Domain Industry Experts Share 2013 Predictions (Part 1)

At the end of the year, I always look back to see what transpired and try to make some internal predictions about what is going to happen in this business in the next year. This helps me plan for the future and helps to shape my business strategy going forward.

I reached out to a number of domain name industry friends and colleagues requesting that they make a prediction for the industry in 2013. I received many great replies, and they are shared below in no particular order. Some of these experts went above and beyond to offer more than one prediction, and I linked to those in a separate post.

Because of the great response, I have broken this up into two articles, the second of which will be posted on Monday.

I want to give a big “thank you” to the people who were willing to take the time to reply and share a prediction.

Tim Chen, CEO, DomainTools  (These are Tim’s opinions and not necessarily shared by DomainTools) – “The U.S. government will attempt to wield increasing influence at the DNS level, in part due to what I expect to be rampant abuse of the new gTLD space.”

Rick Schwartz, Founder, TRAFFIC – “It won’t be boring”

Jeff Gabriel, CEO, Domain Advisors – “Me being Nostradamus of the domain industry I predict that any of the new extensions being released will have little to no affect of the values of .com, .net, .org or any of the other established extensions. This will cause the values of these extensions to remain relatively stagnant where you will see few multi-million dollar reported sales like this year to the public. This does not mean multi-million dollar sales are not happening as my own brokerage, DomainAdvisors closed quite a few unreported ones. Proportionately speaking there must be a lot less than past years because there are so few.

Furthermore, due to the continued downturn in parking, and the maturity of our industry, we will see contraction and consolidation of companies. I feel that some of the companies in our space will be either purchased or closed, and few new companies entering the market to replace them. Our industry is in need of something new, and exciting that creates growth and profitability for all rather than finding it by selling assets and I hope 2013 brings it.”

Phillip McKegney, CEO & Co-Founder, DomainAgents – “2013 will be an interesting year. There is much talk regarding the release of new gTLD’s, often with buzzy descriptions like transformative, monumental or revolutionary. While without a doubt there will be some highly publicized winners, the vast majority of people who “invest” in these domains will see a very poor return or a loss.

Those who haven’t been around for previous cycles of gTLD releases will likely be running with the herd and may have a difficult experience. As with anything it’s always smart to follow the money. Highly vested parties will almost always cheer for their cause. Use your head, don’t drink the Kool Aid.

Aside from the gTLD releases, I generally expect that lower tier names within established extensions to decrease in value and for mid to higher tier names to increase in value. The volume of secondary market names to sell will see a marked increase.

Oh, and of course, DomainAgents is going to kick some ass.”

John Ferber, Co-Founder and Chairman, Domain Holdings – “My prediction is that for the people who work genuine and hard and put forth the right effort the domain industry will continue to provide prosperity to those who nurture and participate in it truly the right way.”

Brett Lewis, Attorney, Lewis & Lin – “This is the year that I finally wrestle John Berryhill in jello. For Charity, of course.”

Bill Sweetman, Vice President of the Domain Portfolio at Tucows – I think 2013 is going to be the year that the general public starts to catch on to the reality that the options to the ‘right of the dot’ are about to expand dramatically. I expect that in the second half of the year we’ll see a defining, “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” moment where (with the support of mainstream media) the ‘new domains’ become a hot topic, especially in marketing, branding, and advertising circles. This will likely be aided and abetted by some traditional and social media marketing awareness campaigns by some of the deeper pocketed new gTLD registries and partner registrars who are hoping to get a jump on the competition. Buckle up kids, this is going to be a fun ride!”

Evan Horowitz, CEO, Hunting Moon – “I predict that unsavory domain marketing methods- such as falsely inquiring to purchase domains solely to solicit domains to broker- will lead to problems for those interfering with domains being brokered via exclusive contracts with brokers that respect best practices.”

Braden Pollock, Founder,  Legal Brand Marketing  – “Twenty-thirteen will be the year of the Google-monster. (As if last year and the year before weren’t). Google will continue to turn the dial on everyone standing between them and the advertiser, e.g. domain parking, EMD’s, leadgen, review sites, travel, auto, finance and every other middleman category.

