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poll NamePros Alexa Rank predictions for year-end

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Where will NamePros end 2019 for traffic?

  • 4th (tie)

    Better than 10,000

    votes
    0.0%
  • 4th (tie)

    Between 10,000 and 15,000

    votes
    0.0%
  • 4th (tie)

    Between 20,000 and 25,000

    votes
    0.0%

  • 17 votes
  • Ended 5 years ago
  • Final results

Rob Monster

Founder of EpikTop Member
Epik Founder
Impact
18,389
In case you were not paying attention, the Alexa rank of NamePros is going through the roof. This place is rocking with great content and great community. It is quite a thing!

upload_2019-9-3_14-16-41.png
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/namepros.com

Earlier today, I made a private prediction that NamePros will continue to grow in popularity. Just for giggles, I thought I would share my prediction.

I predict that NamePros will end 2019 with an Alexa rank of better than 25,000.

What's your prediction?

Cast you ballot before September 30,2019.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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You might be wondering where I think the growth will come from. I will tell you. I think domaining is about to go big-time in emerging markets like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, etc.

In short, people are finding out that you can bootstrap a living by buying cheap names on promo and selling/leasing them to end-users on either inbound or outbound basis. The industry is mature in the US, but is very nascent in most places.

For calibration, on a daily basis, I am seeing people make life-changing income by buying domains for $5 and selling for $100, and then moving up the value chain with more and buy-and-hold names that they can patiently sell for big money.

As it is, NamePros loads quickly pretty much everywhere:

http://ping.pe/namepros.com

The mobile version of NamePros is also quite decent and does not even really need a mobile app to be effective. The email alerts work very well for viral engagement.

Google is also indexing the site nicely:

upload_2019-9-3_14-38-22.png


My main feedback for @Paul Buonopane is that the search has to improve.

As a few folks know, Epik is building a search aggregation engine. It is pulling in content from sites like Reddit. It can easily add NamePros and many other sites. See here for preview of that engine in case not seen:

The easy solution is to install Google Custom Search on NamePros. I don't know about others but right now it is easier to use external Google to search a term like:

upload_2019-9-3_14-42-28.png
 
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I also find it easier to use Google to search NP contents. Often I can't find what I want when using the NP search function.
 
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Interesting data - thanks for the thread and information @Rob Monster I remember looking a year or so ago, but had not looked at it and was somewhat surprised at the really sharp increase of late.

I agree with your reflections that we will see significant growth in domain investment in some markets that have not been dominant in the past (although USA, China and Europe will continue to play big role of course).

It is truly a marvel that NamePros works technically as well as it does, and thank you to all the staff that are responsible for that.

We have seen a lot of discussions on topics somewhat tangential to domain names :xf.wink: but it is truly amazing how easy it is to get an authoritative answer, or reasoned opinion, on almost anything in the world of domains here. I see possibilities of growth in more discussions on clearly related topics but not exactly domains, such as privacy issues, government policy, branding, marketing, website and app development, etc.

Thanks again,

Bob
 
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It is truly a marvel that NamePros works technically as well as it does, and thank you to all the staff that are responsible for that.
Well said Bob. I'm grateful to NP for its tremendous value in educating domain investors.
 
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NamePros is now a World Class Forum that provides a platform for Free Speech in addition to being the best resource and hub for domainers. :)

The admins just have to be careful about a few bullies who don't want to let go of their grip over the forum and who might turn thousands of potential new readers off from participating in the forum by their underhanded tactics and personal attacks on others.

Perhaps it's time to have a stronger Code of Conduct for the forum. Making a more professional environment for the forum might encourage a lot more people to participate here including
some of the more famous personalities in the domain Industry who have been staying away from NamePros because of all the personal attacks and bullying that they have experienced here in the past.

Moderation and Admin has to be taken to a whole new level in order to make more and more of the passive forum readers into active forum participates.
IMO
 
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I voted 30,000 to 35,000..
Too bad, Page Rank been long gone, I figured 7+ today..
 
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I remember when Alexa Rank was in the low thousands for NamePros a few years ago. The Alexa Rank has been unpredictable over the years, but NamePros traffic has been steady.

Examples:
I like the uptrend on Alexa today though ;)


My main feedback for @Paul Buonopane is that the search has to improve.

As a few folks know, Epik is building a search aggregation engine. It is pulling in content from sites like Reddit. It can easily add NamePros and many other sites. See here for preview of that engine in case not seen:

The easy solution is to install Google Custom Search on NamePros. I don't know about others but right now it is easier to use external Google to search a term like:

145445_748c7e4ba55fde508812da01b8353261.png
Agreed, we know there is a lot of room for improvement with search. Search is very complicated and Google is the best at it in the world. We often recommend users to use Google with site:namepros.com when searching for things on NamePros because of how good it is, and that's why they're Google. ;) It's something we try to improve here and there but unless that's your business's main focus, there's no practical way to make your own in-house search anywhere near as good as Google's.

