Everything About 2-Letter .COM Domain Names
.com is the most popular and valuable extension on the Internet. Every day, tens of .com domains sell for thousands of dollars. 2-letter .com domain names have a higher value than any .com domain and are popular because they are short and easily memorable.
In this post, we will look into the statistics of 2-letter .com domain names. They have more common points than just being short and ending with .com.
They Are All Registered
Only 676 two-letter .com can exist (26*26=676) and all of them have been registered since 2000. The last registered one is cm.com which was registered on 16 January 2015.
CM.com domain name was deleted in 2013 due to abusive usage. Nobody could register it again because the registry of .com extension, VeriSign, doesn’t allow to register 2-character domain names anymore. CM.com’s past owners from the 1990s filed a lawsuit claiming that the domain was stolen from them years ago. The judge ordered VeriSign to register the domain name to the complainant. Read the full story on DNW.com.
The oldest 2-letter .com domain name is hp.com. It’s registered in 1986 and owned by Hewlett-Packard. It’s also one of the 100 Oldest Domain Names. 6 of the 100 oldest domain names are also 2-letter .com domains.
534 of 2-letter .com domains were registered between 1994-1999. Only 12 of them were registered after 2000.
Two Letters Can Mean Anything
Two letters can form a word in many different languages. For example, fe means faith in Spanish.
Some interjections and stop words such as “in”, “on”, and “by” also consist of 2 letters.
You can see lots of acronyms with 2 letters on AcronymFinder.com. For example, AA has more than 300 definitions.
All ISO Alpha-2 country codes consist of two letters, these codes are also used to define country-code extensions (ccTLDs):
- US: United States
- UK: United Kingdom
- FR: France
- TR: Turkey
- CN: China
- etc.
CentralNIC, a registry backend provider, is marketing some country-code names like a second-level domain extension: cn.com, de.com, us.com, br.com, uk.com, and eu.com. It allows users to create and use web addresses like stoneinstitute.us.com for $55/year.
2-Letter English Words In Domains
It’s better to mention 2-letter English words separately from others. Because they have a very high value.
- AD.COM: This highly valuable domain name looks like found its place. Verizon Media’s ad service uses this domain name to communicate with advertisers.
- BE.COM: Be.com is the website of a French fashion and lifestyle magazine Be.
- DO.COM: It’s for sale on Sedo and owned by a Chinese registrant.
- HE.COM: It’s the website of Hurricane Electric Internet Services
- HI.COM: HI Holdings owns hi.com.
- OK.COM: It says “good stuff is coming soon.”
- PI.COM: It shows a parking page that indicates the domain name is for sale for $9.3 million.
2 Letter .COM Domain Sales
According to Namebio.com, there are 95 sales with 2-letter .com domain names. The total volume of the sales is $63.6 million.
The most expensive sale is fb.com, which was bought by Facebook for $8.5 million in 2010. Facebook uses this domain name to redirect users to its main website, facebook.com, and has some websites under subdomains on fb.com, such as about.fb.com.
Another important sale on the top 2-letter .com sales list is mi.com which was bought by the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Xiaomi for $3.6 million in 2014.
The cheapest 2-letter .com domain sale is ZL.com at $45,100. The sale took place in 2008.
The average price of the reported 2-letter .com domain sales is $670 thousand.
China is in The Market
In our previous analyzes, we showed that people from China have been becoming more active in the global domain market than ever. This situation can be attributed to the improvement of China’s economy.
24% (161) of the 2-letter .com domain names are owned by Chinese holders. Most of them changed hands in the last few years.
Other countries that are active in the 2-letter .com market are the US, UK, and Canada. More than 100 of 676 2-letter .com domains’ Whois info are protected by Whois privacy services. So, we needed to investigate further to determine the registrant country and increase accuracy.
Everybody Wants Them
There are 16 cases filed by several complainants to take over 2-letter domain names. Only 4 of them transferred to the complainant. All of the others are declined or terminated.
