Daily Domainer

The three Spanish-language domains busca.com ("search" n., "search!" or "he/she searches"), empresas.com ("companies") and economia.com ("economy") have attracted bids of €101,000, €61,000 and €35,000 respectively on Sedo's domain auction service. The reserve price hasn't been met for any of these domains, and there are 7 days to go until the auctions' conclusion.

A heated discussion has erupted on a Spanish domainer blog as to what this all means. Some domainers see a portent of a coming "auction bubble" for Spanish domain names, while others are excited that Spanish domains finally appear to be taking off.

Still others suspect that there may be shill bidders involved who are conspiring to generate publicity for the domains (if so, it appears to be working), and yet another domainer expressed his confidence in Sedo being on top of things and having certified all bidders. (All it takes is a credit card or cell phone to pass the Sedo certification. This is, however, as much as one could reasonably expect before things become too inconvenient for bidders to actually participate.)

The next few days will show how high these bids are going to go. empresas.com and economia.com are certainly worth the current bids, but the Daily Domainer is having a hard time trying to see a six-figure value in busca.com.

Notable past transactions in the Spanish domain world include amistad.com ("friendship" - sold for $100,000), exito.com ("success" - sold for $121,560), dominio.com ("domain" - sold for $120,000), vuelos.com ("flights" - sold for $150,000), viajes.com ("trips" - sold for $300,000) and juegos.com ("games"), which was originally sold for $1,000,000 in 2004, and was under negotiations to be sold yet again for $10 to $15 million in late 2006. However, it is not known if that sale actually went through.