It's not Overture I don't trust, it's the cultlike following of Domaineers applying weight and value to domains because of OVT. More like DEvaluation.
Huge sites get little or no OVT. Small sites get alot. I've got sites that get 400 OVT one month and 100 the next. I've got sites that are #1 everywhere else showing 1000s of daily hits while OVT shows little or none sometimes.
I also take exception to the WIDE variety of backpeddling regarding OVT... on one hand, people say that a site has little or no value because it has a low OVT. Then, you produce a site with HIGH OVT and the same people say it has no value because they didn't type the extention with the domain. Then you produce a site that has high OVT with extention and the SAME people say it has no value because although it has been searched it doesn't mean people are actually GOING there.
Make up your minds!!!! Either that, or be HONEST with yourselves. Quit using OVT as a tool to demean other people's website, hopes and dreams. If YOU PERSONALLY don't like a domain name, just say so. It's not a big deal.
NamePros, for instance, has an OVT of only 42. FORTY-TWO
By most standards, the knee jerk OVT zombies would declare with complete confidence that the domain NamePros.com has almost NO value because the OVT is so low.
However... HOW many members does NP have? How many uniques and total impressions per month? I'd be curious what the Adsense earnings are for NP. I'd bet that it's sizeable.
When it's all boiled down, OVT measures how many times a word or phrase was searched at Yahoo in a Month's time. If you, as a domain owner, go to the various yahoo related search sites and typed in your own name every day, you could generate 100s of OVT results for your own site. What does that mean?
Also,the MYTH that people search with EXTENSION. I think that is completely rediculous and just another way for your competition to devaluate your domain.
I can't think of any time that I have chosen to go to a search engine to type in a complete domain rather than just type in the complete domain and go there directly. Can you?
If you want to find sites about snowmobiles, you go to GOOGLE and type Snowmobiles and then click through the resulting hits.... don't you? The variations come in what search engine you might use but MOST use Google and that alone skews the OVT results and almost nobody that wants to see any VARIETY of results will use an extention because you will get ONE site rather than them all.
So POO on those that say an domain is worthless because it is not searched with extention. That's the most STUPID way to search for anything on the internet and if those are the people hitting your site, you don't want them anyway because they are competely and totally mental.
IF you are trying to get a TRUE and HONEST read on what's being searched and what that means for your domain interests, try and think about how YOU searched for things before some "professional domain reseller" sold you this song and dance about OVT results.
You got along pretty well before... just as all the customers you hope will find YOUR site... and that was searching wide and general terms without extentions.
Moneky See, Monkey Do... that is why OVT has a cultlike following and why so many domaineers get roped into the hope and belief that they will make living (or die trying) based on OVT results why the rest of the End-User world goes on making a living selling products, goods and services from their "rediculously low OVT scoring" websites.
I believe OVT is honest in their reporting. I just think it's the interpretations that are NOT so honest.
GoPC
