Sedo Sucks

[Caveman]

I just received this email from sedo:

Hello, unfortunately your domain was blocked from Sedo’s Parking Program because it was found that your domain was receiving traffic from a unnatural source. We cannot credit any further revenue to this domain, as our affiliate partner will not honour. If you feel that this domain traffic is valid and would like to monetize it, we recommend that you try Domain Hop as they still pay for traffic based upon views, at a $4 RPM (revenue per thousand views), including traffic that we see as unnatural. Domain Hop may be a better option for this individual domain name, as you can still generate revenue with this domain.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,



Louise Scott
Key Account Manager

My response was to explain what exactly "unnatural" traffic was and where exactly it can be "found". If this is the way they treat their customers, then I for one will have nothing more to do with them. I'm not a big fish to them by any means, but it still matters to me. Just needed to vent a little. :yell: So what do you all think about this? Has this happened to anyone else?

 

[dx3k]

thats bad is "unnatural" traffic like purcahsed traffic or those view for view type sites??


dx3k

 

[forona]

doesn't Sedo parking work based on clicks, not views? if people are clicking the links isn't the traffic doing its job?

 

[McDope]

Just to let you know that you're not alone.

http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=48613

They should definitely invest in some serious advertising system and stop namecalling their clients' traffic.

That was a canned message, I doubt they'll elaborate on this issue. As advised, move your parked domain to DH.

 

[bizbj]

Would you tell me when they told you this message?Before you got money from them?And what is your Click through rate ?

 

[Michau]

They don't allow paid traffic because they want to show unbiased hit statistics for their domains, so that thay can be considered by potential buyers. If you are getting paid traffic, you inflate these statistics and hence the problem. Remember that Sedo is primarily a marketplace for domains, not domain parking service.

 

[Caveman]

My clickthrough rate was .02%! For this month, I had a whopping 5 clicks for $1.51 on this name. This name has been parked there for a year now in November, with basically the same traffic every month without a problem. I've never purchased traffic for any domain I've ever had. I don't know what's up with sedo, but I guess I'll just move my 80 or so domains away from them to domain hop.

 

[JamesFNomar]

I have about 20 names w/ Sedo. My question is- what is a good number of views to say that my name is somewhat valuable. For instance- one of my .coms has had 16 views since last week. Is this a horrible number or just ok?

 

[1rrr1]

lol looks like everyone is moving to domainhop

 

[Caveman]

If sedo keeps running off their customers, I can see why. I think sedo should have at the very least worked with me to find out why they think my traffic is unnatural - whatever that means. They have logs to see where it's comming from etc. To h3ll with them, I get PO'd everytime I think about it.

 

[McDope]

lol looks like everyone is moving to domainhop

Of course! Even they are encouraging their clients to do so!

....we recommend that you try Domain Hop....
....Domain Hop may be a better option....

 

[DJ-Sound]

They have to do this because google. Google is always very strict with adsense, if you buy traffic (which is normally 1/3 fake anyways) it will hurt your google adsense account.

 

[redhippo]

thats bad! how do get yourself out of such a jam! SEDO should provide the stats!

 

[wlspro]

Got the same email today.

They have the right to remove any domain name unilaterally but use of such terms as "unnatural source" is ridiculous when they don't bother defining it anywhere.

And all this while they are shamelessly promoting unquestionably trademark infringing domains such as jcpenneys.com , bigbrother5.com and aljazera.net as their top traffic sites.

 

[johnny6]

it's interesting that sedo just recently added the "you can't buy traffic to your domains" in their TOS. I read through them a while ago and they didn't mention it. But now they did.
I suppose the problem is that the target isn't targeted (no matter what you say, there's no such thing as purchased targeted traffic), but it can and does generate some clicks - from people who perhaps wouldn't have found the site any other way. It's very odd.....

 

[Caveman]

My biggest complaint in this whole thing is the fact I have Never purchased traffic from any source for any domain. Any and all my traffic is natural type in and link traffic. For them to just out of the blue say my traffic is "unnatural" is completely rediculous. Like I said, they have the logs. they should at least show me what is "unnatural" about it.

 

[bizbj]

They don't allow paid traffic because they want to show unbiased hit statistics for their domains, so that thay can be considered by potential buyers. If you are getting paid traffic, you inflate these statistics and hence the problem. Remember that Sedo is primarily a marketplace for domains, not domain parking service.

Peoplr park their domain name at SEDO ,because they want to sell their name by Sedo park program.Park is a very important part at Sedo.

 

[johnny6]

Remember that Sedo is primarily a marketplace for domains, not domain parking service.

