I've never been in favor of automated appraisals, but I think estibot.com is doing a fairly decent job versus anything else I've seen. Traffic domains seem to be more accurate than generics. And of course it's almost impossible to automate the appraisal of a brandable. It has been 50/50 in accurately pricing domains I've sold recently - by this I mean within 20%. The ones that it has been off on, was a mix between undervaluing and overvaluing.
I've come across a few surprises though - my latest one was for costrecovery.com. I recently bought this domain (and now also have the .net) I felt it was a very strong domain for a right end user and the EPC is very nice (3-4 range @ fab). I almost fell off my chair when I ran it through estibot and it was given an appraisal of 41,000! I had thought this would be a case where estibot would underestimate.
Anyone else willing to share how accurate they have found estibot to be versus actual end user selling prices?
Estibot was within 20% around 70% of the time on names I've bought in the last 6 months. It isn't as accurate anymore due to Overture being down unfortunately. Not knowing the amount of times a name is search monthly pretty much makes it impossible IMO to give reliable appraisals the majority of the time.
Estibot doesn't place enough weight on how mainstream words are IMO. If we look at antioxidants.com in example, it get appraised at $160,000. I'd venture to say that's a million dollar name -- try and go into the supermarket and not come across that word! Dog food, baby food, everything from cookies to soft drinks to crackers to designer beverages,... I'd mortgage my house and offer 160k for that name in a heartbeat -- unfortunately it's owned by one of the world's largest food ingredient manufacturers, so I'd venture to guess the name isn't for sale
So it has some flaws, yes... But all in all, I've very much enjoyed using Estibot and will continue to do so in the future (fingers crossed that Josh works out a Wordtracker deal)
I've not had any personal experience of end user sales VS estibot values, but I had wirelessdesktops.com appraised on NP for low $XXX reseller, low $XXXX end user, and estibot gives me a result of $3000, so I don't think it's wildly off. ( any re-appraisals are welcome! )
That said, I don't think Josh (sorry to put words in your mouth) ever really intended the dollar value to be used as a concrete valuation.
Automated appraisals (in fact any kind of appraisal) is an unproductive activity.
A domain name is worth precisely what anyone is prepared to pay for it - end of story. So, let's suppose estibot values a domain at $400. Well, that's great but if noone buys it, then it's not worth $400 is it? it's worthless.
Estibot I see values my domain statement.tv at $2,100. I couldn't get any interest on here at $25.
Let's look at some domains I've sold. Let's start with an old one. GoldTracker.com I sold in 2000 for $1,500. Estibot says 470 (would be worth more now logically?).
Routes.tv - it says $1,800 I sold it on sedo for $350.
Diagnose.tv - I sold for $65 it says $840.
Dated.tv I sold for $10 - Esti says $980.
Sexier.tv - Estibot says reg fee - had a private offer of $350 for this in August and one on Afternic this week for $220.
Chilled.tv - Esti says reg fee and I could have sold this at least 10 times for $500+ but am holding onto it.
I could go on...
Completely and utterly pointless. In the real world, the valuations are meaningless but it is a nice gimmick. Sorry if I sound a little erm, cynical but I really have a dislike of these things because alot of people look at these valuations and believe them. Then they get a shock when their domain doesn't sell.
The same results (or better) can be achieved by using common sense.
Last edited by Ummagumma : 09-17-2007 at 07:12 AM.
Frequency
Anchor Text
Title
Backlinks
Alexa Rank
Traffic (uniques) / Day
PPC Ads Score
Related Searches/mo
Thats all what I need from estibot, the best free service around which takes seconds to bring out all this info,Best regards to this automated appraisal service provider
I think Ummagumma brought it exactly to the point.
I might be biased but I just run through the two domains CityPics.com and CityPics.org. While the former (undeveloped) com version gets an estimate of almost $4000, the developed org version shall be worth only $120 - or the domain only even only regfee. Now I am aware that there is a difference between .com and .org but I wouldnt say it is that huge.
just because you couldn't get $20 for it doesn't mean that its not worth that much. You have to remember the prices of names vary according to the buyer.
Thanks for sharing and glad to see someone else have similar view/experience.
For some of the other posters.... automated appraisals are never going to be the 'end all'. I've yet to come across a human appraiser that had a 100% success rate either. It all does come down to what someone is willing to pay.
