Domain Daily · 11 November 2026

Searchable.com Sells for $90,000 – And .web Finally Gets a Launch Date

Searchable.com changed hands for $90,000 through GoDaddy this week, and the detail that stands out to me is what the buyer is reportedly planning to do with it.

By Maggi Ferguson

DomainNews24 posted the sale, crediting the news to DomainNames.com, GoDaddy's own brokerage arm, so worth remembering GoDaddy has a direct stake in how this story gets told. According to that post, the buyer is an entrepreneur named Chris Donnelly, who plans to build an AI search product on the name. DomainCX and a NamePros recap both repeated the $90,000 figure, so the price has three independent mentions, even if they likely trace back to the same GoDaddy announcement. The NamePros writeup adds that the domain's prior owner traded as Clicker, so this reads as a rebrand rather than a straight resale.

I pulled the registry record and the registration date checks out: Searchable.com has been registered since November 1997. The record's last change shows July 2025, well before this week, so whatever paperwork comes with a sale hasn't reached WHOIS yet. That's normal lag, not a red flag.

Separately, DN.com described the same deal as helping an AI search startup and claimed its valuation later reached $85 million. That figure comes from DN.com alone, nobody else repeats it in what I've seen, and DN.com trades in domain names itself, so I'd treat the $85 million as a claim to watch rather than a number to quote.

Premium renewals: the catch nobody prices in upfront

A second sale this week is a useful companion story. Richard Kirkendall said an Open .bot domain sold for $111,000 through Spaceship's sellerhub. DN.com followed up, ranking it as the second-biggest .bot sale made public so far, trailing only a Crypto.bot deal reportedly worth $250,000. Neither account is the seller, so I'm treating $111,000 as a report, not a settled sale, but the two figures line up.

The number that actually caught my eye was the one DN.com added afterwards: a $2,725 annual premium renewal fee on the name, which works out to roughly $27,250 over ten years if that rate holds. That's nearly a third of the purchase price again before the buyer has built anything. Worth factoring in before anyone gets excited about a six-figure .bot headline.

.web gets a date, .name gets a reprieve

Two long-running registry stories moved this week. Domain Name Wire reported that .web finally has a launch date, after roughly ten years in limbo. Verisign has filed its launch documents with ICANN: sunrise opens 10 December, an early window for .com holders opens 12 January, and general availability is 6 April 2027. One date in the piece reads as a slip of the pen, and nobody has published the early-window fee yet. Elliot Silver asked his followers whether they'll actually register .web names once they're available, which is the right question given how long this one has dragged on.

On the .name side, Verisign has walked back a plan to kill third-level registrations. Domain Name Wire broke it and Domain.News repeated it, adding that opposition came from users who'd linked hundreds of accounts to their third-level names. That's one story travelling, not two.

Also on the registry side, Identity Digital and a company called Deqo announced "domain options" aimed at improving capital efficiency for investors, covered via BusinessWire and picked up separately by Domain Name Wire. I haven't seen the mechanics explained yet, so I'll hold my opinion until I do.

Also on my radar

Market day: NameBio's report for 10 November, as listed on Domaining.com, put the day at $620k, with $575,550 of that coming from 663 sales at $100 and up. Podo.ai was the top sale at $30,000 on Atom.
Afternic sweetener: Afternic's blog says GoDaddy's CEO announced 5% back in GoDaddy Cash on Buy It Now sales completed from 11 November to 31 December, capped at $5,000 a sale and credited in January. The credit is non-withdrawable and stays inside GoDaddy, so it works as a retention tool as much as a discount.
XA.si, a two-letter name, reportedly sold for $11,400 at Dynadot according to a single DomainCX post. No second source yet, so treat it as unconfirmed.
A data-driven paper shared on NamePros found only 9.46% of ICANN-accredited registrars have DNSSEC switched on for their own primary domain, with Europe at 22.73% against Asia's 3.46%. A striking gap for an industry that sells security.
ICANN is running a webinar next week on registrar obligations under the UDRP, and a fresh UDRP case summary found that a failed buyout attempt plus a blank website still doesn't add up to bad faith on its own.
NamesCon Global is on in Miami this week, with Right of the Dot running a live auction that includes both AISearch.com and SISearch.com on the same block.

Would you pay a five-figure premium renewal on top of a six-figure purchase for the right .bot name, or does that math kill the deal for you?