information Recent Data on Top Selling Domain Root Words

Two-word domain names form the basis for many domain investor portfolios. By combining two words effectively, the name can form a distinctive brand for a company. Sometimes the names are simply two terms, like HomeDepot, and other times they are merged, as in Microsoft that originally represented microcomputer software.

Of course the terms that make up domain names are not equally valued. Recently Darpan Munjal, CEO of Atom, shared the results of an analysis of core words found in the last 5000 domain names that sold at Atom.

Afternic shares a list of top selling terms each month. In this article, I take a look at the most recent Atom and Afternic data, looking for similarities and differences. I also cover some tools to dig deeper.

What Is A Root Term?

Before we get into the data, what is a root word, sometimes called a base word? Scribbr define it this way:

A root word is the most basic form of a word that cannot be further divided into meaningful segments. Root words are used to form new words by adding letters at the beginning (i.e., a prefix) and/or the end (i.e., a suffix).

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For example, fund would be a root, or base, word, while funded or refund would not.

What Is A Core Root Term?

As we will see below, Atom provided two sales lists: core root words and other add-on root words. Both lists are root words, but the core list contains terms more central to what the business is about.

Add-on words qualify the core root word in some way. In some cases, the add-on word is used to distinguish the name from similar names, or to produce an available combination.

For example, words like pay, health and fund are all on the core root word list, while the, get, and hello are on the add-on words list.

The division between core and add-on words is fuzzy. For example, trust is on the Atom add-on list, but if the name was used by a financial or estate services company, it would be a core root word. Shift is on the core list, but it could be argued it is an add-on term.

Top Selling Root Terms at Atom

Atom analyzed the last 5000 names that sold at Atom, sharing the results in this post. I presume these were names sold on the Premium and UltraPremium marketplaces.


Relative number of sales for different core root terms, based on the last 5000 sales on the Atom marketplace. Data courtesy of Atom.

Before I comment on trends, I should point out, as others have, that the bars are proportional to the total number of sales, as opposed to a sell-through rate. So we don’t know if aspects of the selection or placement process at Atom might have influenced the results, or if simply sellers have far more listings in certain terms. Those with seller accounts at Atom can determine information to clarify this to some degree – I cover that in the next section.

We don’t know the exact number of sales, but the total number in any one term must be fairly modest. There are 29 root terms represented in the chart. Even if all 5000 sales had these terms, certainly not the case, the average would be 172 per name. The differences in the bottom two-thirds of the chart are unlikely to be statistically very significant.

Keeping those caveats in mind, the recently shared Atom data can nonetheless inform us about terms that sell. Here are my observations on the Atom root term data:

• I was surprised that the term pay was so dominant, and related terms like cash, fund, and crypto did well, as did wealth and capital.
• Gaming and betting were well represented, with terms like play, bet, and slot all on the list.
• Root terms tended to be short, with the longest just 7 letters, and most 5 letters or less. Of course almost all root words are relatively short since they are words that cannot be meaningfully divided into parts.
• Both nouns and verbs were well represented in this list, and many of the best-selling terms could be either a noun or a verb, words like fit, pay or fund. A number could also find use as adjectives.
• I was somewhat surprised to see brand on the list, as I would have expected a company looking for a name about brands would have independently come up with their own name, rather than use a brandable marketplace.
• I was not surprised to see terms like health, tech, data, care, home, cloud and hub do well, all are terms used in a wealth of modern businesses.
• I would have personally placed fox in the add-on list, since it is not descriptive of a product or service, in most cases. It is interesting that it is the only animal on either list.
• The term vibe is mentioned a lot among startups recently, so interesting to see it make the list.
• I was somewhat surprised to see that bot made the list, but not agent.
• While not surprised that labs is on list, I was somewhat surprised it was number 2. The related term science does not make the list.
• Hero did better than I might have expected. It is a term that one could argue should be on the add-on list, perhaps.

Atom Account? Dig A Little Deeper

If you have an Atom account at Silver or higher level you can research more information on any particular root term, and also look up past sales on the platform. Here are the steps to research core word analytics:

• Sign into your Atom account, and on left hand menu items select Marketplace Insights.
• Then select Keyword Analytics by pressing the Deep Keyword Analytics button.
• Then you are prompted to enter a term, I tried the word ‘health’. In that term, the first line does not have data for the term based on ‘health’ as a root word – not sure why, maybe not enough sales with only health as a root term. But the second line of the table gives data for domain names that include the exact term ‘health’. The day I checked, the STR (sell-through rate) was given as 11.37% for ‘health’. That is a solid number. By the way, I am pretty sure that Atom gives not the annual sell-through rate, but instead a sell-through rate based on all the names including the term that ever sold on the platform, compared to the number of names with the term listed for sale.
• We wondered above whether root words with a high number of sales might be simply terms with many listings on the platform. In the case of ‘health,’ indeed that seems to be the case, as the Competition, a measure of how many names for sale have that term, is listed as High, 68 on a 100 point scale.
• Continuing to the next line in the report, we have the STR when the term is used to start or end the domain name. For ‘health’ it has a higher sell-through rate (23.29%) when at the end, compared to 8.15% when it is the first word. This is important to keep in mind as you are evaluating domain names.

