discuss The Big Lie in the Domain Industry, Traffic Stats

[oldtimer]

I have been mainly using Sedo and Godaddy parking and sales landers for the past few months and was kind surprised by the number of unique visitors that I was getting considering the very low number of offers or lack thereof for the majority of my domains. Even the offer page views at Sedo were way up there for a lot of my domains while receiving no offers at all on them.

At Sedo I had about 450k unique visitors in the past 12 months on my portfolio of around 1000 domains and some of my domains had consistent offer page views over 50 per month without receiving any offers.

Godaddy doesn’t currently offer stats on sales landers, but they provide very inflated traffic stats on Godaddy Auctions.

Finally I decided to use Parking Crew for my domains and from what I can see the traffic stats for unique visitors and offer page views seem to be more realistic.

I like the fact that Parking Crew still allows me to use Afternic and Sedo sales landers which I like to switch around between occasionally.

My question is if Parking Crew can provide true stats why can’t Sedo and Godaddy and although most experienced domainers know that these stats are mostly from bots, but isn’t that going to be misleading to end users or even new domainers who rely on these false stats to make a domain purchase.

This situation can not be allowed to go on any longer.

We need to have true and accurate stats throughout the Domain Industry.

IMO

Thread Rules:

Everyone’s opinion is welcomed as long as it’s on topic and that things are kept on the professional, constructive, and respectful side. Constructive criticism for the purpose of pointing out the flaws in the domain Industry is allowed, but keep all negative, insulting, rude, and hateful comments out of this thread.

Disclaimer: I am not afflicted with or work for anyone in the Domain Industry.

 

[lock]

Show one example and we will all analyze it.

 

[oldtimer]

Please stop..if domaining is not working for you, stats won't make any difference..

As far as whether domaining is working for me or not that's a separate matter, as an activist I have different plans and goals for owning domain names which might not all be for personal gains.

But even if I owned one domain name (like many end users do) I would still have the right to be concerned about the way that certain things were being handled in the domain Industry.

Nevertheless I have said what I needed to say, the rest is up to the community to see if they are comfortable with the way things are currently being done or if they want to see some new standards being established across the board in the domain Industry.

The best I can do is to just leave it at that.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

dont rely on it %100 , Even though it can include some bots traffic what you see on parking crew .

Simply if the visitor stay longer than 1 minute in avg. session duration you can assume it is real traffic , but still no guarantee .

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What about the 'offer page views' that Parking Crew shows for the domains listed for sale,

I kind of like that as a better metric anyways.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

Well for now I am happy with getting the stats for my domains through Parking Crew, so I am not that much worried about myself,

But I am hoping that someday soon we can have certain Industry wide standards for Traffic Stats so that no matter which platform we are using we can rest assured that we are getting the exact and accurate statistics for our domains.

IMO

 

[Traderas]

I hope I m not off topic.
I tried SEDO parking for first time, starting 20 days ago.
The first results was promising.
After 2 weeks with an average RPM at 0.75, the last 4 days a have a major drop at 0.05.
I have sent 2 emails in sedo's support asking for the reason, or if this is my fault somehow.
The first answer I received was a generic mail about the factors that affect traffic, like the target group or the geographic regions. Which is completely irrelevant because there is a 90% drop in exactly the same domains.
The second answer was about a corrector that happens every 24-48 hours that filters out invalid traffic, and could be a possible reason...
I don't know what should I have understand from these answers, but I clearly haven't.
I would appreciate an opinion

 

[enterscope]

Traffic really only matters if there is revenue. Whether an existing website, type-in for PPC, etc.

Most end users want their exact brand and don't care about the traffic.

 

[Traderas]

Hi

low amount of clicks and low epc, usually means the names are low quality for parking.
i'd be interested in knowing the actual domains, as only then, can a reason be seen.

imo...