Google acquires dozens of companies each year. That may increase in 2013.

Why index Yelp reviews? Just buy Zagat Guide. Why deliver TripAdvisor pages? Buy Frommer’s instead. Expedia? Sorry. With the ITA purchase, Google can book flights directly. Groupon? Nope. Google acquired Punchd, DealMap, Zave Networks DailyDeal and Incentive Targeting Inc to create Google Offers. (There are plenty more purchases that we don’t know about since most are not public)

I don’t mean to discuss Google’s push into browsers, cellular, social, file storage, wallet, maps, TV, music, ebooks and, believe it or not, parcel pick up stations or any of the myriad of other channels they’re in. This is about Google creating and owning content. Not just videos on YouTube, but all the content we used to use Google to search for. It’s becoming a walled garden. If Google owns the content (to deliver ads and collect data), why serve up someone else’s sites? And don’t get me started on Google’s gTLD applications. If Google is granted .film, how well will .movie sites be indexed? Can you say “conflict of interest”?

Since I’m in leadgen what scares me the most is their push into my world. BeatThatQuote.com was acquired to create Google Advisor as their leadgen platform. At the moment it’s just credit card offers although they’ve tested mortgage and bank account offers as well. (Lookout BankRate). I expect to Google Advisor to expand into other verticals. The EMD shift hurt but the further push into leadgen will really cause some havoc around here.

The only answer is to look for other avenues. I realize that Google has 85% of the search traffic but there’s more to the internet than just search. Put your thinking caps on, and buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. I am going to ask a follow up question for Braden, although anyone can answer.

    1. What other avenues of getting traffic to a lead gen site are there other than social and apps? Even then

    2. Is it still a good idea to use EMD for lead gen sites, or better to build around brandable domains?

    3. At what point do you think governments start to step in to stop Google from creating this monopoly

    • @Yury
      1. You can buy traffic from many different sources including, other search engines and parking platforms. Plus there are lots of networks for placing ads in apps, blogs and related sites.
      2. I’d stick with EMD’s as there’s nothing Google can do about direct nav. It will always be there.
      3. The Feds will stop Google from buying Yahoo, Groupon or some other major purchase that would restrict competition. Beyond that, Google can buy small companies (ahem, under a billion $$)and fly under the radar as they develop new channels.

    • I don’t see how Google can legally purchase any “content” site and not be anti-competitive.

      Take beatthatquote.com for example. When a competitor notices that beatthatquote.com ranks higher on Google than their own site, they can sue Google for being anti-competitive because google has the advantage in ranking their own site since they know every single ranking factor and no one else does.

  2. I predict
    –Domain 4 rent will popup like a mushroom 😉
    –Test before you buy domains …
    –Seo … Selling domain name and service (eg. pr 3/serp )with money back Guarantee..
    –more private domain brokers will be on demand..
    –new law on domain trading might be highlighted
    — Big pie of newtlds will be wasted for marketing/ superball/G ad/ tv and so on..

    What ever might happen.. What ever it might turn out ..
    Remember We all have a passion for what we do …
    And there is no other place that we will rather be then talking about domain again in coming year ..

    Thank you all for this beautiful year specially Elliot 🙂
    Wish you all the best and
    Happy New year

  3. Hi Elliot

    When I was at namedrive event in London in 2007 this post Tommy Butler was keen to push development, by branding and getting repeat traffic. The better the site looks and the more content and information, he opined, the more repeat traffic won and advertisers will feel they want to work and be associated with you. If your sites link to each other and have good content the more likely you will be to keep the customer within your site. The key question is, “would I go to that page and use it?”

    I said then that in five years time parking you domain your business will be dead in the water. Also said have to look at people habits and study habits to understand how to get sales. sad then dump your crap domains and focus on good quality domains.

    • That’s a great review on the future thoughts of the pro’s.
      Always good to ponder and use as guidance before setting out projects in business.
      Cheers!

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