analysis How 26 Metal .com Domains Are Being Used Today

Sixth part of my series on lexicon domains. I analyzed the current usage of 26 English metal .com domains, and here are the results:

• 14 metal domains are actively in use by businesses or individuals
• 2 metal domains are up for sale
• 10 metal domains are largely dormant, sitting parked, under construction, broken, redirected, or unreachable

The sale of Gold.com for $8.5M in 2024 was record-breaking and ranks among the highest public domain prices in recent years. No surprise there – with governments printing ever more fiat money and gold prices soaring, Gold.com is simply capitalizing on the momentum with a huge leverage. Even Walmart started selling gold bars. Since metal needs to be physically shipped (most buyers want to own it), also country TLDs for metal domains—which cover local markets and build trust—benefit from this trend.

Source: Metal Domain Stats by Lexicon Domains

 

[Eric Lyon]

It's interesting to see that 53.8% of the precious metal domains are developed into businesses. though, I don't see redirects/forwarding as part of the measurements. Would those be counted as developed businesses since they resolve after redirecting as a web site?

Curious if acknowledging those would lower the 53.8% significantly or moderately.

 

[flip]

Good question. I did not differentiate between developed domain and redirect. I counted redirects also as Business / Personal Page if the page belonged to the business and is used for a purpose of the business. I did this because the domain is owned and used by a business and therefore it is not available.

This happens sometimes if a business has a company website and product brands are registered as domain which redirect to the product page on the company website. Or, in the case of metal domains, the company offers this metal as a product and redirects the metal domain to a subpage of their company page like for beryllium.com. I had the impression that the share of developed metal domains is higher than for other lexicon domain categories.

Also, many plural animal domains are used by sports clubs and redirect like dolphins.com or tigers.com. I counted these as business / personal page, too.

 

[dncafe]

Would it be better for a company like JM Bullion to redirect Gold.com to their main site like they do, or have a small site dedicated to gold charts, gold investing etc. with branding like "GOLD.com a JM Bullion Company" and funnel traffic back to their main site

 

[Eric Lyon]

Would it be better for a company like JM Bullion to redirect Gold.com to their main site like they do, or have a small site dedicated to gold charts, gold investing etc. with branding like "GOLD.com a JM Bullion Company" and funnel traffic back to their main site

I agree, it may increase conversion potential to niche the initial landing page to the domain, since its the primary reason for visiting and give the feeling of specialization in what they wanted.

It could also warm them up before visiting the parent brand and they won't experience as much of a temperature shock when they go to the parent brand buy and see all the other options available.

Note: They could even redirect gold.com to a dedicated gold page on the parent brand to smooth out the transition more instead of the home page as a catchall.

 

[dncafe]

edit: please delete, thanks

 

[flip]

I don't understand why JM Bullion at least redirects users to a gold-specific landing page rather than just the homepage. I imagine that it would convert better.

Since "real" type-in traffic with other navigational concepts (voice search, etc.) isn't increasing any more and given the huge purchase price, I personally would monetize gold.com by developing the domain. As a new user searching on Google, gold.com would immediately show trust whereas JM Bullion is a brand which you might not be familiar with. Right now, gold.com is not indexed (except the redirect page): https://www.google.com/search?q=site:gold.com

Eventually, JM Bullion did tests and their data shows that the redirect is working fine for them. I don't know.

In Germany and Switzerland, these are developed sites:

• gold.ch
• silber.ch
• gold.de
• silber.ch