Survey: SnapNames Still Tops for Expired Domains

SnapNames is the most popular expired domain marketplace with 47% of the vote.

You probably don’t need a survey to tell you which expired domain service is most popular. Just look at the 100 biggest domain sales of 2006: 15 of them are from SnapNames, including Jasmin.com at $310,250. Competitor Pool’s highest sale was $19,500.

SnapNames has cornered the market on expired domain names by striking exclusive agreements with registrars such as Network Solutions and Register.com. In fact, late last year Dotster’s NameWinner tossed in the towel and started sending its expired domain business to SnapNames. NameWinner was a pioneer in the domain name dropping business. Perhaps Dotster figured out it could earn more with SnapNames’ large contingent of buyers.

Here’s how the expired domain catchers stacked up in the 2007 Domain Name Wire survey and how this compares to 2006:

SnapNames has clearly expanded its lead on the market. There are a couple other notable changes. First, Pool saw its popularity drop significantly. Pool dropped from 27% to 9% of the vote. Second, GoDaddy’s TDNAM is picking up steam. TDNAM is developing innovative features such as offering domain traffic statistics. With GoDaddy’s large number of domains under management, the company has a massive number of expired domains to offer each day.