable tool for determining ‘Who Is’ looking at your assets. I typical create an end-of-week/month report and analyze the results to follow trends on interests. The recent trend appears to be more people have been looking as my current visits per month have dramatically increased from July to August 2012 - as seen in my below listing. I am especially pleased at the increased visits to my Hand Registered domains as they give me a good perspective on my selection of a domain name.


    DomainName (July / August)
    3Dcopying.com (10 / 35)
    ActivePrinters.com (5 / 40)
    ArmyOutlet.com (11 / 50)
    BeerResources.com (5 / 39)
    CaliforniaGrapevines.com (19 / 47)
    CellUse.com (8 / 39)
    CloudBasedResources.com (3 / 36 Hand Reg)
    CommonFeel.com (4 / 31)
    CookAid.com (6 / 36)
    CoverCharger.com (4 / 33 Hand Reg)
    ezDataApps.com (3 / 53 Hand Reg)
    FairClouds.com (11 / 39 Hand Reg)
    FindItWith.com (3 / 44 Hand Reg)
    GreaterNation.com (4 / 36)
    HerbalVinegars.com (4 / 45)
    Kinectware.com (4 / 51)
    LIiteRoast.com (3 / 54 Hand Reg)
    OpernCloudApplications.com (3 / 45 Hand Reg)
    OpenCloudCommunications.com (1 33 Hand Reg)
    ScreenCharge.com (1 / 45 Hand Reg)
    Searosions.com (2 /33 Hand Reg)
    SeaVessel.com (2 / 59)
    SmartCardRewards.com (11 / 54)
    SpecsFree3D.com (5 / 39 Hand Reg)
    SpecsFree3DTV.com (5 / 35 Hand Reg)
    SpecsFreeTV.com (4 / 32 Hand Reg)
    SugarFlavor.com (7 / 37)
    SuroundTouch.com (2 / 38 Hand Reg)
    TufTab.com (3 / 51 Hand Reg)
    Wavi3D.com (4 / 79 Hand Reg)
    WhyGOP.com (3 / 33 Hand Reg)
    WrittenImage.com (3 / 49)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting, I wonder if others are experiencing higher August than July Whois counts. Maybe Godaddy changed how they collect the data?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Domains
      My exact thoughts as well... In reviewing my past four (4) months I only really noted a couple of my domains with a significant jump in WhoIs counts. So needless to say, I was taken aback a bit with the two month comparisons - although I have also noticed a recent daily/weekly trend upwards in 'looks.

      So, I too would be interested to hear if others are experiencing the same. If this is an 'true indication of domain interest, then maybe we can all expect to see an uptick in the domain after market.

      Delete
  3. I monitored the Godaddy Whois check for all my domains and noticed a substantial increase for the following domains during August.

    PrivacyLawsuit.com - 38 (Only 10 the previous month)
    ReliefWell.com - 16 (6 in July)
    SalvageBoatParts.com - 41 (14 in July)
    FindBankAccount.com - 38 (5 in July)
    8mmCameras.com - 16 (5 in July)

    The rest of the domains are keeping a constant level of searches and have some that do not show searches at all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very interesting text. However I am not sure this type of GD data is of great informative value as I see no evident correlation between the number of "visits" to the GD WHOIS database (I mean the lookups)and sales. I Think there may be some web apps that do the lookups automatically (because I've noticed an increase in lookups of domains which are close to expiration date).
    On the other hand I kind of enjoy seeing domains I just hand registered like a few days ago getting a lot of lookups -> it gives me a hope of potential sales. The ones I h-red in September (this month) got around 20 lookups so far over the last 2 days

    I think a premium .com'd get over 1000 lookups a month
    best regards
    Jacek


    ReplyDelete
  5. I check my whois weekly. This is the highest numbers from August 2012.

    4NFC.COM 72
    TAPTOUNLOCK.COM 62
    ONLYNFC.COM 61
    DOMAINNAMEGARDEN.COM 56
    SMARTERNFC.COM 55
    NEARFIELDSECURITY.COM 53
    NFCTAGSNOW.COM 51
    TAPPINGNFC.COM 49
    TAGRITE.COM 40
    SCANCREDITCARDS.COM 38
    NFCMOBILENET.COM 38
    NFCGANG.COM 37
    NFCWEBS.COM 37
    NFCTAGCLOUD.COM 36
    SWIPEWALLET.COM 36
    CONTACTLESSPAYMENTPROCESSING.COM 34
    GOLDSMARTWALLET.COM 34
    TOUCHSMARTPHONES.COM 34
    NFCTAGTEAM.COM 33
    NFCFUSION.COM 32
    NFCONLY.COM 31
    EWALLETPHONES.COM 31
    KEYNFC.COM 30
    NFCAPPLIANCES.COM 30
    NFCRETAILSERVICE.COM 30
    SMARTWALLETBANK.COM 30
    SMARTWALLETPROCESSING.COM 30
    TAPSMARTWALLETS.COM 30
    NFCTAGSSITE.COM 29
    DIGITALSMARTWALLETS.COM 29
    FREESMARTWALLET.COM 29
    SMARTWALLETMANAGER.COM 29
    TAPSMARTWALLET.COM 28
    NFC4GTABLET.COM 28
    NFCTAGBLOG.COM 28
    BESTSMARTWALLETS.COM 28
    SMARTWALLETCHIPS.COM 28
    FREESMARTWALLETS.COM 27
    GETSMARTWALLET.COM 27
    SMARTWALLETGAMES.COM 27
    SMARTWALLETNEWS.COM 27
    SMARTWALLETSALE.COM 27
    INTERNETEXPERTZ.COM 26

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've noticed searches on the idn.com names lately as well.
    酒店上海.com 49
    笔记本电脑出售.com 28
    银行存款.com 32

    ReplyDelete
  7. The highest counts I've observed are for dictionary word domain names. The .coms especially.
    Unfortunately, the Whois count report does not indicate data for the new TLD names (.co, .club and the likes). Otherwise I would 've been most interested to see who is searching for yup.club, which I've just recently hand-reg and estimated by SEDO evaluator bot as $4000 (LOL).

    Thanks.
    Joseph.
    www.domainswot.com

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!