NameSilo

analysis The Top Ten Index As Measure Of Domain Name Extension Strength

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Which domain name extensions are growing stronger, and which are waning in popularity? We often use measures such as total sales dollar volume to help answer that question.

Sometimes that can be deceptive, though. It is possible to have an uptick in sales numbers and dollar volume because investors have lost interest in an extension and are liquidating their holdings, or possibly a single outlier sale has influenced the volume.

If a domain extension is truly strong, that should be reflected in numerous high-value sales in the extension each year.

The Top Ten Index – TTI

I define the Top Ten Index (TTI) as the mean value of the top 10 sales in the extension, or group, for that year. I use data from NameBio to find average, also called the mean, value for the highest 10 sales each year in that extension or group.

I first computed TTI for every year from 2014 through this point of 2024 for all domain name sales recorded in NameBio, obtaining the results shown below. The top 10 is dominated by .com names, although there are some other extensions represented some years.

Image-All-Mean.jpg

Note that since 2024 is not yet complete, and there may be additions to the top 10, there is some bias in the 2024 results. The lowest value for the TTI for all extensions was 2020, when the mean value was just over $1.18 million, while the strongest year was 2019 with a TTI of just under $5.36 million.

As other measures have indicated, 2020 was a challenging year, but the next few years saw a strong bounceback in the domain name market.

Top Ten Median – TTM

The very high TTI for 2019 was heavily influenced by the $30 million sale of the domain name voice.com. I decided to also look at the median, or middle value, for the top 10 sales each year, calling that index the Top Ten Median – TTM.

Image-All-Median.jpg

When we arrange the top 10 sales and take the midpoint between the fifth and sixth value, or median, we see that one big sale no longer strongly influences the index, and the TTM for 2019 was $1.5 million, not much different than a typical year.

When we use medians, the best year was 2014, with a TTM of $2.4 million, while the worst years were 2020 and 2024, with TTM values of about $900 thousand.

The strength of 2021 is particularly obvious when we use medians, since there was not just one or two, but many high-value sales.

Is .NET On The Rise?

There has been domainer talk of late about the returning strength of the .NET extension. Braden Pollock of Legal Brand Marketing sold super.net for $150,000 in September, and spring.net for $100,000 the preceding month. Earlier in the year, he had two other of the top ten .NET sales of 2024.

Let’s use the TTI to see how 2024 compares to previous years for the .NET extension.

Image-NET-Mean.jpg

We see that even though 2024 is not yet finished, .NET is on track to have its best year since 2021, although the TTI is not higher than it was during 2014 to 2017.

I also looked at the median of the top 10 sales for .NET. When looked at that way, although 2024 is going to eclipse 2022 and 2023 for .NET, it is not unusual compared to the 11-year average.
Image-NET-Median.jpg

Top Ten Average and Median for .AI

We all know that high-value .AI sales are common recently, so it is not surprising to see that reflected in both the TTI and TTM.
Image-AI-Mean.jpg

Image-AI-Median.jpg

Spot The Trend Early

In the early years of the time period I used, there were just a handful of .AI sales each year, only one in the first year. The TTI and TTM values did not explode for .AI until 2023. But looking back the .AI extension was consistently growing by these indexes throughout the early years.

year
mean
median
2014
$250​
2500​
2015
$2,329​
1300​
2016
$3,360​
3400​
2017
$13,790​
$10,000​
2018
$19,061​
$8,525​
2019
$17,692​
$12,500​
2020
$27,063​
$12,500​
2021
$25,998​
$21,500​
2022
$29,779​
$25,553​
2023
$202,586​
$125,000​
2024
$135,544​
$120,000​

Table Median and Mean Values Top Ten for .AI. See the steady growth in early years.

This suggests that domain investors should look carefully at extensions that are consistently growing in order to spot opportunities.

Easy To Compute TTI and TTM Values for Any Extension Yourself

In order to search for early trends, you probably want to calculate some TTI and TTM values yourself. This might help you to find some extensions early in trending upward.

It is easy to calculate TTI and TTM by following these steps:
  1. Go to NameBio.
  2. Set the Extension you want to investigate.
  3. Set the Date Range for each year in the period you want to study.
  4. Press Search and then press on Price to order from highest-price sale.
  5. For the TTM count down to the fifth value and the sixth value, and take the halfway point. For example, if the fifth highest was $20,000 and the sixth was $16,000, the median for that year is $18,000.
  6. To calculate the TTI is a bit more work, but you can export the 10 values, paste into a spreadsheet, and use formulae to convert the text values for price to numeric or currency format, and compute the average.
  7. Set to a new year with Date Range and repeat. I selected 2014 through 2024, but you might want to only check a shorter period, like the past 5 years.
The .IO Extension

I also looked at the .IO extension. We see that 2021 was the best year in terms of TTI, although all of the past four years have been strong.
Image-IO-Mean.jpg

For this extension also, the growth was slow but relatively consistent over a number of years before interest in the extension exploded. An astute investor could have predicted the emergence of the extension by calculating TTI and TTM and witnessing the consistent growth.

I also looked at the median values for .IO. 2021 was the best year for .IO by both measures, with a top ten average of $119,987 and a top ten median value of $100,000.
Image-IO-Median.jpg

What do you think? Are TTI and TTM useful measures to define strength of extensions? Do you think they could be helpful in spotting trends early?

Heartfelt thanks to NameBio for the data that made this analysis possible.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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Great info as always Bob. Cheers 👍👌
 
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Because .AI has a high cost of entry there's room for expansion. I don't see this as a tech-bubble. There's already a global race towards Quantum Supremacy.

The domain investor strategy is finding a registrar that has a reasonable 2 year term.
 
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Mr. Hawkes, why are you so fricken cool?
 
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Thank you for sharing this wonderful analysis, Bob!
 
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wow! Amazing analysis I will definitely trie it on a shorter period and will see where that will take us.
thank you for sharing.
 
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Truly thought-provoking measurements and insights. Thank you @Bob Hawkes
 
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Amazing as usual. Thank you Bob!
 
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