Search vs. traffic

[krx]

AFAIK, there is no way to really know how much traffic a domain gets without actually owning it and running your own analytics. That said, search volume as shown by the adwords tool or wordtracker is thought to be an indicator. However I have some keyword domains that show 10,000 to 40,000 exact search on adwords but get nary one direct hit a month. All parked pages - no development whatsoever.

I would think there would be some kind of ratio that would be more or less consistent across domains. Like 10% or 25% or something, ie, if you're getting 10,000 in exact search you should be getting x% or xx% of direct traffic to the domain.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Any ideas why?

---------- Post added at 09:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 AM ----------

Another question, does the adwords tool or wordtracker (or any other search tool) include what is typed in the address bar, or just what's typed in the search box? If you plug in "mykeyword.com" will you see how many times this is searched in the search box or do these tools include how many times it is typed in the address box as well?

 

[Bannen]

If your domain gets no type-in traffic, then the traffic can only come from backlinks to your site, or from search engines. Assuming your domain isn't linked to by other sites, all you're left with is search engine traffic.

And with search engine traffic, all that counts is having a website that is indexed well for keywords, and that ranks high in the serps, preferably on page 1 of google. Though even if your site ranks a few pages back, you'll still get some residual traffic if it's a well-searched term.

But even if your term gets 100,000 exact monthly searches... if it doesn't get type-in traffic, doesn't have backlinks, and the website/parked page is 10 or 50 or 100 pages back in google search results, you'll be lucky to get a handful of visitors each month.

Actually those high exact searches are often what bite you in the arse; if you take a low niche name with only xxx or x,xxx monthly searches, you usually have only small competition if you want to get a minisite or blog to the first page of google, and if you do a good job you can get your site in first results spot, and rake in all that SE traffic. But if your name has xx,xxx or xxx,xxx exact searches, you'll have so much competition from so many sites, that you'll usually have to do major development, rather than simply a good minisite, to get your site to page 1 spot 1.

That's the whole business model behind the minisite boom: having niche names that had decent monthly searches, but weren't huge terms with lots of competition from other sites.

But remember that Goog's algorithms have changed over the last while, and they are so biased against parked pages and minisites that now it's very difficult to get even niche minisites optimized to page 1 of search results, without putting in considerably more work than most minisiters want to. Parked pages don't stand much chance either. A dynamic site like a blog, with consistent new/original content being added, is what Google loves and what they try shoot straight to the first page.


For your second question, Adwords search tool only shows results from search boxes, since it is based on 'searching'; people who type a URL into the address field aren't technically searching for anything, they're trying to get directly to an address.
Even so, if you type in a domain name to the Adwords tool it will still show you search results for that domain (if it gets 'searches'), since a lot of people still don't know what that URL field thingy up at the top is for. I've told them, but my folks still type a domain name into the google search box, rather than into the URL field. Lots of people still do that so the keyword tool will show those ones. Type in something like cars.com to the keyword tool and it will show you all kinds of variants, with extension, that are typed into search boxes.

There are other tools that do show how many type-ins a domain name will get from the URL field, but I don't know what they are anymore. Used to be Overture was the big tool for type-in traffic checking but I don't know if it's still around.

 

[TheWatcher]

I use Google Keyword Tool to give me a good estimate before I buy a domain name. I will be able to know if the price is acceptable to me and within current market value.

The keyword tool is use to get an search estimate about the domain name. I use the "exact" keyword instead of "phrase" search. That's a big difference.

continue reading here:
king.net/forum/domainname/before-you-buy-a-domain-name

Though I also buy brandable domain name for projects. If I want it, I pay good money.

 

[lothos]

AFAIK, there is no way to really know how much traffic a domain gets without actually owning it and running your own analytics. That said, search volume as shown by the adwords tool or wordtracker is thought to be an indicator.

I would think there would be some kind of ratio that would be more or less consistent across domains. Like 10% or 25% or something, ie, if you're getting 10,000 in exact search you should be getting x% or xx% of direct traffic to the domain.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Any ideas why?

Exact searches doesn't mean that the website is listed in Google. It doesn't mean it ranks first for the search terms. Etc. There are too many factors in play here.

There is no correlation or indication of traffic compared to searches per month.

 

[krx]

Thanks for the replies. I was assuming (wrongly it seems) that there would be some kind of correlation between how many times a keyword phrase (eg, "my keyword") is searched and how many times the corresponding domain (mykeyword.com) is typed into the address bar. But doesn't it seem like there should be? I mean, if you take 3 keyword phrases (eg, "cedar playsets", "vintage shoes", and "media cabinets") wouldn't you expect the type-in traffic to the corresponding domains to be a roughly similar proportion of how many times each keyword phrase is searched? What am I missing here?

 

[ecalc]

In my experience there is correlation but it is highly sensitive to variables such as ...

TLD - the usual suspect wins here

number of keywords - the lower the better

subject matter - low brow beats intellectual

It can also be helpful to cross check keyword search results from multiple independent keyword tools. Type-in traffic prediction is a black art and will likely remain that way due to the moneymaking nature of the beast.

 

[krx]

Make sense .. thanks.