Another good search tool is gone, and I hope the domain marketplaces fill the void.
I’ve commented before about how it’s frustrating that domain marketplaces such as Sedo and Afternic have horrible search. They are leaving lots of money on the table by not making their entire inventory searchable by more metrics.
This weekend I went to DomainTools’ marketplace section. It used to have a nifty tool to search for domains in the aftermarket. It scored each domain, giving a relative quality marker to its sorting algorithm.
Alas, DomainTools shut down its marketplace tools earlier this year. A message on its website states “DomainTools has retired the Domain Marketplace functionality as we increase focus on our security mission.”
I really hope marketplaces will take notice and make it easier for investors to search through their inventory. Sedo took some baby steps with its expired domain inventory but it’s time to do more.
I think that marketplaces could have a significant impact on liquidity and sell-through rates by improving the search experience.
Totally agree and not just to make it easier for investors to manage things, but to make it easier for potential end user buyers to find relevant names.
I’ve tried using these marketplaces for names I wanted to buy for my own business purposes and they are pretty useless.
I gave up on Sedo and Afternic’s search and filter features a long time ago. Afternic’s is particularly worthless. ExpiredDomains.net at least allows for easier searches of Sedo’s inventory and is more helpful in that regard.
ExpiredDomains.net is great but only has a fraction of Sedo’s inventory.
Try using Dofo.com … it’s a bit slow but aggregates many different aftermarket feeds including all the big players.
So infuriating
Afternic’s SIMPLE search hardly works half the time – see here https://cl.ly/e78745d44f6d
Additionaly Sedo – their OWN api doesn’t know the difference between make offer and BIN. Try searching BIN names on Dofo, Expired Domains, etc, none of them show properly. see here https://cl.ly/246101bc2e0b
What about https://dofo.com 🙂
I checked out Dofo based on Bill Sweetman’s recommendation. It’s certainly a leg up from marketplace search features, but it doesn’t have the “domainer” search functions I need. I’ll put together a list of those needs.
Thanks, Andrew, I’m looking forward to hearing from your comments about dofo.com.
DomainTools search was far from perfect. I created it because search was so frustrating and inventory was so spread out. A truly great search has never been made. V2 of search at DomainTools would have made price minimums discoverable. If a domain owner refused to sell at $20k, that should be a known floor that the market should know. Sad to see my old company turn off a great features, but it was 15 years old. Nothing had been inovated on since I left.
I told what we are doing to serve a better search in this interview:
Dofo aims to fix domain search (https://domainnamewire.com/2020/05/27/interview-dofo-aims-to-fix-domain-search/)