The other option is the one you mentioned: integrate Google's search into our site. This was actually done before and while it worked well for most users, there were a few problems: (1) some users cannot access Google due to restrictions in their country or other reasons, (2) the Advanced Search on NamePros allows for certain specialized searches that can't be done on Google such as searching for posts by a specific user, and (3) search results on Google are not on NamePros. The third one is obvious but that brings up other downsides such as less opportunities for users to see content being posted on NamePros and discover things they weren't searching for.

Your fedback is always appreciated.
 
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ICYMI, NamePros is moving right along:

upload_2019-9-10_6-30-36.png


As for the topic of internal search on NamePros, as part of the Toki.com project, there may be a solution that could improve it. Details to follow.
 
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My main feedback for @Paul Buonopane is that the search has to improve.

This is easier said than done. We use Elasticsearch, the industry standard for faceted search. However, we have trouble indexing content in a meaningful way for a few reasons:
  1. XenForo's search was really designed for smaller forums that are indexing content directly in MySQL. Although they do offer an official Elasticsearch add-on, it's not nearly as robust as we'd like. Elasticsearch requires approach problems differently from MySQL, but this wasn't really taken into account when XenForo was designed.
  2. When we first migrated to XenForo, we recognized this limitation and chose to enhance XenForo's official add-on with a third-party commercial add-on. However, this add-on has numerous issues as a result of the way it attempts to work around XenForo's limitations. We've made some significant fixes to it, but we really need to rewrite it at this point.
  3. Even when we rewrite the third-party add-on, we're going to have a hard time analyzing content and scoring results in a way that makes sense. This is because domains have to be tokenized and analyzed very different from standard text, and when someone performs a search, we have to score differently depending on whether someone is searching for a domain or standard text. (And if we don't know for which of the two they're searching, the results are inevitably going to be mediocre.)
We've already made significant progress toward developing better Elasticsearch analyzers and scoring algorithms, but it's still going to be some time before we're able to deploy the changes.

Using a third-party search engine such as Google Custom Search Engine in the interim isn't an option:
  1. Search engines that rely on indexing will only be able to search public content. If someone wants to restrict their search to public content, they can already do this with standard search engines.
  2. We're not going to give a complete copy of all public and private content on NamePros to a third party for search purposes. This would be required if we wanted private content such as direct messages to be searchable.
  3. Any generic alternatives are going to offer limited improvement over what we already have unless they utilize privacy-invasive scoring (e.g., what Google does), in large part due to the differences between searching for a domain name versus searching for text.
 
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I remember when Alexa Rank was in the low thousands for NamePros a few years ago. The Alexa Rank has been unpredictable over the years, but NamePros traffic has been steady.

Examples:
I like the uptrend on Alexa today though ;)



Agreed, we know there is a lot of room for improvement with search. Search is very complicated and Google is the best at it in the world. We often recommend users to use Google with site:namepros.com when searching for things on NamePros because of how good it is, and that's why they're Google. ;) It's something we try to improve here and there but unless that's your business's main focus, there's no practical way to make your own in-house search anywhere near as good as Google's.

The other option is the one you mentioned: integrate Google's search into our site. This was actually done before and while it worked well for most users, there were a few problems: (1) some users cannot access Google due to restrictions in their country or other reasons, (2) the Advanced Search on NamePros allows for certain specialized searches that can't be done on Google such as searching for posts by a specific user, and (3) search results on Google are not on NamePros. The third one is obvious but that brings up other downsides such as less opportunities for users to see content being posted on NamePros and discover things they weren't searching for.

Your fedback is always appreciated.

Exactly Eric I was going to say 63,000 is not rocking I remember when we were in the 5000's.
 
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I think Alexa is ignoring Nigeria.....

upload_2019-9-29_19-25-40.png


Nigeria is becoming a Domaining Powerhouse. Somehow Alexa ignored them. Either that, or everyone in Nigeria is using a US VPN. Possible.
 
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Moving right along folks:

upload_2019-10-13_18-1-18.png


Feeling bullish about this prediction.

Thanks to the Moderators for continually improving the user experience as the industry works together to MAKE THE PIE BIGGER.
 
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I might have to upgrade my forecast. It is only November 3 folks.

upload_2019-11-3_14-30-35.png
 
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I was going to change my vote but see you can't. If this continues clearly will end higher than I thought. @Rob Monster how do you generate the graphs? Is it a free tool anyone can use?
Bob
 
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Protip: If anyone has a staff working for their website and wants their Alexa rank to soar, get everyone to install the Alexa toolbar and Alexa will waaaay over-estimate your traffic numbers.

If everyone working for Epik that posts on NP got the Alexa toolbar I think any number on this vote is possible. Such a small amount of people use it in the wild that it doesn't take much to skew the numbers (This was the case a few years ago at least..)
 
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Protip: If anyone has a staff working for their website and wants their Alexa rank to soar, get everyone to install the Alexa toolbar and Alexa will waaaay over-estimate your traffic numbers.

