How it works

A domain's rank comes from first-party demand: visits to its profile page, recorded by our own servers. Nothing else creates a rank.

Two things are never ranking inputs:

• Asking prices or any other owner-supplied number. Otherwise the list just ranks whoever typed the biggest figure.
• Owner-side analytics such as GA4, and connected accounts of any kind, Google Search Console included. The owner instruments their own site, so the numbers can be botted in an afternoon; and a number measured inside somebody else's account is not something we measured. Search Console had a bounded place here until September 2026. It has none now.
• Public-record signals about the domain: whether it serves a live site, whether it has mail servers, how long the web archive has seen it. They tell a buyer a lot and we show them, but a domain does not climb because it has a website.

One thing shades the order, within a hard limit: watchers, the accounts that asked to be told when a domain's price, expiry or sale changes. It is the most deliberate thing a reader does here, and also the cheapest thing on this site to forge, since an account costs an email and a watch never expires by itself. So it is capped at +10%, and it is a multiplier for the same reason: a domain nobody has opened scores zero however many accounts follow it. Sockpuppets only pay off on a domain that already has measured traffic, and anyone able to fake that traffic never needed the sockpuppets.

The boosted band above the board is a separate list with its own rule, ordered by visitors an owner brought through their own link this week. Those visitors are real visits and count toward the board like any other; the band is a second place to stand, not a second score. How boosting works.

Only domains with a proven owner: Verified means one of two things, and the domain's own page says which. Either the owner published a DNS TXT record carrying a token we issued, the same mechanism Google Search Console uses, or the registrar or DNS account the domain lives in answered for it. Nobody but the domain's controller can do either, so neither needs manual review and neither can be faked. An account key shown to us is used for that one question and never stored, so there is no key here to lose. Unverified listings are excluded from the leaderboard entirely and clearly de-emphasized in the catalog.

Being for sale is a separate question. A domain whose owner is not selling still ranks, marked not for sale where its price would be, because demand for it is a real fact. The board has a filter for anyone who only wants what they can buy, and the catalog only ever lists domains that are for sale.

Whoever proves control today. A domain has one public profile forever, and that profile carries the domain's history: its measured visits, registry facts and any past sale. The account holding it is whoever last proved that control, and a listing is never moved between accounts on a provider's say-so: an account that names a domain somebody else has listed here changes nothing, and sends you to the claim below instead.

So a buyer who just took over a domain claims it and relists it, and an owner who finds their domain listed by a stranger takes it back the same way. The claim token is issued to the claimant alone, so an existing record can never satisfy somebody else's claim, and the previous holder is emailed the moment a claim succeeds.

A view registers only from a real browser executing our script, so crawlers that don't run JavaScript never count. On top of that we drop:

• known bot, headless and tooling user-agents (kept in the log, flagged, excluded from all counts);
• browsers that report themselves as automated, or report no real viewport;
• bursts from one address: more than 20 views a minute is a script, not a reader;
• the owner's own visits to their domain. They still show in the live counter on the front page, which is about who is on the site right now rather than what any one domain is worth;
• everything after a visitor's first view of a domain that day. A view lasts a day: the same person reloading a page all afternoon is one view, and comes back tomorrow as another. Ranking counts unique daily visitors, not raw hits.

What we do not do yet: filter by datacenter IP ranges, which needs an IP intelligence database. It is on the list, and until it ships we do not claim it.

Privacy: we store only salted hashes of IP and user-agent, and the salt rotates daily, so visitors can't be tracked across days. Location is country-level only.

Inquiries follow the same logic. Only signed-in accounts with a verified email can send one, a buyer can open exactly one inquiry per domain, and the seller's response rate and reply time come from replies sent through us. A seller who answers privately by email looks slower here than they were, which is why the label always says what was measured.

score = ln(1 + demand) x reputation x watch

demand     = sum(unique daily visitors x decay) + inquiries x 5
decay      = 0.5 ^ (days ago / 7)      a view's weight halves weekly
window     = last 30 days
reputation = 1 + min(0.15, 0.03 x ln(1 + seller's verified domains))
watch      = 1 + min(0.10, 0.02 x ln(1 + accounts watching))

demand     = min(100, round(100 x score / ln(1 + 1000)))
             the number the board prints: every doubling of demand adds 10 points

The log keeps one viral day from freezing the list. The decay keeps it current. Both multipliers are deliberately small, and both sit outside the logarithm on purpose: only what is inside it can create a rank, and the rest can shade one that demand already earned. Every input is measured by this site.

An inquiry counts like 5 visitors, and only one inquiry per buyer per domain ever counts. Reputation comes only from the seller's count of ownership-verified domains. One account can watch a domain once, and the watch multiplier reaches its cap at around 150 watchers.

The board prints the score as a whole number from 0 to 100, not a percentage. The top of the scale is 1,000 visitors' worth of demand, chosen so that every doubling adds ten points: one visitor is 10, fifteen are 40, thirty are 50, a hundred and twenty-five are 70, a thousand are 100. The scale is fixed rather than relative to the rest of the board, so a domain's number depends on its own visitors alone: a new listing starts at 0 and climbs as people arrive, and one busy domain cannot flatten every other number. The number and the order of the board are the same fact, since the index only ever rises with the score.

We are never in the transaction: we never hold funds, 0%. The money is between buyer and seller, so a reported sale price is always an owner claim. The transfer is different: we snapshot the registry record when a sale is reported and check it daily, and when the registrar or nameservers change hands the sale becomes a verified transfer with a date.

