Recently “FairfaxYellowPages.com” was sold for $10,000, evidently to an “end user”. We will do an investigation to examine this transaction as we may obtain some insight into the value of geo-generic dot coms and the motivations of the end users that buy them.

There is more than one “Fairfax” - WikiPedia lists more than a dozen potential “Fairfax”s - most of them are cities (well, villages), one is a county in Virginia, two are a district/street in Los Angeles and one is a company. As the term “Yellow Pages” is ordinarily associated with the telephone advertising medium it would seem as if the domain would likely be used for a similar purpose. It should be noted that “Yellow Pages” is not a trademark but the logo is, according to Steve Morales, the seller of “FairfaxYellowPages.com”.

Our purpose is to estimate the value of similar “yellowpages.com” geo-generics which necessitates some research concerning the various “Fairfax”s - population is the most important factor that is easily transferrable to other geos but there are other factors that we will consider as well, for example the demographics of the geographical area like income, growth, etc. The first priority is to examine all “Fairfax”s and speculate as to which specific “Fairfax” the domain is likely to target.

Fairfax, Virginia is the largest of the cities that Wikipedia lists with a population of 23,000. A whois search lists a “Ken Hansen” of Centreville, Virginia as the domain owner and so we are assuming that the targeted geographical area is indeed “Fairfax, Virginia” but the county of Fairfax is also in Virginia so we must consider that the targeted geographical area might be either a city or a county. Fairfax the county has over 1 million people and the Virginia laws do not permit it to incorporate which is why it isn’t a city but if it were it would be one of the top ten most populous USA cities.

Fairfax county has been either first or second in the USA as far as income goes - you can’t get much better than that. It is about 400 square miles in size and is relatively square in shape which translates to about 20 miles by 20 miles - certainly a “yellow pages” type effort would be feasible for a county of its size as opposed to having a “yellow pages” for each municipality within the county.

The domain appears to have been purchased by Ken Hansen and a quick Google search finds “Mr. Hansen is the CEO of the e-commerce company Zhongguo Ventures LLC, which provides an e-commerce and business platform which enables Chinese companies to enter the U.S. market”. Interesting. Also, “Mr. Hansen is a co-founder of China Springboard and is responsible for all aspects of China Springboard’s international business activities”. A quick look at the China Springboard site provides this information - “leverages the power of direct navigation traffic” which is in keeping with the purchase of a geo-generic domain.

In our opinion “FairfaxYellowPages.com” would be one of the most desired geo-generic “yellow pages” domains in the USA, a few would be better but not all that many. If we assume that $10,000 was a reasonably fair selling price then we can begin contrasting Fairfax against other geographical areas to estimate what other “yellowpages.com” geo-generics ought to sell for.

One of the sites that we intend to sell at auction is “StPetersYellowPages.com” - St Peters is a city of 60,000 people in Missouri. It is 60th in a recent “Top USA Cities To Live In” list. A quick estimated value might be about $600 dollars based on population. We would reduce it a bit based on income and raise it a bit because it is a stand-alone city rather than a county. Perhaps $500 would be a low estimate and $1000 a high one.