DomainTools Blog

Gabe Amey writes us about how a huge companies are wasting great generic domain names. It makes me cry to see a domain like Home Loans.com sit their and resolve to a 404 error page. That domain could generate several thousand dollars a month in Parking revenue but Wells Fargo just points it at a page that says, “No Page Found”. Eyye eyye, what a waste. That is sick.

“I don’t know why, but I have a pet peeve with large companies that hold these beautiful generic domains in their portfolio, yet they do nothing with it. For example, take a look at Home Loans.com, owned by Wells Fargo. According to Compete.com, that domain gets almost 400 unique visitors a day, yet for some reason they rather let that name site idle than forward it to their web page regarding mortgage loans. I just don’t get it!

Imagine how much revenue they are leaving on the table probably because of the lack of knowledge regarding the power this generic domain holds. If they forwarded this domain to their mortgage page (like Bank of American did with their domain loans.com) and assuming that this name gets 12,000 type-ins a month, with a conservative 1% conversion rate (people using Wells Fargo for their home loan), with revenues of $4000 per loan (very realistic in this industry) - we are talking potential revenues of $480,000 a month or $5,760,000 annually!

Yet for some reason Richard Kovacevich (the recently departed CEO of Wells Fargo) or any other high ranking management personnel for that matter, fail to realize that they can probably add $5 million dollars in annual revenue by simply instructing some systems administrator to take 2 minutes out of his/her time to forward the domain to their mortgage home page. 2 minutes of work = $5 million in revenues - what a concept….if only they knew.

Wells Fargo is not the only one missing the boat - Fidelity owns Retire.com….but instead of it being forwarded to their 401K home page….this domain is being wasted into internet obscurity. I’m sure there’s huge list of similar big name companies under-utilizing their generic domains for what seems like no good reason at all.

It’s still baffles me that it’s almost 2008 and these companies don’t get it…..this truly signifies that it’s still really early in the domain game, don’t you think?”

Thanks for the heads up Gabe. If anyone else spots a great generic domain owned by a huge corporation that is wasting please post in the comments below.