NAMES, HISTORY AND SALES
A domain is three different assets wearing one name.
You might be pricing a memorable word, a pile of old links, or a website with readers and revenue. Those are not the same sale. An automated appraisal that returns one number has already mixed them up.
Reviewed 30 October 2026. Worked prices in the examples are labelled hypotheticals, not recorded sales. How we mark illustrations.
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Start by saying which value you mean
The name itself can be worth money with no website attached. Short, easy to say, and obvious to a buyer with a budget: that is brand and resale value. Comparable completed sales are the evidence. An asking price on a marketplace is not a sale.
The link profile is a second asset. Other sites point at the domain. Some of those links are relevant and old. Some are spam left by the last owner. Third-party scores summarise this. They are not a price, and they are not a Google ranking.
The business is a third asset. Rankings, subscribers, revenue, content and a trading history can dwarf the bare name. Selling that is a website sale. Calling it a domain sale hides the thing the buyer is actually paying for. If you only own the name, do not borrow a revenue multiple from someone else's business.
DR, DA and Authority Score
Ahrefs Domain Rating, Moz Domain Authority and Semrush Authority Score are three vendors' numbers. Google does not publish them and does not use them as a ranking factor. Semrush says the same about website-authority scores in general: they are an industry estimate.
Ahrefs describes Domain Rating as a 0 to 100 score of backlink-profile strength. It counts unique domains that link with at least one followed link, how strong those domains are, and how widely they themselves link out. Ahrefs says DR ignores traffic, spam signals and domain age. A high DR can be a lot of links and still be a poor website. Ahrefs also says the scale is comparative. A DR of 30 is not "good" in the abstract. It is higher or lower than the sites you are comparing.
Moz describes Domain Authority as a 0 to 100 prediction of how likely a site is to rank, built from link data in a model that changes as the index changes. Moz tells you to compare it with competitors, not to celebrate a rise that your competitors also saw. Because the model moves, a DA from last year is not a stable certificate.
Semrush describes Authority Score as a 0 to 100 compound of backlinks, estimated organic traffic, and spam or manipulation checks. That is a different recipe from DR, which is why the numbers disagree. Semrush's checker page lists signals such as links from domains that share an IP, a backlink pile with almost no rankings, and an unusually high share of followed links. Those checks are Semrush's checks. They are still not Google's.
| Score | Publisher | What they say goes in | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Rating | Ahrefs | Followed referring domains, their strength, how widely they link out. Logarithmic 0 to 100 | Not traffic, not spam filtering, not a sale price |
| Domain Authority | Moz | A predictive model on their link index, 0 to 100 | Not a fixed grade. The index and the model change |
| Authority Score | Semrush | Links, estimated organic traffic, and spam-pattern checks, 0 to 100 | Not a Google score, and not interchangeable with DR or DA |
Use the scores as a sort order when you have a list of sites and you need to know which ones to open first. Then open them. A referring domain with a high score and a page of unrelated casino links is not a recommendation. It is a risk.
A research order that survives a sales call
No single login answers "should I buy this?". Split the question.
| Question | Where to look | A result you can write down |
|---|---|---|
| What did similar names sell for? | A completed-sales database such as NameBio, plus marketplace sold lists | Extension, words, date, and whether the buyer was an end user or an investor |
| Who controls it today? | whois and the registry. For .uk, Nominet. For many generic endings, the registrar shown in WHOIS | Registrar, expiry, and whether the contact is privacy-redacted |
| Where does it point? | dig for NS, A and MX | Nameservers, website address, and whether mail is live |
| What used to be on it? | The Wayback Machine at web.archive.org | Years of real content, or a history of doorway pages and redirects |
| Is the word someone else's trade mark? | The UK trade mark search on gov.uk, and the register for the market you will trade in | A matching mark in the same class, or a note that you did not find one |
| Why is the score high? | Ahrefs, Moz or Semrush, then the actual linking pages | A sample of ten links you would be willing to show a buyer |
On a machine with the tools installed, the mechanical checks look like this. Replace the name.
whois example.co.uk
dig example.co.uk NS
dig example.co.uk A
dig example.co.uk MXwhois output varies by registry. Privacy services hide the person and still show the registrar and dates. dig shows where the name goes now. If MX records exist, someone may be receiving mail. Buying the name without a plan for that mail is how invoices go missing. Our domain and hosting guide separates the name from the website, and the DNS guide explains the record types those dig queries return.
Automated appraisals, including the free tools registrars put next to the buy button, are a prompt. They are not an offer. If an appraisal says £2,000 and you cannot find three completed sales of similar names, the appraisal is a story. Write down the sales you did find, including the ones that were cheap. The cheap ones are the market too.
Expired and aged names
An old registration date does not carry authority with it. The useful question is what the name did. Open the Wayback Machine and click through several years. Look for a real site, a parked page, a redirect to another brand, or a block of spam. Then look at the links. A name that spent 2019 redirecting to a loan site can still have those links. Search engines may treat the domain as that history, not as your new blog.
Check the trade mark before you fall in love with the wording. In the UK the public search is at gov.uk/search-for-trademark. A matching mark in the class you want to trade in is a reason to walk away, even if the domain is cheap. Other countries have their own registers. A .com aimed at US customers needs a US check as well.
After you buy, decide whether you are continuing the old topic or starting clean. If the old links are irrelevant or spammy, do not build a business on the hope that the score will transfer. A disavow file is not a ritual that fixes a bad purchase. Sometimes the right move is a new name that has no history at all.