You can obtain similar data when you rate a specific name using the Domain Insights Tool, but have more control when you use the method I outlined above.

Recent Top Selling Terms at Afternic

Each month Afternic releases a list of top selling terms, although there is usually a bit of delay. The most recent data from Afternic is for month of January 2025, and is shown below. Update: Afternic February data was released just after this article was published. Go to end of article to see that data.

Some of the same caveats apply. These are based on number of sales, but we don’t know the number of names with those terms listed at Afternic, so these are not sell-through rates.

We know proportional numbers from the graph, but not the actual number of sales. Given how much of the aftermarket pie is at Afternic, we can expect that the top terms each have a fairly significant number of sales.

Here are the top January 2025 Afternic sales in the filtered list.


Relative number of sales, filtered list to exclude terms like ‘a’ and ‘the’, at Afternic in January 2025. Data courtesy of Afternic.

Some observations I make when comparing the two lists:

• There are substantial differences between the Atom and Afternic lists.
• There are commonalities too, with terms like bet and health on both lists.
• AI and agent are both on the Afternic list, but not bot that was on the Atom list.
• The Afternic list is dominated by terms that are also domain extensions, including ai, my, bet, group, health, home, services, law, shop, new, me, best, it, club, solutions, pro, and tech. The new extension registries tended to seek extensions that matched well-selling terms, so it is maybe not surprising. The only terms on the Afternic filtered list that are NOT also a domain extension are home, agent and real, and there is a plural .homes extension.
• The Afternic list is pretty consistent from month to month, with terms like AI, my and bet always doing well recently.

We would expect from the nature of the marketplaces that Afternic would be more geared to terms with search strength, while Atom would focus on distinctive combinations that would make a startup name.

It should be kept in mind that the time period is not identical, with Afternic data for just the month of January 2025, while Atom data corresponds to whatever period was needed to sell 5000 names.

Afternic Unfiltered List

Afternic also publish an unfiltered list, and in that, almost always the is at or near the top. Here is the January 2025 Afternic unfiltered list.


Relative number of sales, unfiltered, at Afternic in January 2025. Data courtesy of Afternic.

Add-On Word Popularity

Now going back to the Atom analysis for the 5000 most recent sales, here is data for add-on root words.

Relative number of sales for different add-on terms, based on the last 5000 sales on the Atom marketplace. Data courtesy of Atom.

We see that the role of the add-on term is often to give a lively and personal call-to-action, with terms like hey, get, hello, thrive, bold, and just. It can also be used to build trust through words like ever, better, true, tru, and trust

Other Ways to Gauge Interest

The NamePros Blog has covered other ways to see terms that are currently popular including:

• NameBio Trends covers most searched, most wholesale sales, and terms that sell most often recently in retail. You need a membership to access this data, and it is not to be shared. See my article Six Ways to Use New NameBio Trends Reports..
• dotDB Keyword provides Top Keywords and Emerging Keyword reports, as well as ability to search for status on a particular term. You need a paid plan to see much of either list. I covered dotDB in my interview with the dotDB developer Ken Lin: Interview with Ken Lin: Developer of dotDB.
• A few years ago I covered Estibot Domain Trends and a number of other resources in Finding Technology Trends and Opportunities.
• Sedo also shares a monthly list, although it is the most searched terms, rather than the terms that sold that month.

Share Your Thoughts

I invite readers to share their views on popular terms, such as:

• Which resources, mentioned here or not, do you use to investigate terms that sell well?
• Do you think in terms of core root words and add-on terms when composing or evaluating possible names? If so, what factors do you consider?
• If you are willing to share, what keyword that did not make these lists do you think has a lot of potential?
• What is the keyword on the Atom core list that you think has the most potential?

Of course, feel free on any other aspects of this topic.

Addition:
Shortly after this article published, Afternic released February 2025 data. The filtered list is shown below. While many entries are unchanged, both agent and health dropped off the list in February, and now all three of home, homes and house are on the list. The state of Florida made list, but near bottom. Pro and club moved up many places, but not sure how significant the statistics are for that portion of the data.



Sincere thanks to Atom and CEO Darpan Munjal, and to Afternic for sharing the data highlighted in this article. Regularly providing data makes us all more successful as domain investors, and better able to meet the needs of startup owners.