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advice Domain score list

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Hi everyone,

I have been helping out a fellow new member here, who has shown a lot of passion and commitment in learning the best way to understand domain names.

I shared with this member a personal domain score list that I came up with over the years and would like to share it with you all.

When looking at domain names to buy, feel free to compare them against the following list. I like to call this list the domain score list, and it is something I came up with and use to help determine whether or not I should purchase a domain name for resell purpose (as opposed to development).

Before you read this list, I want to make one very important point. It is almost useless to use this list if it is not a .com and the .com is publicly listed for sale, if so you have a very very low chance of selling the non .com tld. In fact, you should rarely if ever buy a non .com domain if the .com version is for sale unless you plan to develop it.

Domain Score List

This list is really only recommended to be used with .com domains, although it can act as a reference for other tlds. If you own a 1-3 letter .com or 1-4 number .com, do not read this list, you are already a winner. Any item that has a sub list means the points are accumulative, so the 4 letter section below is +10 for 4 letters and an additional +10 for CVCV.
  • Edited: The version that was here previously had some typos and some missing criteria. The spreadsheet that has been attached to this post contains the correct and most up to date version of the domain score list.
This is just something I came up with after years of research and buying and selling domains.

PLEASE NOTE that this is not financial advice. This is my own personal score list that I use and I would like to share. Please do your own due diligence and research when buying a domain name but feel free to use this as a guide for scoring the quality of the domain name against.

Feel free to compare your domain names against this list and share with us if you like.

The points given on each crtieria may need to be tweaked somewhat, but these are what I have come up with over the years.

I will constantly review this scoring list and adjust points as necessary, and especially if other members here can provide feedback.

Edit: Fixed formatting issues with copy and paste.




 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Hi everyone,

I have been helping out a fellow new member here, who has shown a lot of passion and commitment in learning the best way to understand domain names.

I shared with this member a personal domain score list that I came up with over the years and would like to share it with you all.

When looking at domain names to buy, feel free to compare them against the following list. I like to call this list the domain score list, and it is something I came up with and use to help determine whether or not I should purchase a domain name for resell purpose (as opposed to development).

Before you read this list, I want to make one very important point. It is almost useless to use this list if it is not a .com and the .com is publicly listed for sale, if so you have a very very low chance of selling the non .com tld. In fact, you should rarely if ever buy a non .com domain if the .com version is for sale unless you plan to develop it.