Reviews are locked behind that: only the sale's named buyer, only if they actually contacted the seller here, and only after the registry confirmed the transfer. No purchase, no review, so a seller cannot farm ratings.

Every figure on proven.domains carries one of these labels:

• measured by proven.domains: our servers, our logs. The only thing that creates a rank.
• public record: registries (RDAP), archives, trademark offices. Objective, not ours.
• their analytics reports: the owner's own numbers, attributed to whoever produced them, never summed with ours and never part of the ranking.
• owner claim: including every asking price. Unverified by definition.

Browse the catalog

Short answers, written to be quoted. Each one stands on its own, because most people who read it will arrive at this question and no other.

How do I prove I own a domain?

Two ways, and proven.domains treats them as equal. Either you publish a DNS TXT record containing a token issued to you — the same mechanism Google Search Console uses — or you prove control of the registrar or DNS account the domain lives in, which is a superset of DNS control. Nobody but the domain's actual controller can do either, so neither needs manual review and neither can be faked. An account key shown to us is used for that one check and never stored.

How much commission does a domain marketplace take?

Marketplaces such as Afternic, Sedo and GoDaddy Auctions typically take 15–25% of the sale price. On a $10,000 sale that is $1,500 to $2,500. proven.domains takes 0%: it never holds funds, never processes a payment and is never party to the transaction. It verifies who owns what and introduces the two sides; the money moves between buyer and seller directly, usually through an escrow service they choose themselves.

How much is my domain worth?

proven.domains will not tell you, on purpose. Automated appraisals exist because inflated valuations drive listings and listings drive commissions, so every incumbent that publishes one is paid to flatter the seller. Instead the profile shows the evidence a buyer would want and labels where each piece came from: measured visitor demand, registry facts such as age and expiry, dispute history, and the owner's own asking price marked as the claim it is. The market sets the price.

How do I know a domain seller is not a scammer?

Check three things, all public on a proven.domains seller profile. Whether the domains are ownership-verified, which proves the seller controls what they are selling and kills the most common fraud in the aftermarket — listing domains you do not own. Whether past sales were confirmed by a registry transfer rather than only reported. And the reviews, which can only be written by a sale's named buyer, only if they contacted the seller through the site, and only after the registry confirmed the domain changed hands.

Is the traffic on a domain listing real?

The visitor number proven.domains ranks on is measured by its own servers on its own pages, not reported by the seller. It counts unique daily visitors — one person reloading all afternoon is one visit — and excludes known bots, browsers reporting themselves as automated, bursts of more than 20 views a minute from one address, and the owner's own visits to their own domain. Numbers a seller supplies, and numbers from a seller's own analytics, are shown separately and never merged with the measured ones.

What counts as a view in the proven.domains total?

Every page opened on the site, with a reload inside half a minute, and a repeat view of one domain inside the same day, folded into one. Known bots are excluded, and so is every request the site makes to itself: the daily pass that opens each listing to catch a broken page or a changed price counts nowhere.

What does the verified badge mean?

That the account listing the domain has proven it controls that domain, by DNS TXT record or by proving the registrar or DNS account. It is binary — a domain is verified or it is not — and the profile says which of the two doors it came through. It is not a claim about price, quality or the seller's honesty, and it is not a guarantee of a sale. Unverified listings are excluded from the ranking entirely.

Can a domain buy its way up the ranking?

No. Only demand proven.domains measures itself creates a rank: visits to a domain's profile page, recorded by its own servers, decayed so that a view's weight halves every 7 days over a 30-day window. Asking prices are never an input. Neither is the owner's own analytics, which they instrument themselves. Two small multipliers can shade an order that demand already earned — seller reputation and accounts watching — each capped, and each outside the logarithm, so a domain nobody opens scores zero however large they get. The full formula is published.

Does a domain being listed here mean it is for sale?

Not necessarily. A domain whose owner is not selling can still have a profile, marked "not for sale" where a price would be, because measured demand for it is a real fact worth publishing. The catalog lists only domains that are for sale, and the leaderboard has a filter for the same thing. A public asking price is always the owner's claim; many listings have no public price at all, and those are sold by inquiry.

What are the UDRP flags on a domain profile?

Past domain-name disputes decided under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, harvested from published WIPO decisions. They matter to a buyer because a name with a dispute history carries a risk of losing the domain later. Two limits are stated wherever they appear: the corpus is WIPO only, which is roughly 57% of all UDRP cases, and it is not trademark matching. No flag on a domain means nothing was found in that corpus — never that the domain is clear.

What is a boosted domain?

A listing whose owner brought visitors to it this week. Every domain page on proven.domains has a boost link, which is the same page with a code on the end. Visitors who arrive through that link are counted for the domain, and the 5 listings with the most such visitors this week stand in a band above the board on the front page, ordered by that count. A place takes at least 5 visitors, and more than the last place holds once all 5 are taken. The count resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC, every domain stands on its own, and only verified listings that are for sale qualify. A visitor who arrives through the link is a real visit to the listing, so it counts toward the board like any other; the band is a second place to stand, above it. Boosting is free. The rules are published at /boost.

Does proven.domains hold the money or provide escrow?

No. proven.domains never holds funds, never processes payments, takes no commission and has no custody of any domain at any point. It verifies ownership, measures demand, publishes registry facts and introduces buyer to seller. Everything after that is between the two parties, and reporting a sale afterwards is what lets the registry transfer be confirmed and a review be written.