Sex.com officially the most expensive domain name

Sex.com, the online domain name, has entered The Guinness Book of Records for being the "most expensive internet address domain name," following its sale to Clover Holdings in November last year for $13 million.

The sale, on Nov. 17, was brokered by domain name sale house Sedo, which is based in Cologne, Germany but has its U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

Sedo says it has brokered about $400 million worth of domain names over 10 years, including a number of other seven-figure transactions for premium domains such as Vodka.com, Pizza.com and Russia.com.

The Sex.com domain was put up for sale in July 2010 after the previous owner Escom went bankrupt, according to TechCrunch.

Clover Holdings, a private company registered on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, put in the highest bid for the domain.

In an interview with TechCrunch, the new owner of Sex.com, said the website — even though it is a placeholder page while he decides how to use the site — received more than 125,000 visitors on a daily basis, from all over the world (but mostly from the United States, India and Germany).

Requesting anonymity, he said the revenues he received from Sex.com had already far exceeded his expectations: without providing details he said the page was on track to return an amount well over seven figures a year.

The owner, who has long focused on the acquisition and development of other high-value generic domain names, said he’d received a handful of offers, from mainstream media companies, technology companies and even one from the pharmaceutical industry, to develop the site.