Numeric domain properties: the next 5th Avenue

If registration of a plurality of TLDs - for a brand, word, name, phrase, etc... - is any indicator of the perceived value of a domain, then numeric domains that spell common brands and words have been growing in value over the past decade and skyrocketing over the past 2 years.

A few years ago, only a fraction of the dotcom wordnumbers for the top ranked websites in the U.S. were registered. The past 48 months or so has seen the registration of the .com and slowly the .net, and in some cases .mobi and other TLDs, for the wordnumbers of the top 10 and many of the top 100 most visited websites in the U.S.

Below is the list of the top 10 most popular websites in the U.S. per the ranking company Alexa. Next to the brand name is the number of TLDs (com/net/org/info/biz/us) that the corresponding wordnumber has been registered (including the .com).

Google 4
Yahoo 6
Myspace 2
Youtube 3
Facebook 3
Live [Windows] 4
Ebay 5
Wikipedia 2
MSN 6
Craigslist 2

For the top 10 websites in the U.S. per Alexa, each brand's wordnumber is registered at least in the .com and .net, and in some cases registered 'across the board' of TLDs, as is the case with 92466, Yahoo's wordnumber.

If we expanded this analysis beyond the top 10 websites, it would yield few surprises. We know that well over a thousand wordnumbers for brands and many tens of thousands of wordnumbers for generic words have been registered in the .com TLD and that it's rare to see more than that (the .com) registered. So, when we learned that ChaCha owned its wordnumber in the .com TLD, 242242.com, as well as all other common TLDs and also a few dozen typo-variants of 242242.com, we thought that was a special item to report, especially since ChaCha.com isn't a very popular website. Today, Alexa gives it a rank of 27,317. By most accounts, that ranking is a pretty disappointing one for an alternative search engine that is trying to break out of the pack. And it is probably deserved too. I tried ChaCha this past week for the first time. My inaugural query was a simple one: what is the toll for the Tappan Zee Bridge? The answer came back within 45 seconds and stated that the toll was $4.00. I'm glad I didn't count exact change before leaving to get in my car because when I arrived at the toll both, I learned the toll was $4.50.

ChaCha registered 242242.net/org/info/etc... late last year and bought the 242242.com domain not from us, but from a relative of Scott Smith, who is CEO and President of NumericDomains.com.