A new group of UK domains have been put up for auction, and single letter domain names have reached an average of £39,000.

Twelve of the single letter domain names went under the hammer, including x.co.uk and 0.co.uk, in the auction organized by Nominet. Web addresses and two-letter domains were sold by the administrators for the UK’s internet infrastructure. Raising £3m for the Nominet Trust – a charity promoting internet safety, access and education.

Buyers included businesses and individuals, including speculators suggesting they can create a business out of a rare domain or sell it on for more.
Facebook brought fb.co.uk, H&M brought hm.co.uk, Google missed out on g.co.uk to Any-web (thought to be the auctions biggest seller).

These highly sort after website domains, many of which have already changed hands numerous times, are usually brought on a ‘first come first served’ basis. However these short domains were kept back, with Nominet contacting around 20,000 rights holders to give them the chance to buy the addresses for a smaller fee before they went up for auction.

The owner of x.co.uk, has already been sold on three times, for unknown prices. The owner at present is Kiss Ltd of Mayfair.

Any-web brought more than 170 domains, totaling £500,000, and paid a five-figure digit for g.co.uk (beating Google), according to data collected by Ty Hancocks.

It has been estimated that the global domain-name market is worth approximately $25bn and still growing strong at around 10 per cent a year.
“The revenue raised was at the top end of our expectations,” said Nick Wenban-Smith, senior legal counsel for Nominet.