I 100% disagree. Sedo makes MUCH more money from their advertisers on parked pages than they do from selling domains. Hands down.

 

[DownUnder]

Hi All,

One thing that domainers have to remember is that ultimately somebody has to want to pay for the traffic that your domains generate.

In Sedo's case they use google for monetising their parking traffic.

A concept that a lot of people on this board may not be aware of is Google's 'Black Box' calculations for traffic payments. Google uses a ROI (return on investment) model to judge the quality of traffic sent to their paying advertisers. They then adjust revenue share percentages based on the value of this traffic. If a particular source is supplying bad traffic, then that source has its revenue share % dropped.

So what does this mean? In Sedo's case they probably need to make sure that any domains sending traffic that will not convert with advertisers do not adversely the potential earnings of domains sending excellent traffic.

I don't know any of Sedo's policies, but I do know that I constantly have to deal with this sort of situation at Fabulous. A lot of domain owners seem to think that all of their traffic is worth a lot of money. The simple fact is that there are varying levels of traffic quality and not all domain traffic is worth money to advertisers.

At Fabulous we deal with most advertisers directly, so have the advantage of being able to talk with them about the traffic that is working and not working etc and how much they are prepared to pay for certain traffic sources.

Once again I must stress I don't know Sedo's policies, but I think they would have a pretty tough time managing all of the traffic in their network and making sure that their payout % was not adversely affected in any way by untargeted or suspect traffic.

Saying a traffic source is 'unnatural' is perhaps not the best way to convey that the traffic is unwelcome.... Maybe they think it was fraudulent (no offence - I'm not implying it was, just hypothesising) and are just trying to be nice about it? If they do think it was fraud they would probably not give further details to ensure that their detection methods are not compromised.... But fraud control is a whole different story that I will save for another time....

Anyway - just trying to shed some light on what could be going on. Hope it helps...

 

[Caveman]

Well, the traffic this name was sending to sedo was not converting very well, but it never had in the almost year I have been sending it. The thing everyone seems to be overlooking is that I have only had 5 clickthroughs for $1.51 this month. This is about average for this name. It's never been a real "killer" domain. So my next question, and maybe DownUnder can answer this for me, is does it really matter what type of traffic your sending to a parking program, ie type-ins or link traffic if they don't click on the ads? No clicks, no charge to advertisers, right? I have some domains that average above 50% clickthrough and some that are at 0% clickthrough. I also remember that sedo didn't mind screwing up my clickthroughs when they would, out of the blue, change all my keywords to very non-relevent terms for all my domains (before self optimization).

 

[charlie_uk]

it difficult to judge anything with Sedo's anti cheating policy. Really this means you cannot do any kind of measure whether sedo are converting clicks to cash.

I want to know if they have to report to anyone?

Imagine if they wanted to raise cash in a hurry all they would have to do is keep the cash raised by every 10th click - how much would even a day of this raise in revenue? I wouldn't have though that they refund advertisers who have unusal traffic clicking their links?

They do not have a clear traffic policy and so you can judge what they allow, what they dont and what they pocket :S

 

[Caveman]

Update!

Got this reply this morning:

Hi, our apologies if you feel that this is not necessary, unnatural traffic is defined as (but not limited to) any action where clicks are gathered via: Pop Ups, Artificial Clicks (i.e. Scripts, etc), Incentive Generated Clicks (Paid, Support this site, etc.), or any Clicks that are not from natural traffic. There is a full explanation of the terms and conditions at the link that I have included.

http://www.sedo.com/about/faq.php3?language=e&session=197391#cef425afbc1c9a827fc5e8da2632b1d5#CD10

I hope that you do not feel that this is unfair, we try to treat our customers especially important customers as fairly as possible. In the case of this domain name the traffic that is being generated is not honored by our parking affiliate.

I hope this has not cause offence.

Kind regards,



Louise Scott
Key Account Manager

My reply was:

I, like most honest folks, do take offense at being called a cheater. I understand the TOS and the idea of generating clicks in my mind is cheating someone out of money. I don't understand how you can say that having 5 clickthroughs for $1.51 this month is manipulating or generating clicks! Sedo has the logs and can easily check where the clicks came from. I will continue to move my domains to domain hop as you so graciously suggested.

 

[Caveman]

Just wondering what anyone thought of the second email?

 

[logos]

Interesting?

I just listed gloads.com onto sedo today and within an hour I made $0.42 with one click? I hope they don't think I'm paying for traffic because gloads.com is still linked to other gaming websites!

 

[Caveman]

That's a great amonut per click. What is your keyword(s)?