discuss Domain traffic as a predictor of sales?

[gareth1614]

A general question:

Of course every domain and extension is different, but what correlation (if any) have you found between the rate of organic traffic on a domain and the likelihood of buyer interest and/or a sale?

Assuming the traffic is likely to be legit and not bots, and the source (e.g. Sedo parking etc) is one you trust.

Any insights are appreciated.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

To end-users? Almost none because there are so many unrelated reasons for traffic, and it only takes one visit from an interested buyer to result in a sale. The number of inquiries has a much stronger correlation.

To other types of buyers? A strong correlation because quality traffic can be monetized. Anything that earns money can be sold for a multiple of those earnings.

 

[Future Sensors]

Agree with @Bravo Mod Team -- and would like to add the following.

Most popular domain marketplaces give you very little information about the visitors to your landers. Moreover, it's not clearly documented what and how exactly traffic is measured. For example: are page reloads counted once or multiple times? And within what time frame? That's just one example.

Furthermore, as OP already assumes, a lot of web traffic is caused by bots, especially in the period just after new domain registration, and when the domain is about to expire. There are countless bots that check for trademark infringements, bots that check for illegal content, bots that check for malware, bots that search the web for search engines or AI learning, bots that check which TLDs have a developed website, automated systems that visit your website when your TLS certificate is renewed, you have domainers that just briefly visit your site only to check how you are pricing your domains without any intention of buying your domain, some browsers are doing link pre-fetching, you have botnets visiting random IPs and websites to check the security of your website (bad actors), spam bots, and so on, and so on.

And sometimes, someone, a real human, comes along who plans to buy your domain

Coincidentally, NamePros is currently working on displaying a LOT of useful information about domain visitors and domain leads in the Domain Parking dashboard. With a trained eye, all this combined info will surely help you better respond to incoming sales inquiries, and help you with adjusting your domain prices.

Here's another suggestion I recently made about tracking and displaying repeat visitors to your NamePros Domain Parking lander.

 

[equity78]

Very little correlation, some will tell you the names with 0 traffic in their portfolio have sold more. It can be random and if you have a few sales in a row you will tend to think traffic is the reason why it sold.