Flying.com parent company adds another web site to its collection.
UsedAirplanes, Inc., the parent company of Flying.com and UsedAirplanes.com, has purchased the domain name and web site UsedAircraft.com to add to its expanding arsenal of web properties.
Earlier this year the company acquired Flying.com for $1.1 million. I interviewed company President & CEO Mark J Horne at the time, and he explained the decision as a “no-brainer”:
“On an investment standpoint, if you had a million dollars cash right now, what do you do with it?,†asked Horne. “Stick it in the bank? You’d make $12,000 a year in interest on that money…you can’t stick it in the bank. To put it into an asset like this where I know the business well, it was a no-brainer.â€
In justifying the acquisition cost of its new acquisition, Horne made points familiar to domain and web veterans:
The keyword “used aircraft†is one of the most highly used keywords in Google, Bing and Yahoo for people searching for used aircraft. On a monthly basis, Google, Yahoo and Bing will process several hundreds of thousands of search queries for the keyword “used aircraft†and millions more for search queries relating to “used aircraft.†These figures do not include all the users that forgo the search process by putting UsedAircraft.com into their URL or have the site bookmarked.
“UsedAircraft.com has been online for over 15 years and their long history gives them a compelling indexing value relative to the major search engines overall ranking algorithms including: Registration and Hosting Data (specifically the 15-year time value); High Trust/Authority (of the Host Domain); Link Popularity (of the Specific Page); Anchor Text (of External Links); On-Page Keyword Usage (throughout) and Traffic and Click-Through Data. The new website will also focus on increasing the Social Graph Metrics,” stated Horne.
The purchase price was not disclosed, but with added development costs the deal was described as a six-figure investment.
SL says
Google’s keyword tool shows 40k broad, 18k phrase and 3.6k exact. As a comparison, Wordtracker is around 15k/month across G/Y/B.
No doubt it’s a perfect domain for them and we’re talking about very high-ticket items (just takes one, etc.) But how could they have come up with a 6-7 figure search volume?
And surely direct nav isn’t more than a few dozen per month? Dunno.
Jamie says
“But how could they have come up with a 6-7 figure search volume?”
But it sounded good didn’t it. 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
I think they’re adding a few keywords
Dan Sanchez says
Not sure if that site is their “added development” – I just hope it didn’t cost them six figures to put that up!
Nice way to control the used aircraft market, good buy!
Josh says
So wait, there are people out there who sit down, and search google for used aircraft…seriously? Mind you my uncle Joe always talked about picking up a jumbo when he retired lol I suppose aircraft may be a heavy word for single engine amateur pilot craft.