The problem with any appraisal - human or automated - is that it doesn't take into account the emotional side of it. How attached is someone to a domain? How much are they willing to spend to get it? Emotions play into domain sales a considerable amount. Especially right now depending on how confident one is of the future of domains in general.
I too have seen some of my names come back for over $5,000, only to drop to a few hundred the next day. Then the day after it goes back up to over $1,000, then five minutes later it says regfee. I no longer look at the value at all when using it, but do like the other features such as backlinks, alexa, etc. so I continue to use it.
Ummagumma, I have a question. Why does you selling something mean that is the best price you can possibly get for it? Just because you sold a name for $65 doesn't mean Estibot's valuation of $1,000 is wrong. Perhaps you didn't come across the right end-user or market it aggressively enough.
I don't agree that a domain name doesn't have a value until it sells, and that what it is sold for is what it is worth. Saying that would imply that if a domain has never sold before, what a buyer offers is 100% completely and totally arbitrary in relation to the domain name itself, and that it is all about their budget.
Domain names have an inherent value based on a number of characteristics, such as keyword popularity, length, number of words, frequency, page rank, backlinks, age, etc. that are there whether or not someone wants to buy the name at that particular moment. All Estibot does is factor in all these variables, weight them accordingly, and gives a valuation.
When you buy a name, don't you try to figure out what it is worth before you make an offer? I bet the process you go through, such as checking OVT, Google, PR, backlinks, etc. is very similar to what Estibot does. So what is wrong with automating the process? Making it accurate is just a matter of getting the weighting of each variable right...
As far as the valuations changing from day to day, that is because Josh is working on the algorithm all the time trying to make it better. Thus it is going to fluctuate from day to day, but hopefully it is getting closer to a price you think is accurate. Remember, this is still in beta...
Good logic there. The point is, you can't take estibot's estimate and take is as the " world" on that domains' value. On some names, its quite off, on others, its quite good. At least i know when isearch an appraisal domain in appraisal section and put it into estibot, if it comes up with something > reg fee, i won't appraise it at reg fee. Its also quite relative as some have pointed out.
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Estibot has been and is extremely unstable. It changes almost between each time. One time $670 then a try again seconds later $4700 and so on. And without Overture..?
It is close to pointless to have such a service out as it is now. I have used it however because I look at the different results that appear side by side. I think, instead of the anchor text function, the phrase in the url would be better to have.
Besides, I have thought about google earlier, it presents strange results sometimes. And so when estibot shows that a phrase is found lets say 1350 times as a title, it then shows that if you go to the last page among the results in google it ends at 255 results and so on. Estibot doesn´t know this, that google behaves strangely in which further makes the estibot unreliable. Compared to Yahoo, yahoo is however stable.
No a price is not a price until payed, but at least theoretically, an automatic appraisal service could come quite close to show a potential price.
Look
Anybody who believes completely the dollar value Estibot gives, without doing research of his own is a fool. If w34.org does give you $13000 as the result and you believe it, then I think you have no business owning domains.
Yes, Estibot is wrong 50% of the time. Its also right the other 50%. Thats a fairly good odd for an automated system.
And folks. Please do NOT take the dollar value. Even estibot says that.
Its a wonderful wonderful tool for looking at the stats. But for an exact dollar value, you're better off asking one of the Senior domainers here.
With time, stats themselves would give you an idea of keyword domains. If estibot said eCasino.com was worth $10, would you believe it?
Use your own judgement.
I agree with Estibot on these two valuations. You made a mistake selling these domains so cheaply IMO. Diagnose.tv is a great name with good development potential.
You should've took one of those offers IMO. Why would you think Chilled.tv is worth $400 more than Diagnose.tv? I personally don't see the development potential here.
Josh has said before that Estibot produces end-user valuations.
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It is in beta. The prices are changing on a day to day basis because Josh is improving it. On a minute-to-minute basis, the price may change because one of the sites it checks for stats timed out... nothing you can do about that. Do you give yourself a hard time for not being able to come up with a good appraisal when OVT times out??... I think it is much more likely that you blame overture, so why blame Estibot when another site causes an issue? At least it tells you what timed out so you can adjust the price accordingly.
I'm not a fan of any automated appraisals and think they usually do more harm then good as far as giving new domainers unrealistic expectations on their domains, meaning they hold out for higher offers on junk and sell low appraisals too cheap, that being said Josh from estibot seems to be a nice guy so i wish him the best in tweaking and fine tuning it to become the best automated appraisal system out there.