In 2000, the German national broadcaster Deutsche Welle filed a dispute to take dw.com. The panelist declined its request and decided that the complainant tried to do reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH). DW.com is now owned by Deutsche Welle, the company probably bought the domain name from the previous owner.
| DOMAIN | DATE | DECISION |
|---|---|---|
| dw.com | 2000 | RDNH |
| jt.com | 2000 | Transferred |
| vz.com | 2000 | Denied |
| pi.com | 2000 | Denied |
| xi.com | 2004 | Transferred |
| op.com | 2004 | Transferred |
| rl.com | 2006 | Denied |
| mk.com | 2007 | Terminated |
| bb.com | 2008 | Transferred |
| bs.com | 2008 | Denied |
| yu.com | 2012 | Denied |
| we.com | 2014 | Terminated |
| nf.com | 2015 | Denied |
| wi.com | 2015 | Denied |
| kq.com | 2016 | Denied |
| zl.com | 2016 | Terminated |
Almost 50% of 2 Letter .COMs Are Not Used
According to dofo.com’s data, 335 of them are being used actively. Some big companies use 2-letter domains for their main websites:
- American Airlines: AA.com
- Burger King: BK.com
- Commission Junction: CJ.com
- Dow Jones: DJ.com
- Deutsche Bank: DB.com
- General Electric: GE.com
- General Motors: GM.com
- Texas Instruments: TI.com
- Volkswagen: VW.com
- and more…
126 of the 2-letter .com domains don’t have a website but are being redirected to other domains:
- UE.com -> ultimateears.com
- ME.com -> apple.com
- LC.com -> marriott.com
- UD.com -> uniteddomains.com
- and 122 more.
191 of them have no website, at all.
24 of the 2-letter .com domain names are parked for selling or monetizing.
Most Popular 2-Letter .COMs
| DOMAIN | RANK |
|---|---|
| qq.com | 5 |
| jd.com | 11 |
| vk.com | 23 |
| yy.com | 72 |
| rt.com | 322 |
| hp.com | 356 |
| td.com | 452 |
| go.com | 494 |
| as.com | 590 |
| hm.com | 606 |
| ea.com | 665 |
| xe.com | 677 |
| mi.com | 781 |
| wp.com | 834 |
| dw.com | 903 |
| ft.com | 1,160 |
| aa.com | 1,627 |
| xm.com | 1,788 |
| lg.com | 1,957 |
| ig.com | 2,133 |
Popularity data was taken from Alexa.
There are 15 domain names in the Alexa Top 1 Thousand Websites List. The most popular one is QQ.com, a web portal, and a mailbox provider from China. QQ.com is the fifth most popular website in the world.
The second most popular domain worldwide is JD.COM. It is a Chinese e-commerce website and its 2019 revenue is $82.8 billion.
The third one, VK.COM, is the biggest social network in Russia and it has almost 100 million monthly active users.
We also see many large companies on the list: the fashion company H&M (hm.com), the video game producer Electronic Arts (ea.com), South Korean electronics manufacturer LG (lg.com), and more.
There are 45 2-letter .com domain names that have an Alexa rank under 10 thousand.
Popular Domain Registrars
GoDaddy has the most 2-letter .com domain names under management with 101 domain names. Network Solutions, one of the oldest registrars in the world, holds 91 of them.
The third one is the Chinese registrar Ename, with 84 domain names. We can say Chinese buyers tend to transfer domains to China-based domain registrars.
Corporate domain registrars CSC and MarkMonitor that manages domain portfolios of other companies take fourth and fifth place on the list with 82 and 42 domains under management.
| REGISTRAR | COUNT |
|---|---|
| GoDaddy | 101 |
| Network Solutions | 91 |
| Ename | 84 |
| CSC | 82 |
| MarkMonitor | 42 |
| Uniregistrar | 38 |
| Alibaba | 29 |
| 62.com | 26 |
| Tucows | 21 |
| Name.com | 19 |
You Can Still Have A Two Letter .COM Domain
81 of the 2-letter .com domain names are currently for sale on marketplaces. You can buy one of them for at least a 6-figure price. The cheapest 2-letter .com domain name with a buy now price is uz.com which has a $916,406 price tag.
