Sedo
The largest domain marketplace and a major parking and search-feed platform, put up for sale by IONOS in 2025.
Cologne, Germany · founded 2000 · sedo.com
What Sedo does
Sedo is best known as a marketplace where people buy and sell domain names. It was founded in Germany in 2000 and has long been part of the United Internet group, most recently inside the hosting company IONOS.
Its second business is monetisation. Sedo parks domains for their owners and, through its search feed, has also served arbitrage companies that buy traffic. IONOS reports this as its AdTech segment.
That business was hit hard when Google ended ads on parked domains. Domain Name Wire reported that Sedo's revenue fell 66% year on year in the third quarter of 2025, from €80.2 million to €27.5 million. IONOS then decided to sell Sedo and said in March 2026 that it aimed to close a sale by the third quarter of 2026. No buyer had been named in the reports we checked.
How it makes money
Commission on domain sales, plus a share of the ad revenue earned on parked domains and on partner pages using its search feed.
Where it meets invalid traffic
Like every parking platform it must convince search engines that parked traffic is worth paying for. Google's decision that it was not is the reason the business shrank.
Products
- Sedo marketplace
- Sedo domain parking
- Sedo search feed (RSOC)