Cook domain names attract just one bid

A large haul of 142 travel related domain names and websites once used by Thomas Cook have attracted just one bid for £5,000 on eBay.

A large haul of 142 travel-related domain names and websites once used by Thomas Cook have attracted just one bid for £5,000 on eBay.

The domains were listed on December 14 originally with an overall value of £18,000, but with just a day left in the seven day auction a sole bid has been lodged by an anonymous eBay buyer.

The listing by seller webdesign03 says the domains are being sold by 1UK.com, which has used the domains for the last 12 years for an SEO campaign by Thomas Cook, its consumer direct arm Netflights.com and schools trips specialist NST Travel Group.

The valuation, based on a number of factors including the length of time they have been established and the number of pages, places an average value on each at £100.

The listing says: “For any travel company or SEO company I cannot stress how valuable these domains could be to your campaign with them being established for such a long period of time and all travel related as well, this is a very unique opportunity for anyone serious about competing at the top level in Google for travel related SEO.

“All the content has been done in house with our own content writers and all the websites and content on them are also included in this package with the domain names.

“There is a total of approximately 1,659 pages of unique trave- related content – the pages content sizes vary so we had to set an average as some pages could be 68 paragraphs long and some only two paragraphs.

“So whilst the websites may not all look spectacular from a design point of view they are dating back a long time, so they are well established which is one of the main values as trusted sites and they all have unique hand-written natural content.

“The sites were produced for SEO at the time and not for today’s new SEO techniques so will need some updating if you wanted to use the current sites as they are.”

The seller states he is happy to transfer the domains over a period of time so as not to arouse suspicion of bulk transfer by search engines.

He also says he is prepared to consider a monthly rental deal of £950 per month so they could be used for SEO purposes “without being disturbed”.

In a customer question about the domains, seller Paul Thompson reveals that they are all live but have had the branding removed after Netflights terminated a contract in October.

A scan of the domains on offer reveals there are a number related to the London Olympics 2012 and there are many that are destination specific and include the term ‘cheap’.

The listing specifically picks out get-packing.com, a domain used for Netflights that it claims retains a top 50 position on Google for the search term ‘cheap flights’.