Here is the list of all 2-letter .com domain names with a BIN (Buy It Now) price:
| DOMAIN | PRICE |
|---|---|
| fe.com | $1,000,000 |
| kf.com | $1,500,000 |
| oj.com | $2,400,000 |
| qn.com | $2,500,000 |
| qd.com | $3,000,000 |
| lp.com | $3,000,000 |
| oe.com | $3,000,000 |
| ts.com | $3,000,000 |
| rz.com | $3,000,000 |
| jl.com | $3,000,000 |
| jn.com | $3,500,000 |
| fn.com | $4,000,000 |
| at.com | $4,000,000 |
| bz.com | $4,000,000 |
| kd.com | $4,000,000 |
| ax.com | $5,000,000 |
| yb.com | $5,000,000 |
| yo.com | $5,000,000 |
| wt.com | $5,000,000 |
| jb.com | $6,000,000 |
| vv.com | $6,000,000 |
| kr.com | $8,000,000 |
| jp.com | $8,000,000 |
| tb.com | $8,000,000 |
| cz.com | $9,000,000 |
| uz.com | $916,406 |
See all of them here.
A Chinese domain investor, Yue Dai, owns 16 of the 2-letter .com domain names and sells them for large amounts. Read his story on DNW.
2-letter .com domains have always been in demand. Some of them are off the market forever because giant companies own them. Some others are for sale for millions of dollars.
If you had a chance to own a 2-letter .com domain name, what would it be? Please share your comments below.
Comments
Leave a Reply
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A really interesting and well researched article. Looking forward to your next one.
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Thank you!
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If you had a chance to own a 2-letter .com domain,
what would it be? Please leave me some comments.Only 676 two-letter .com can exist (26*26=676)
and all of them have been registered since 2000.
6 of the 100 oldest domain’s are 2-letter .com’s.
Only 12 of them were registered after 2000.
534 of 2-letter .com domains were
registered between 1994-1999.
2-letter .com domains have always been in demand.
Some are off the market for HISTORICAL reasons,
Others my sell someday for muti-millions of dollars.Two letters can form words in many different languages.
For example, rm can mean Real Media asin “.rm” files ?.
All ISO Alpha-2 country codes consist of two letters
codes used to define country-code extensions (ccTLDs).
It’s better to mention 2-letter English words
separately, Because they have a very high value.
The last registered one is cm.com
Which was registered on 16 January 2015./
jbsweden/
jb.se #Itsme
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I love your post as it’s not just your ordinary blog, an insightful one, deep research, educative, etc. Good job and can’t wait for your next post. Thank you.
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Thank you Mr Dee. We will continue to publish informative posts like this. 🙂
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You have been doing quality work since the first day. I also congratulate you for this detailed and beautiful article.
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Thank you for this valuable post.
I got here after a spontaneous purchase of best.us.com and was surprised to find fresh content that would even relate to .us.com (sub-)domains… :).I never thought I’d buy one yet I felt that there’s a clear value in this case.
I wonder if you can share a thought about this domain, do you think best.us.com could have a meaningful resale value? Thanks! -
Fascinating study of the Two Letter Domain phenomenon.
Greetings from France where internet arrived late and where most brands missed to get the two letter domain matching their famous logos.Added a link to it from our VB.com/2, another study of the 2 Letter Phenomenon (activation timeline).
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I remember not willing to registering them back in the day, 1992, because for me weren’t beautiful. 2 and then com was somehow not aestethical. What a mistake! I had in my screen AB, JJ and DA that I was about to register and then switched to a more beautiful form like 3 and 3, LLL.COM. We were so innocent at the beginning of the Internet…
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I am very impressed with your well written and well researched article. It was very informative. Good Job and keep up the good work.
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