The brand-to-traffic (B/T) ratio is an analytical tool to determine the best use of a domain name, judge its traffic quality and select portfolios.

DomainMart, a provider of secondary domain name market products and consulting services, today introduced the brand-to-traffic (B/T) ratio, an analytical tool to determine the best use of a domain name, judge its traffic quality and select portfolios.

The company says that the value of a commercial site's domain name is driven by two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, functionality forces: branding and traffic values. As these drivers are unobservable, to impute their respective values DomainMart uses statistical techniques to combine information on observable proxies.

Tajirian, DomainMart CEO notes that an appraisal report based on valuation of comparable domain names sold does not provide any intuitive feel of the value. "This is primarily driven by the fact that there are no theoretical models to describe the value drivers for such appraisals. Thus, the companies providing appraisal services have each adopted their own list of descriptors such as 'branding and advertising','linguistic', and 'length'," adds Tajirian.