Redirects deserve their own look. If the expired name 301s to a different site, the links may be aimed at that destination, not at a site you will put on the name. Turn the redirect off only when you own it, and watch whether anything important breaks. The domain expiry guide covers the calendar from the owner's side, including what happens when a name you already use lapses.
Buying, selling and transferring
Retail and wholesale are different prices. An end user who wants the exact name for a company may pay more than an investor who needs to resell it. If you are the investor, price for the people who buy names all week, not for the one founder who might appear. If you are the founder, do not pay an investor price for a name you could approximate with a different word.
Here is a hypothetical set, so the method is visible. It is not a record of real sales. Suppose three similar two-word .co.uk names sold in the last two years for £400, £750 and £1,200, all to small businesses, and the name you hold is the same shape. An asking price of £3,000 needs a reason those three sales did not have: a shorter word, a buyer you have already spoken to, or traffic you can show. "The appraisal said so" is not that reason. If you need a faster sale, the wholesale price is closer to what another investor will pay, which is often below the last end-user sale.
Ways to sell:
- A buy-it-now price on a marketplace, when you know the number and you want a simple checkout.
- Make-offer, when the likely buyers are few and a conversation is worth more than a sticker.
- An auction, when you want a deadline and you can accept the result.
- A broker, when the name is valuable enough that their fee is smaller than the buyer you cannot reach yourself.
Fees and minimum commissions sit on the marketplace page. Read them before you list. A £500 sale with a 20 percent commission and a payment delay is not a £500 sale.
Transfers fail for dull reasons. For many generic top-level domains, ICANN's transfer policy is the rulebook: the name must be unlocked at the current registrar, and you need the auth code that registrar issues. A common lock is 60 days after a new registration or after a transfer in. Confirm it for the ending you hold, because the policy is not a substitute for the registry's own rule. .uk names are Nominet's system, not a copy of the .com flow. Nominet's own support pages are the ones to follow for a .uk push or registrar change. While the transfer runs, do not let the name expire. Renewal during a confused transfer is cheaper than losing the name.
Write down the current nameservers before you move the domain. A transfer that also switches DNS will take the website and the mail with it if you have not recreated the records. The move the domain without moving the site guide is the sequence. Mail is the record people forget. Check MX before and after.
What a sponsored article is worth
A sponsored article is a piece of publishing with a commercial arrangement. Its price is production, the audience you actually have, and the rights the buyer wants. It is not a multiple of Domain Rating. DR does not know your email list, your real readers, or whether the piece takes a day or a week.
A worked cost, using a hypothetical rate so the structure is clear: five hours of reporting and editing at £40 an hour is £200 of production. Add the time to brief, to amend, and to place the piece. If a buyer wants exclusive use for a year, that is a different product from a normal post that stays on your site. Quote those separately. The £40 figure is an illustration of a costing method, not a survey of UK freelance rates.
Paid links that exist to manipulate search rankings are the line Google's spam policies care about. If money changed hands for a link, qualify it. rel="sponsored" is the attribute Google documents for that. A nofollow link is the older alternative they still describe. Do not sell a followed link on the strength of a DR number and call it an editorial placement. The article can be useful and still mark the commercial link honestly. Readers and the policy are both served by the same label.
Traffic you cite to a sponsor should be traffic you can open in your analytics, for a period you name. A score is not a substitute for that screenshot. If you do not have analytics yet, say so, and price the piece as production plus distribution you can describe.
Three picks
Register a new name and build on it
Choose a fresh registration when you need an address for a project and you do not want someone else's links. Check the trade mark, check social handles if the brand matters, and renew it for long enough that a forgotten year does not drop the name. Pair it with hosting only when you are ready to publish. The name and the hosting are separate bills.
Buy an expired name after the history checks
Choose this when Wayback, the link sample and the trade mark search are all boring in a good way. Budget time to clean redirects and to watch the site in Search Console after launch. Walk away when the archive is spam, even if DR looks impressive beside a new domain.
Sell, with a number you can defend
Choose a marketplace or a broker once you have written down comparable sales and your fees. Price retail and wholesale as two numbers. Unlock the name and have the auth code only when a buyer is real. Keep DNS stable until the website and the mail have a home.
Questions that come up in negotiations
Is a higher DR always worth more money?
No. DR is a link-popularity summary. Two names with the same DR can have completely different sales, traffic and trade mark risk. Use it to decide what to inspect, then price from sales and from what you are actually transferring.
Should I buy because the appraisal is high?
Only if completed sales of similar names sit near that appraisal. If they do not, the tool is optimistic. Tools are allowed to be wrong. Your invoice is not.
Can I move the name and leave the website where it is?
Yes. Keep the nameservers, or copy every record, and do not let the transfer become an accidental DNS change. Mail is the usual casualty.
What should I hand a sponsor instead of DR?
A description of the audience, a traffic range you can support, what the article will cover, how long it stays up, and how the link will be marked. That is a rate card. A screenshot of Domain Rating is not.
Verdict
Price the name from comparable sales, the link profile from the links themselves, and the business from the business. Use DR, DA and Authority Score only as different vendors' sorting tools, and never as a Google score or a pound figure. For an expired name, read the archive and the trade mark register before you pay. For a sponsored article, cost the work and mark paid links as sponsored. The laptop in the photograph is the whole toolkit: a registrar, a few command-line checks, and the discipline to write down what you found.
Sources checked 30 October 2026: Ahrefs on Domain Rating, Moz on Domain Authority, Semrush on Authority Score, ICANN transfer policy, Nominet, UK trade mark search, Wayback Machine, and Google spam policies.