Domain Score List

This list is really only recommended to be used with .com domains, although it can act as a reference for other tlds. If you own a 1-3 letter .com or 1-4 number .com, do not read this list, you are already a winner. Any item that has a sub list means the points are accumulative, so the 4 letter section below is +10 for 4 letters and an additional +10 for CVCV.
  • The domain name is a .com and other tlds are also registered (+2)
  • The domain name is a .com and other tlds are developed (+5)
  • The domain name is 4 letters (+10):
    • It is a CVCV (+15)
    • It is a CHIP (chinese premium) (+10)
  • The domain name is 5 numbers (+10):
    • Without a 0 or 4 (+10)
  • The domain name is an exact match GEO for a city, town or populace:
    • Is the population between 100,000 - 1 million? (+15)
    • Is the population greater than 1 million? (+25)
  • The domain name contains only one word that appears in an official dictionary, such as Oxford English Dictionary (+10)
    • If it is one word, is it a highly recognisable fruit, animal or category defining name? Examples include monkey.com, tomato.com and loans.com (+15, this is accumulative with the above so it can make 20 total)
  • Using Google Keyword Planner (with all locations set), check the keyword(s) of this domain name as follows;
    • If the keyword(s) receive(s) at least 100-1000 searches and has CPC > $1 (+2)
    • If the keyword(s) receive(s) at least 1000-10000 searches and has CPC > $1 (+4)
    • If the keyword(s) receive(s) at least 10000 searches and has CPC > $1 (+8)
    • If the keyword(s) receive(s) greater than 100,000 searches and has CPC > $1 (+16)
    • Add an additional 0.2 points for every $1 CPC
    • Is the competition medium (+2) or high (+4)? This is good as it shows more demand in markting those keywords.
  • The domain name is a brandable that includes a keyword that describes a category/niche or a keyword that is similar to one that describes a category/niche/:
    • Is it pronounceable? (+3)
    • Does it pass the radio test (pronounceable and easy to spell) (+3)
    • Does the keyword describing the niche (e.g. 'crypto') receive at least 100,000 searches on Google on its own? (+5)
    • Is the category that it describes clearly visible in the domain name and unchanged? (+5)
    • If the category is recognisable but changed, does it it only have one letter different (such as a K for a C, whereby Karpool.com or Konversions.com are example) (+2)
    • Does it contain a popular suffix or prefix, for example 'world', 'planet', 'my', '360'. (+3)
    • Is it one syllable? (+10)
    • Is it 2 syllables? (+5)
    • Is it 3 syllables? (+3)
    • Is it 12 characters or less? (+5)
    • Does the primary keyword of the niche (ex 'Crypto', 'Weed', 'Pot') have at least 100,000 searches on its own on Google Keyword planner? (+5)
  • The domain name is a brandable that is made up:
    • Is it pronouncable? (+3)
    • Does it pass the radio test (pronounceable and easy to spell) (+3)
    • Is it 5 letters and a CVCVC? (+4)
    • Is it 6 letters and a CVCVCV? (+2)
    • Is a well known niche recognisable in the domain name? Example would be fitso.com where by fit = fitness. (+5)
    • Is it 1-2 syllables at most? (+5)
  • Is this domain name a GEO, whereby it contains a city, town or other populace along with a service, product or niche (examples would be ChicagoWindows.com, NewYorkLandscaping.com amongst many others):
    • Is the population between 100,000 - 1 million? (+3)
    • Is the population greater than 1 million? (+6)
    • Does the service, product or niche come after the city/town/populace? (+3)
    • Check Google Keyword planner and set location to that place, then search for the keywords that are either before or after the location itself (e.g. 'windows' in ChicagoWindows.com). Do they have at least 100-1000 searches (+2), 1000 or more searches (+4) or 10,000+ searches (+8).
  • Check out namebio.com sales and split out the keywords of your domain name:
    • Do each of the keywords have sale history on Namebio? (+1)
    • If they have sale history, is it over 100 entries for that keyword? (+1 for each keyword over 100 entries)
  • Enter the keywords of the domain in quotes on Google and check how many results:
    • Between 100,000 and 1,000,000 results (+3)
    • Between 1,000,000 and 10,000,000 results (+6)
    • More than 10,000,000 Google results (+9)
Follow the criteria above and add up all points where your domain meets the criteria.
  • 0-5 points = The domain likely has zero or little value
  • 6-10 points = Will be difficult to sell, but may have some value to someone
  • 11-15 points = A name with some resell potential (likely $xxx), maybe worth a risk at reg fee or low $xx
  • 16-20 points = Likely $xxxx+ value
  • 21-25 points = Highly likely a 4 figure+ domain, and possible low 5 fig value
  • 26-30 points = Highly likely a 5 figure+ domain, possible mid $xx,xxx+ value
  • 30-39 points = Great domain. At least mid 5 figures but likely a lot more.
  • 40 points+ = WOW!
This is just something I came up with after years of research and buying and selling domains.

PLEASE NOTE that this is not financial advice. This is my own personal score list that I use and I would like to share. Please do your own due diligence and research when buying a domain name but feel free to use this as a guide for scoring the quality of the domain name against.

Feel free to compare your domain names against this list and share with us if you like.

The points given on each crtieria may need to be tweaked somewhat, but these are what I have come up with over the years.

I will constantly review this scoring list and adjust points as necessary, and especially if other members here can provide feedback.

Edit: Fixed formatting issues with copy and paste.




I do something like that, just not as intensive. I think most probably do to one extent or another. As an example.

Last Black Friday/Cyber Monday there were a lot of coupons, so I decided to kind of challenge/test myself with hand regs. It's pretty rare that I hand reg nowadays, generally don't like doing it. But I bought 20 domains for about $5 each, $100. Any money I make over my initial small investment, I can only buy hand regs. So worst case scenario, I break even. So already from those initial 20 domains, I sold 3 for a little over $200. Small sales, quick flip type of deal. So made my money back and $100 profit. Took that $100 and bought more hand regs. I even keep these on page 2 of my spreadsheet, not to mix with the regular ones.

