boats.com

boats.com, founded in 1999, is the largest global search engine in the leisure marine market with more than 120,000 boats from 146 countries. Its powerful URL helps position boats.com as the go-to resource for everything boats - boating news, DIY tutorials, blog posts, videos, reviews and boat listings. For OEMs and their dealer networks, boats.com offers effective marketing tools to promote and sell new and used boats for sale across the globe. boats.com was originally launched as a private, venture capital-funded start-up in San Francisco, CA to leverage the dot com boom in the boating niche.

In January 2000, boats.com acquired YachtWorld, marking the first Internet content deal within the boating industry. Just a few months later, boats.com expanded its offerings to the European market. Ian Atkins opened the first European office in Fareham, England to launch boats.com to the European markets and provide dedicated sites for the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and Australia. boats.com was acquired in 2004, and for the next six years focused on building content, including editorial, videos, reviews and global boat listings - positioning it as the site for “everything boats.” In 2010, boats.com, YachtWorld and Boat Trader joined forces as the three leading marine websites to form Boats Group (then operated as Dominion Marine Media). In July 2016, Boats Group was acquired by Apax Partners and then by Permira Funds in February 2021.