To start with I will answer question #1. Yes there is a way to see where your traffic is coming from and maybe even get an idea of what they are looking for. I suspect that when you setup your domain you set the nameservers to sedo's namservers and let them handle the rest. What this does is when someone types in your domain, they look to sedo to get the actual address of your site. (which happens to be on sedo's server) You are completely out of the loop.
How I do it is to host my own domains. I've got the godaddy delux linux plan for like $6 a month. If you don't already have hosting, you are going to need it if you want to make a website so you might as well shoot for a cheap plan that allows unlimited domains. Anyways, I add my domains to my godaddy hosting account and change the nameservers so that people who type in my domain name get directed to my hosting account.
Each domain gets directed to its own folder with its own index.html, .htaccess, log.pl, and log.txt. Heres is a copy of the actual index.htm that gets loaded. Just replace both instances of "domainname.tld" with your domain name.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<TITLE>domainname.tld</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET rows="100%,*" border=0 frameborder=0 framespacing=0>
<FRAME name=top src="http://www.sedo.com/parking/domainname.tld" noresize>
</FRAMESET>
<!--#exec cgi="/log.pl" -->
</HTML>
As you look at the code you will see that it essentially loads the sedo page in a frame that fills the entire browser window. Then it executes a script called log.pl. What the site visitor sees is exactly the same as if they went straight to sedo. I'm sure there are others here who have a far better script than the simple logging script I wrote for mine, but I grab the ip address, language, browser type, and time of every person who visits my domain. I haven't quite figured out how to get the referrer data, but I know its also available. I just haven't spent the time to work that one out.
Here is the actual logging script. I just put an empty log.txt file in the same folder as the index.html and wait. A few hits later I can open log.txt in notepad and see who's been visiting.
Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$counter = "log.txt";
print "Content-type: text/plain", "\n\n";
open (FILE, "+>>" . $counter) || die "Cannot write to counter file.\n";
flock (FILE, 2);
print FILE "$ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'} ";
print FILE "$ENV{'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'} ";
print FILE "$ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'} ";
print FILE "$ENV{'DATE_GMT'} \n";
flock (FILE, 8);
close (FILE);
exit;
From this point, all you need to do is get a better script or modify this one to capture the referrer data. Referrer data is what tells you how someone got to your site. It will be blank if it is from a typein, but will have the link if your traffic is coming from backlinks or a search engine
CHILLY said:
PART2:
If you were to take that domain that averages 20 uniques a day and park it at another parking site...Would that traffic continue or does the traffic you get depend on which Parking site you use. If the traffic would differ between various parking sites--why would it be different? Does the traffic of your Domain depend upon the popularity of the parking company or would it be your domain name alone?
To answer part2 is easy. You will get the exact same number of visits regardless of where you direct the visitors to. The reason you might see differences is that different parking services may count different things as a real unique visitor. Generally none of them count bots and spiders, but since different services use different detection methods you will see different results. I have one domain that I payed like $200 for as a traffic domain because it was supposed to get like 15 uniques per day. After testing it myself, in reality it gets 0. Every one of those visitors is some sort of bot, spider, trojan, or other nasty nonhuman traffic. Aside from its true name value its worthless. It
might be worth the reg fee if you had a use for it.
The one factor that can change between hosting your own site instead of a parked page is the visitors impression. You will get the same number of people stumble upon your site, but if you do a good job of developing you will get some of those people to come back repeatedly. Repeat visits means popularity witch translates into backlinks, pr, and eventually $$$.
CHILLY said:
PART3:
IF you were to take that domain name that gets 20 uniques at sedo and make a website out of it---would you still get that 20 unique average a day on you website?
Assuming the traffic is real to begin with then yes, but even better you will get more as time goes on. 20 today, next week 20 a day + 20 more who came back after seeing your site this week. Do a good job developing and growth will be exponential.
