What Is the GoDaddy Valuation?

GoDaddy's valuation of domains is one factor you may use as a rough guide if you plan to purchase a domain at auction and place pay-per-click advertisements on your site. These ads earn you money every time a visitor clicks your ads. GoDaddy defines valuation as the "pay per click (PPC) average revenue for a domain over a period of time," an imprecise definition.

Background

GoDaddy offers domain name registration by several methods. You can purchase domains directly for a flat fee or buy expired domain names through auctions. If you peruse auctions for expired domains, you will see a column showing the "valuation" for each domain name. This number can range from double digit amounts to more than several thousand dollars, or may not show at all for some domain names in the auction listings.

Usefulness

GoDaddy does not explain how long that "period of time" in its valuation definition is, or whether it differs between domains. In addition, GoDaddy states that all ranks on its auction listings are estimates for domain names as is, and do not reflect future ranks. Valuation does not guarantee a set amount of revenue once you create a website located at the domain name. Valuation may not aid in your decision to purchase a domain name if you do not intend to use pay-per-click, or any, advertising on your website.

Considerations

GoDaddy provides several categroies of data, of which valuation is just one, that can influence your decision to purchase a domain from their auctions. These data include Alexa rankings. Alexa is a third-party Internet metric company that measures websites statistics to compare and ranks websites. The company describes this rank as "based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users." Michael H. Fleischner recommends this rank as one tool for webmasters in his book "SEO Made Simple." GoDaddy also provides PageRank for domains at auction. A higher PageRank causes your website to appear closer to the top of Google searches, based on links from other websites to your own. If your focus is on visitors, rather than revenue, you may place more importance on these factors than valuation.

Expert Insight

Jamie Zoch, who has made a career of domain name investments and offers advice to consumers in his blog Dot Weekly, explains that you should not purchase a domain based on valuation or even traffic stats alone. In 2009, he wrote an article about purchasing domain names and traffic stats on his blog. In the article, he explains that "keyword(s) [in the domain name] should be the main reason you are purchasing the domain name," because you cannot test valuation or other statistics until you actually purchase a domain and set it up for your intended usage. GoDaddy does not provide valuation for all domain names nor do they provide search engine rankings, Alexa rank or estimated monthly traffic for all domain auctions, but you can always consider keywords when making a domain purchase.

References

• Dot Weekly; Godaddy.com: Valuation Dollar Value. Trust It?; Jamie Zoch; 2009
• GoDaddy Domain Auctions
• Dot Weekly; Buying Domain Name Based on Traffic Stats; Jamie Zoch 2010
• Webmaster Tools Help: Google Basics
• Alexa: About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
• "SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine"; Michael H. Fleischner; 2009