DomainTools Blog

AZ.com is a rare two letter domain that has huge potential. The domain was registered in 1994 and has been locked up for years by the current owner. A through Z is often abbreviated as AZ. The country of Azerbaijan uses these initials. The state of Arizona also uses these initials. So there are so many multiple ways the domain can be used but only one company can control it. There are only 676 two letter domain names in the world and most of those are owned by large corporations. AA.com for American Airlines. AB.com for Allen-Bradley. AC.com for Accenture, AD.com for Artificial Development, Inc. And the list goes on and on. BA.com for British Airways. CA.com for Computer Associates. DA.com now directs to eBay Express (Did eBay buy this. Secret launch perhaps?). GE.com for General Electric. GM.com for General Motors. A status symbol for large corporations has always been their stock ticker and more recently two letter domain names.

Barnes and Noble had a hard to spell domain name, so they simplified the way people reach them by enabling BN.com. Just off the top of my head, I could see Amazon.com wanting this domain because it is a natural abbreviation for them and has the double meaning of “everything”. Large domainers always regret when they sell these precise domains. The value of two letter domain names only goes up in value. They only made a few of them and now they are restricted by ICANN rules from ever being registered again. The only way to buy a two letter dotcom is in the aftermarket. So the price will only go up on in the future.

We think there will be heavy bidding on this domain. And it will be one of the biggest domains of the auction.

This two character dotcom has Overture scores off the chart and it is very rare to see this kind of 2 character available. While talking with the owner he gave me some good background on the domain as well,

“AZ.COM equals time saved. Could the 2-letter domain AZ.COM be the most valuable in existence? The fact that user adoption and retention can make or break a good website address could be the key.

Given excellent content, the first of two primary factors driving a URL’s early adoption is EOR or “ease of recall”. Is the domain name easy to remember? I.E., Are there the fewest letters to remember or are there a multitude? Can the domain be remembered by association? What type of association? Is the association of a common english word best or is it a combination of multiple multi-lingual mechanical associations? The “first” and the “last” letters of the alphabet in most languages is the A and the Z and they are ‘mechanically’ located next to each other on a typical QWERTY keyboard. The brain locks in AZ.COM after just one use.

The second primary factor involving early user adoption also involves the user’s experience and that is “ease of entry” or EOE. How many seconds does an average user take to type in this domain? What is the yearly, quarterly, or daily average in man hours spent worldwide typing in this domain? The answer might surprise you. Let’s be conservative. Let’s assume an average typist’s speed of around 350 CPM (characters per minute). Let’s assume the statistics at http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm are current. Based on that information (10 searches per day per billion users efficiently typing in the 10 characters of google.com into their address bar) the total number of man hours would be 100 billion characters per day divided by 350 CPM divided by 60 minutes or 4.7 million man hours per day.

AZ.COM requires around half the number of keystrokes over GOOGLE.COM which is a savings of around 2 million man hours per day. Most of those users are in western, English speaking countries. Assuming a 5 dollar per hour labor rate, the daily cash savings is at least 8 figures over a typical 6 character domain. Based on the previous assumptions, the yearly cash savings is almost 4 billion dollars.”

To Bid on this rare domain name please attend the DomainTools Live Auction. It will take place August 15th in Seattle during the last day of the Domain Roundtable. Bidders can also bid online. Please stay tuned for information on how to bid remotely.