According to FT.com in a recently concluded auction, the average price for a single letter .co.uk domain name was £39,000 or roughly $60,000.
“In all Twelve single-letter domains, including x.co.uk and 0.co.uk, fetched an average of £39,000 each in an auction run by Nominet, which administers the UK’s internet infrastructure.”
“Including two-letter domains, 2,831 web addresses were sold, raising £3m for the Nominet (roughly $4.6 Million)
“Notable buyers include Facebook, which bought fb.co.uk, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, snapping up hr.co.uk, H&M buying hm.co.uk and Mercedes-Benz purchasing mb.co.uk.
But in the highest-priced auction, Google was outbid for the rights to g.co.uk by Any-Web, a company which collects, builds and resells domain names and is believed to be the auction’s biggest spender.”
“Any-Web paid a high five-digit figure for g.co.uk, one of more than 170 domains the company acquired for a total investment of almost £500,000, which also acquired VC.co.uk and PE.co.uk.
“”Other individuals and companies each acquiring multiple domains include XYZ Invest LLC, which acquired no.co.uk; Registration Transfers Limited, buyer of gm.co.uk; and Domain Developers Fund, which bought pr.co.uk. ”
According to the story some of the domain has already traded, some several times.
“The registrar of x.co.uk, for example, has changed hands three times in the past week and is currently owned by Kiss Ltd of Mayfair.”
Interesting that Google would spend reported 7 figures for g.co but wouldn’t spend 6 figures for a much longer established g.co.uk.
$60k on average is not a bad price for a single character .co.uk, compared to the current asking price of a single letter .co which is said to be $1.5M
Please read the FT.com story for more info.
.co probably gave google $10M to buy g.co for 7 figures!
dot com is king…all others suck!
This gives a good approximate value comparison between these titan extensions
g.Co $1,500,000
and
g.co.uk $60,000
Showing us the high stakes value in less is more when it comes to web addressing.
Anunt@
if all the others suck…then why did you buy flowers.mobi?
with that money you could have go to Vegas, you would have been better off.
Now,that sucks!!!
This is the way i see it…i still own flowers.mobi which is worth atleast a dollar…in Vegas, i would have lost it all…so i’m still ahead…LOL
absurd to buy at a so high price a domain that has a TLD much longer than its name … it’s only antityposquatting paranoia
@Anunt
“.co probably gave google $10M to buy g.co for 7 figures!
dot com is king…all others suck!”
I’m sorry but, as someone who bought flowers.mobi, your comment above is not very convincing 🙂
The CC is important in terms of credibility with the daily advertising by BBC.co.uk with all the program /sub domains. The com & co.uk are the brands.
The dot co is taken as a typo error & the rest as low order.
The sale was a good move, and I suspect it won’t be long now before ICANN follow suit, and start unloading single letter .com’s.
The single and double letter auctions at nominet did not receive the recognition that the latest releases had at domain registrars in general. This was not a new tld release and buyers had a time window to even apply through a confusing application process. That being said as an auction participant I thought many deals were had and believe the buyers snapped these up for ridiculous prices.
If Google had REALLY wanted it, they would have put out the dough and easily outbid everyone. .co is more an international extension that can be adopted by any company. .co.uk has its limitations. Obviously the Google captain in charge of domain acquisitions sent a soldier to the auction with a definite cap. At the end of the day, a nice result for .co. Shows the value Google has put in the .co extension.
on a side note:
looks like dupont picked up polyester.co
someone else has the .com
Come and get it! Domains are red-hot
Only a question:
Do you think that if G.com/T.com become available
Google/Twitter will buy them to replace the actual shortener G.co/T.co?
I think by the time/if G.com/T.com became available,
the .co would have alreay become too ingrained.
Think they would use the .com in a different manner if obtained.
“Coupons.com Grabs $30M in Funding From Greylock”
allthingsd.com/20111003/attention-shoppers-coupons-com-grabs-30m-in-funding-from-greylock/
this clearly demonstrate how much important is to own/buy the right domain name to have a successful startup/website
We picked up many names in the auction which was advertised very shortly and the application process was also short and obviously confusing, only very few applied for even single letter domains. In the last weeks more then 20 people contactced us to ask us to bid on their behalf because they missed the application deadline.
Now after the auction we allready received dozens of offers for the names and its clear that there is strong demand from local businesses for such great .co.uk. names.
Idiot move by Google not to aquire G.co.uk, hope it is bought by Bing and used as a
forwarding url for their site!
For additional three letters “.co” one should not write six figure cheques.
Google will probably wait another decate for g.uk.
@.ME
Google won’t be buying anything more. Perhaps g.com, if and when it will ever be released, and even then I’m not sure.
They bought plus.me and android.me though.