I don't argue, these are low quality domains for sure!
I registered a bunch of .ru.com names, quite cheap, and parked them to see what will happen.
If that was their performance from the beginning, I wouldn't bother.
But the major performance change is that confuses me.
Average RPM dropped 90% and stayed there...

 

[oldtimer]

including whether it is dns traffic or redirected or "paid for traffic" to that name or link traffic from other websites.

imo...

It could be the traffic from search engines,

When search engines first index new landing pages at Sedo you might get some traffic, but after couple of weeks that traffic is reduced or dies altogether as your indexed pages are either deleted or sent down the abyss.

So it might not have anything to do with Sedo.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

Well the Parking Crew thing didn't work for me either since I noticed that they were artificially manipulating the stats specially the ones for the 'offer page views' that I was interested to get.

I guess I am going to use Google Analytics myself when I get a chance.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

Thanks for the info @Bob Hawkes

The thing is why should this situation be so confusing in the first place that even veteran domainers such as yourself are put in a position that they have to guess what's going on with all this.

One thing is for certain,

The platforms themselves have a very good and clear understanding of all these stats and traffic metrics and use them to their own advantage when it comes to managing their side of the business.

Now the question is why don't they want to share that data with us by give us true and accurate stats that can help us manage our domains.

Do they actually benefit from hiding this valuable info from the rest of us or worse giving us false and inflated stats.

Most likely all the different platforms use Google Analytics to track visitors and their behaviors, I assume the differences in their filtering and interpreting the data is what causes all the discrepancy in the numbers that we see. I guess we as domainers can use Google Analytics ourselves too, but when you have a lot of domains that are constantly changing that can be very cumbersome to set up.

A visitor can get to the landing page perhaps by typing the domain directly or clicking on a link somewhere that the domain is being advertised or perhaps through the search engines. Some visitors might actually find the domain by searching the platform itself or perhaps by seeing the domain through the participating Registrars and their downstream partner networks.

Nevertheless regardless of what steps the visitors have to take to arrive at the landing page their behavior and any subsequent actions on their part (like wanting to make an offer) can be tracked through Google Analytics (or any other tracking systems) and so as confusing as it seems, but it's a pretty easy thing to do for all the different platforms. Apparently they just make it look confusing because they somehow are benefiting from the fog that is created around domain traffic.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread it's about time that the domain Industry came up with some kind of a standard across all platforms when it comes to how the stats and traffic are obtained, processed, counted, and displayed.

Now go get them Bob.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

I have a solution for you.

Move to a marketplace that offers Google Analytics integration, and work with the raw data, which you can then finetune, manage, filter, and interpret to your liking.

But above all, don't get too carried away with these statistics.

Thanks for your suggestion,

But we need to solve this problem at the Industry level not just for me.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

But above all, don't get too carried away with these statistics.

I believe that true and accurate stats for the 'offer page views' can be a very helpful metric (along with others of course) to domainers.

IMO

 

[lovely4ever]

Thanks for your suggestion,

But we need to solve this problem at the Industry level not just for me.

IMO

if you call it a problem ! I believe we have problems in our life much important to solve than to solve traffic issues !!


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[lovely4ever]

public then the Industry will deteriorate into a mafia like organization which then is going to require the Government to intervene and regulate it.

IMO

Actually it require government intervene and regulate , we individuals now cannot solve it .


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[lock]

I had to sit through a speech once where some one claimed their advertising was working middle of night taking credit for a few bot clicks when a sale was made day after but were not referred as claimed. Was just cringing at the bs.

 

[lock]

trafficstats in org is my site and will tell you if you have a lander.

 

[jim h]

It seems that I am not the first skeptic.
Although this will increase the burden on the system, these data should be truly disclosed.

 

[oldtimer]

I believe I have found the perfect parking platform

More details after I test it for a while.

Disclaimer: I have no connections or affiliations with them.

IMO

 

[oldtimer]

There is a lot of delusion here I have a lot of sites running stat scripts and tools and if it shows you have no traffic it isn't being mean or lowers value it just doesn't prove much by parking a name with no marketing backlinks and expect just because it really is a great type in it is going to rank with parking no content.