One of the ways I'm picking them is kind of what you're doing. I only buy .com. And I have a simple point system that I kind of keep in my head. Very simple stuff. Just a few simple things I look at. Is it registered in other extensions. Has it ever been developed. Search volume. My basic thinking is if I buy 100 hand reg .coms that are currently regged in other extensions, a name somebody thought enough of to develop at one time and one with keywords people are actually searching on, my chance of a sale would be higher compared to domains without any of that. Then some other factors as well.

Simply looking at past names I didn't renew, they were usually only registered in the .com I had, not even 1 other extension. The ones where I get sales, offers etc. are usually the ones meeting some of the factors above. Over time, you can get a pretty good idea of what's working for you.
 
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Excellent post @Dave. I'm going to try to use this formally, instead of from "feel" inside my head. I would probably add something though. Is the domain in Archive.org +1, was it ever a developed +3, listed for 5+ years +2, more than 10 years +3 (on top of the 2 for over 5 years) But this doesn't mean age of the domain necessarily. What do you think of the weighting? Does it feel right compared your existing weighting?
 
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Excellent post @Dave. I'm going to try to use this formally, instead of from "feel" inside my head. I would probably add something though. Is the domain in Archive.org +1, was it ever a developed +3, listed for 5+ years +2, more than 10 years +3 (on top of the 2 for over 5 years) But this doesn't mean age of the domain necessarily. What do you think of the weighting? Does it feel right compared your existing weighting?

The weighting is actually wrong on some of these because I was copying and pasting from an excel spreadsheet from different columns and messed up on some of them. I realised too late and I can't edit the original post now either.

I will try to post an updated version later, but in the mean time this list is good to use. I just am too busy at the moment to post an updated list.

Thanks
 
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A couple of questions:

  • The domain name contains only one word that appears in an official dictionary, such as Oxford English Dictionary (+10)
    • If it is one word, is it a highly recognisable fruit, animal or category defining name? Examples include monkey.com, tomato.com and loans.com (+15, this is accumulative with the above so it can make 20 total)

Is the '20 total' here the max we should allow when adding 10+15 or is it just a mistake? (should be 25)


When searching in Google Adwords, should we leave the 'Google Partners' on as well?


Moreover,

It takes balls for one to share their tricks in this industry. My hat's off to you Sir.
 
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Really appreciate you taking the time and effort to share your knowledge - Thank you for sharing!
 
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A couple of questions:



Is the '20 total' here the max we should allow when adding 10+15 or is it just a mistake? (should be 25)


When searching in Google Adwords, should we leave the 'Google Partners' on as well?


Moreover,

It takes balls for one to share their tricks in this industry. My hat's off to you Sir.

As noted above, I usually have this in a spreadsheet in columns and I was copying and pasting from there and made a few mistakes. I will update the post later.

Use this is as a guide but just note the points total is likely not going to be accurate since some of the values are off.

Thanks
 
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Amazing stuff. Domaining in math.

0208ANSWER1-SUB-articleLarge.jpg
 
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an exact match GEO for a city, town or populace
Do you mean pure Geo like newyork.com, or Geo+kw like newyorkdentist.com?
 
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Hey guys, here is a spreadsheet for you all to reference that is the right version.

Thanks
 

Attachments

  • Domain Score List.xlsx
    5.4 KB · Views: 55
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Do you mean pure Geo like newyork.com, or Geo+kw like newyorkdentist.com?

There are two sections, one for pure GEO, and one for geo + keyword or keyword + geo (although geo + keyword is favoured in general).

See the attachment above.

Also the points totals I provided was something new I tried out for that post and regret now, I don't want this to be like those appraisal tools. I usually just get a score of the domain, the higher the better is a good thing typically.

Thanks
 
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Thanks for such great insights. I think on some level, people do some points on your list. I know I do. I'll try to incorporate some of the points listed here
 
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Very kind and generous of you guys. Thanks a lot.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to share this mate. Much appreciated
 
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Can anyone create automated tools based on this score list? :xf.grin:
 
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Thanks for sharing your success formula! I do most of this in my head already but likely don't ever evaluate any 2 names exactly the same way. Codifying your formula creates a useable tool that every domainer can take advantage of.

I recommend a sticky for that spreadsheet.

Kudos to you and continued success!
 
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