I'll No Bid on this one, then

[Chabrenas]

I'm not yet into buying domains, but I thought it was time to take a look at part of the process just to get a feel for it.

Today's GoDaddy auction includes century21-manchester.com, Buy Now for $11. Ignoring the potential problems with a well-known international brand name for the moment, I checked Century21 for offices and property lists to see what demand for that local domain name might be.

- There is a Manchester in each of 4 States in the US, and 47 offices. (I've only been to the NH one).
- Searching century21.co.uk for Manchester properties returned only a page full of apartments in one block in Halifax. It's a long time since I've been to Manchester, but I'm surprised Century21 isn't represented there. Is that true?

Moral: townname-businessname.com may not be worth much if there are several towns with the same name.

[petertdavis]

- There is a Manchester in each of 4 States in the US, and 47 offices. (I've only been to the NH one).

Did you mean 40 states? I don't know exactly how many Manchesters are in the US, but I'd bet there are more states with one than without. But, yea, Manchester NH is the biggest one we have, not nearly as big as the UK one though. Agree with all your other points about the domain though. It might be marketable, and especially so since the Century21 business model is franchises, so a talented domain squatter could potentially get multiple businesses interested in buying a domain like that.

[Chabrenas]

4 states that century21.com admits to having Manchester offices in. Sorry, I should have been more specifc

Good point: I hadn't thought about the fact that the targets would be franchisees. I wonder whether their franchise terms allow them to run their own domains using the brand name, though.