Secure escrow service Escrow.com has released its report on domain name transactions processed during the first quarter of this year. The total value of these transactions reached $128 million. According to Domain Name Wire, this is the highest quarterly figure recorded over the past three years.
As expected, the .COM generic top-level domain (gTLD) remained the clear leader. Moreover, it set a new record: the total value of transactions involving .COM domain names reached $89 million in the first quarter. This is the highest amount ever recorded in the quarterly Domain Investment Index reports. The average sale price of a single-word .COM domain sold through Escrow.com during the quarter reached $402,000. It should be noted, however, that this figure is indicative rather than definitive, as it is influenced by both exceptionally high and exceptionally low transaction values, which can vary significantly.
Meanwhile, Anguilla’s country-code domain, .AI, appears to have slowed its remarkable growth and reached something of a plateau. For the first time in the past eight quarters, it not only failed to grow but posted a slight decline of three percent. Nevertheless, the total value of .AI domain transactions still reached an impressive $10 million.
The median value of a domain name transaction processed through Escrow.com in the first quarter was $5,369, which is another noteworthy milestone. For the first time in the company’s history, the median price of a domain name exceeded the median price of a content-based website, which stood at $4,000. Some analysts suggest that this trend may reflect the growing influence of artificial intelligence on internet search and the declining value of content-driven websites. However, the results of a single quarter are unlikely to provide sufficient evidence for such far-reaching conclusions.