If everyone working for Epik that posts on NP got the Alexa toolbar I think any number on this vote is possible. Such a small amount of people use it in the wild that it doesn't take much to skew the numbers (This was the case a few years ago at least..)

Thanks -- sure, Alexa is a dull knife.

The point is not to game the system but to have some sense of whether NamePros is becoming more relevant as moves fro a lower order agenda (domain liquidation) to a higher order agenda (anticipating opportunities and selling retail) on the way to making the pie bigger.
 
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Momentum building:

upload_2019-11-7_6-19-28.png



I am upgrading my forecast from 25,000 to 10,000. This is no small feat because once you get into the top 25,000, the traffic competition becomes a lot more formidable. It is the nature of "winner take all" when it comes to the Internet and human attention:

Visitors-vs.-Rank.jpeg


Why do I care at all about NamePros' Alexa rank? Because it is a metric of IMPACT, and it is an indicator of making the pie bigger.

A few essential things:

1. NamePros has a reputation for be toxic. I see why people think that. Please stop pooping all over each other. The edgelord stuff that goes on here sometimes is an impediment to people engaging.

2. Share more threads and posts outside of NP. You can link any post to outside social media or from blogs using the share link which includes built-in sharing tools.

3. Tend the grounds and raise the bar. NamePros management is open to feedback and suggestions. They are fallible humans despite the mysterious aloofness of most of the people involved.

4. Include your NamePros profile URL in your social media profiles and add it to your Email signature. It is another painless away to increase awareness, and that backlink is a SEO signal.

What are your ideas? Any other upgraded predictions?
 
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1. NamePros has a reputation for be toxic. I see why people think that. Please stop pooping all over each other. The edgelord stuff that goes on here sometimes is an impediment to people engaging.

2. Share more threads and posts outside of NP. You can link any post to outside social media or from blogs using the share link which includes built-in sharing tools.

3. Tend the grounds and raise the bar. NamePros management is open to feedback and suggestions. They are fallible humans despite the mysterious aloofness of most of the people involved.

4. Include your NamePros profile URL in your social media profiles and add it to your Email signature. It is another painless away to increase awareness, and that backlink is a SEO signal.

This is superb advice @Rob Monster!

Re your point 1, I think we should all remember that the name of the site is NamePros and we should all be professional in our interactions. That would go a long way to achieve an environment that is more welcoming, and I would add more helpful, to all.

Totally agree with 2. I try to do it regularly (and not just for my own posts :xf.grin:) on Twitter, and urge those with blogs, Facebook activity, LinkedIn etc. to consider promoting the most valuable threads and posts.

Yes 4 is good advice that I will consider doing (re email signature). Some months ago I did add on my domain website my NamePros username as one way for people to contact me.

Thank you for these valuable suggestions, Rob. I think we can all make NamePros even better, and being members of it can help us all grow the prosperity of the domain aftermarket.

Bob
 
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why is that important to us domainers?
actually, I couldn't care less about namepros alexa ranking
 
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why is that important to us domainers?
actually, I couldn't care less about namepros alexa ranking

Frank, sometimes I think you need to go back to high school.

Find a good tutorial online about Supply and Demand. I found one:


It is simple:

1. If there are more domainers, there are more buyers.

2. If domainers learn to hold their inventory for higher prices, you have higher average prices

3. If domainers move supply into strong hands (end users) you have less available supply.

The result is HIGHER PRICES and more PROSPERITY.

People can then invest in their families, make babies, grow communities, and find truth.

Do you want everyone to be poor? Why?
 
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why is that important to us domainers?
actually, I couldn't care less about namepros alexa ranking
In some sense I agree with the part re Alexa ranking.

But the other, that NamePros grows and be stronger and more professional is of interest to all of us, I think. In the same way that real estate professionals are helped by having professional standards, organizations and network connections, ideally NamePros could do that for us all. But it only works that way when the interactions, or at least those outside the Break Room, are professional, since they are there for the world to see.

Just my opinion. I totally respect your right to view it otherwise.

Have a nice day.

Bob
 
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Frank, sometimes I think you need to go back to high school.

Find a good tutorial online about Supply and Demand. I found one:


It is simple:

1. If there are more domainers, there are more buyers.

2. If domainers learn to hold their inventory for higher prices, you have higher average prices

3. If domainers move supply into strong hands (end users) you have less available supply.

The result is HIGHER PRICES and more PROSPERITY.

People can then invest in their families, make babies, grow communities, and find truth.

Do you want everyone to be poor? Why?


>>>>> 1. If there are more domainers, there are more buyers. <<<<<
LOL
good joke

selling to fellow domainers?
newbies

that interesting for epik
but not for us domainers


>>>>> 2. If domainers learn to hold their inventory for higher prices, you have higher average prices<<<<<

come on
how is that related to Alexa btw more traffic?

>>>>> 3. If domainers move supply into strong hands (end users) you have less available supply. <<<<<

I can only regard this as trolling

just because there are more domainers
we won't sell at a higher price to stronger hands

I will ignore the rest of your post

Ephesians 4:31-32
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
 
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