Direct Navigation Overview

The direct navigation space has quietly been built up and grown while the Internet went through its cycle of boom and bust. Up to twenty percent of people who use the internet type in what they are looking for in the form of a domain name. This has been coined with the term, direct navigation.

While search engines provide a gateway to find information, the overwhelming number of results have often frustrated people trying to find relevant information. Their next recourse is to type in what they are looking for as a domain name. This targeted user intent has by its very nature led to an industry where such intent is serviced by trying to provide the information that might match that intent. The current model is by providing the pay per click advertising based on the keywords that were used to form the domain name. eg. Weddingshoes.com would provide a list of advertisers who advertised for the keywords wedding shoes.

Piper Jaffray estimates that the paid search industry will generate an estimated $14 billion globally in 2006. It is estimated that the direct navigation market represents more than 10% of the global search market and is growing at comparable annual rates. By 2010, paid search, including paid listings and paid inclusion, is expected to equal 40 percent of the online ad spend or $7.5 billion.

High quality portfolios of domain names are limited and difficult to attain, with the costs rising quickly each year. Yet the direct navigation market has started to mature as domain name prices have spiked and the direct navigation market has began to consolidate.

Reinvent Technology and its related companies are in a good position to build upon its quality domain name portfolio and positiion itself as a leader in this industry.