This Spring eMall.ca made headlines across the web when they announced the sale of 300 premium generic .ca domains to Yellow Pages Group for a little over $6,000 a piece, netting the small company $2.5 Million. For Yellow Pages Group it was a move to lock up key pieces of virtual real estate in the Canadian market in order to promote and grow their online directory. .CA investors are hoping that's just the beginning and they have a reason to be optimistic. Even if the eMall.ca sale is not counted, 2006 has been a record year for reported Canadian domain sales. The sale of a 300 domain portfolio isn't the largest of the year but it's certainly one to remember.

It underlines a bevy of .CA sales and an unprecedented volume of transactions. The number of publicly reported .CA domain sales has doubled in each of the last 3 years. With the recent eMall.ca portfolio sale, Canadians can now argue that their TLD is more popular than .US domains, the country code TLD for the United States.

What's even more interesting is that .US domain sales have been rapidly growing. In 2005 over $300,000 worth of .US domain sales were reported, and that was almost 400% greater from the year prior. Seeing .CA domain sales eclipse .US sales is like watching a Formula One race car zip past a Ferrari, both barreling down the racetrack at mind boggling speeds.

Of course this is only counting publicly disclosed sales. For both .CA and .US domains there is an entire galaxy of sales that go undisclosed each year. CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority that oversees the registration of all .CA domains, recently reported 5,696 registrant to registrant transfers took place in 2005. This accounts for a 144% growth over the year prior **. By any measure, the market for Canadian domains is getting hotter.

Investors have started to catch on to this and are rapidly moving to acquire .CA domains. Since CIRA began operations they have seen a decidedly healthy growth with a big jump in registrations and renewals over the last 3 years.

Why is Canada's .CA in such high demand? Not only is Canada a nation of 40 million English speakers with an internet infrastructure most countries in the world can only dream of, the .CA TLD benefits from a variety of demographic and behavioral trends as well. Not the least of which is a consumer-driven demand for local products and services. Viral growth coupled with .CA publishers looking for an easier way to target the Canada audience are putting the .CA extension in the same league with other country code domains that have seen double digit growth in the last few years.

If you're wondering how you can get in on the Canadian domain market and you happen to be Canadian it's as simple as contacting an accredited .CA registrar. Prices tend to vary but for capable businesses and individuals who are interested in .CA names, Sedo has partnered with Webnames.ca, Canada's leading domain name registrar, to offer all Sedo newsletter subscribers a 25% discount off all domain name related purchases until the end of July, 2006. Simply visit www.refer-a-friend.ca and enter the code SED-425 to receive 25% off your first purchase. If you plan on registering a large number of .CA domain names, please contact Webnames.ca by phone at 1-866-221-7878 with your new account username and they will be happy to apply special domainer volume pricing for future purchases.

Regardless of what happens for the rest of the year, 2006 will be a record for .CA sales. Those with quality, generic, .CA domains should feel very good about their investments right now. Of course, the year is only half over and the 2nd half may leave the first in the dust. One thing is for certain, the demand for quality .CA domains will continue to grow.

* Sales data provided by the DNJournal

** Transfer data taken from CIRA's Annual Report

*** Registration data provided by CIRA's Annual Report

Jay Finnan
Director of Marketing
http://www.sedo.com