In the United States, where dot-com is still king, few have paid attention to the sudden spike in activity at the dot-us (.us) domain extension, which grew by 21 percent in the third quarter. Many of these .us domains are being bought by companies based outside the USA. Over the past 12 months, .US registry DNS lookups have increased by 250 percent to approximately 10 billion per month.
According to Massachusetts-based Sedo, whose company name is an acronym for “Search Engine For Domain Offers,” said the usage of .us domain extensions spiked recently due to companies looking to strengthen their online presence in the States. Sedo, which maintains a domain database of over two million listings, serves as an eBay of sorts for domain negotiation.
One such negotiation ended with Natural Foods, Inc. buying foods.us for $20,000 from Christian Zouzas, a domain holder with a over 200 .us domains posted for sale on Sedo.com. Zouzas expects other domains like movies.us and America.us, to fetch a pretty penny.
“Companies across all markets are now considering domains with .US extensions, especially those looking to enhance their marketing initiatives and grow their U.S. customer base,” said Zouzas.
“More companies are contacting me and researching domains available on Sedo.com, as they recognize the opportunity to drive their U.S. presence with a new .US domain name.”
Recently, a number of .us sales have been made to foreign companies. Domains sold to foreign companies include volvocars.us, hitachi.us, and ikea.us.
Outside the United States and most notably across Europe, most domain extensions are affiliated with the country in which the company operates. However, in the U.S., the standard is the .com extension,” said Matt Bentley, CEO of Sedo.com.
“Many organizations, especially those based overseas, are strengthening their identity in American markets with a .US domain. As the extension grows in popularity, the value of owning a .US domain increases dramatically.”