Parking stats is only one metric amongst many others that domainers should consider in evaluating their domains.

There are a lot of domains that have an inherent potential and value built into them, but they don't get any traffic. There are also different sources and kinds of traffic for a domain name or website.

The one that I am most interested in is the stats for the Sales Landers that shows the info about the potential buyers visits to the Landers and their subsequent actions and behaviors as to whether they have taken any additional steps in showing further interest in a domain name even for those who haven't made any offers because perhaps they thought the price was too high or was out of their range.

This info can help us price our domains better and perhaps be able to make more sales.

This is the data that big registrars themselves use in evaluating their own portfolios so there should be no reason for them to leave us in the dark about the Sales Landers that We have with them (or worse to give us inaccurate or inflated stats).

Nevertheless regardless of what kind of traffic stats we are talking about it's time to have some standards across the Industry that promote giving true and accurate data that are not manipulated or inflated artificially.


IMO

 

[lock]

How about develop a site and get a reality check the tiniest bit of effort makes 1000% more traffic.
I don't feel there are any lies to unravel but feel free to post evidence.

 

[lock]

Over inflated would be bots but i really think counting a few parking clicks is pointless when a description gives it 10 x more and then page another 100% more etc.

 

[Real AJ Martin]

I have been mainly using Sedo and Godaddy parking and sales landers for the past few months and was kind surprised by the number of unique visitors that I was getting considering the very low number of offers or lack thereof for the majority of my domains. Even the offer page views at Sedo were way up there for a lot of my domains while receiving no offers at all on them.

At Sedo I had about 450k unique visitors in the past 12 months on my portfolio of around 1000 domains and some of my domains had consistent offer page views over 50 per month without receiving any offers.

Godaddy doesn’t currently offer stats on sales landers, but they provide very inflated traffic stats on Godaddy Auctions.

Finally I decided to use Parking Crew for my domains and from what I can see the traffic stats for unique visitors and offer page views seem to be more realistic.

I like the fact that Parking Crew still allows me to use Afternic and Sedo sales landers which I like to switch around between occasionally.

My question is if Parking Crew can provide true stats why can’t Sedo and Godaddy and although most experienced domainers know that these stats are mostly from bots, but isn’t that going to be misleading to end users or even new domainers who rely on these false stats to make a domain purchase.

This situation can not be allowed to go on any longer.

We need to have true and accurate stats throughout the Domain Industry.

IMO

Thread Rules:

Everyone’s opinion is welcomed as long as it’s on topic and that things are kept on the professional, constructive, and respectful side. Constructive criticism for the purpose of pointing out the flaws in the domain Industry is allowed, but keep all negative, insulting, rude, and hateful comments out of this thread.

Disclaimer: I am not afflicted with or work for anyone in the Domain Industry.

any actual sample landers to show ? Their site is one pager with ZERO example pages and the video explanation is canned cartoon

 

[buydomainnames]

Selling domains no need a lot of traffics, we only need 1 real traffic per domains to hit BIN or make offer seriously.

But we should build a valuable traffic when we develop website to sell product / services, attract more new visitor and promote our website massively

 

[clint walker]

I like the fact that Parking Crew still allows me to use Afternic and Sedo sales landers which I like to switch around between occasionally.

So they allow Godaddy/Afternic Ns3 Ns4 and Ns5 Ns6 landers for your domains. Is this straight forward? And you can still get visitor stats for these landers whilst its not technically parked? (sorry for a late reply to older thread)

 

[oldtimer]

I think no way any registrar or sales lander can avoid bot traffic in their statistics record .
even when using google analytics and with filter you still get lots of bot traffic ,
Thats my opinion from long time Observing the domains traffic .


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So how does Parking Crew filter all those bots and junk traffic, because their traffic stats seem to be very accurate and it's also in real time so you can see the changes in traffic as they occur.

IMO