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.

 

[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

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I mean a person or robot has to take an additional step to get to the "offer page" usually by clicking on the link at the bottom or top of the landing page that says "buy this domain" or "make an offer" or "contact the owner",

I have wondered at this. Yes, one way to get to the offer page is to search on Sedo and then click on that name from the list. But if the name uses a Sedo that goes directly to for sale, i.e. not using parking links, does it not also count those that simply enter the URL and end up at the lander? I also thought so.

Some time ago by in this NamePros post a representative from Sedo said that with parking advertising links when visited it went into the first traffic, and then if person clicked on the link this name is for sale it got also counted in the sales listing.

It is important to also take into account that the two numbers at Sedo are for different time periods, one resetting each month.

It does seem that numbers are higher at Sedo than at say Dan for the same name. I presume that is a due both to differences in marketplace searches and also in effectiveness excluding bot traffic.

I sometimes wonder how many visits are simply domain investors checking the status on a name. Some of my names in strong keywords but seldom known extensions get more traffic than much more valuable names in well known extensions. I wonder if it is simply domain investors wondering what is being done with the name.

Bob

 

[likemike]

Seeing accurate stats without all the bots on the web would be an impossibility since there are all sorts of ways to manipulate bots. The real value of the domain is in the eye of the prospective buyer.

 

[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

 

[Future Sensors]

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.

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.

 

[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

 

[Future Sensors]

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

Good luck.

 

[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 !!


.

 

[oldtimer]

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


.

That might be true specially considering what is going on in the World right now,

But we here in this forum are mostly domainers and the problems in the domain Industry can effect us perhaps even more than other things that are going on in the society and in the World.

You guys should stop protecting a flawed system and help fix it not just for our sake as domainers, but for the sake of all the people who are not familiar with this stuff, but are still being affected by these flaws.

In any Industry it's the duty for the people who are in the know to protect the general public.

If the people who are in the know such as @Future Sensors start protecting the system instead of the 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

 

[Future Sensors]

If the people who are in the know such as @Future Sensors start protecting the system instead of the public then the Industry will deteriorate into a mafia like organization which then is going to require the Government to intervene and regulate it.

What a bizarre, unwanted twist that you suddenly put me at the center of this.

 

[oldtimer]

What a bizarre, unwanted twist that you suddenly put me at the center of this.

Actually you need to think of this in a positive way as I consider you (along with a few others here) to be a knowledgeable person about the inner works of the domain Industry and who can be of great benefit to the community here if he decides to be a Force For Good.

IMO

 

[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 .


.

 

[oldtimer]

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


.

What is going to determine whether what we have here is an Industry or not is whether we ourselves can come up with certain standards that can promote honest and fair play.

If we can't do that then we don't have an Industry we just have a gang of pirates.

IMO

 

[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.

 

[phaethon]

The other day I sold a .com with zero traffic. Some guy just hit the buy it now button. Traffic matters only if it makes money.

 

[biggie]

Apparently they just make it look confusing because they somehow are benefiting from the fog

Hi

it's obvious you are making more of it than it is
making accusations that they are "hiding" data, etc.

telling other members they are just as confused because they don't know the "intent" of the viewer on their names.

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.

you're never going to know why, unless you ask the person or bot who clicked.

for a long time member to create a title that implicates parking platforms in a big lie, without posting any definitive proof, is shameful.

imo...

 

[oldtimer]

for a long time member to create a title that implicates parking platforms in a big lie, without posting any definitive proof, is shameful.

imo...

Hi Biggie,

Stop protecting a flawed system and try to make some constructive suggestions as to what could be done to fix these problems Industry wide.

It's not just parking, it's sales lander statistics and also domain and website traffic in general that needs to be made available in an accurate and standardized way.

Now let me ask you this, as a longtime member yourself what do you have against bringing some order and uniformity to the domain Industry and why do you want to discourage us to even discuss these problems.

You should already know that I am not one who gives in to the status quo of doing things so easily and neither should you.

IMO

 

[poweredbyme]

From technical perspective, you can never know the real traffic of any domain or website. Internet connections are highly chaotic.

There are tons of things that affect traffic stats, including but not limited to connection issues, custom settings and firewall/access limiting settings on client side, server side, network side, etc. Also you have to consider different traffic stats software based on different criteria and algorithms. In short, you can never know the real traffic, even if you monitor raw server logs. It's simply impossible to know the exact traffic figures which is definitely higher than the traffic data provided by various sources and software.

 

[poweredbyme]

Geo location is one of the tons of factors.
A parking company with servers in Germany are going to report different traffic numbers than another parking company with servers in California. The chances of this is very close to 100%. Because server location matters a lot from technical perspective. Anycast? It has its own problems, can never be the perfect solution.

Any traffic data you have will always be less than the actual traffic.

@oldtimer , any profit oriented company will try to max profit and you are looking for an industry wide solution. This is not rational. Because an industry consist of companies which compete each other. How do they compete if they reveal all of their experiences, all data the they collect for long years? That's why private companies have trade secrets and each company has its own way of doing the same business in the same industry. We, as domainers, have freedom of choice, we can choose any provider and dump the ones which don't work. That's the solution you are looking for. I would be careful when asking for an industry wide solution, as someone else may ask for the same thing in the industry you operate in. For instance a domain end user may come to this forum and ask for an industry wide solution to problems his/her faced with a few domainers who try to sell domains. The worse thing that end user may have proofs of bad faith and may ask for an industry wide regulation/solution. Even worse, that person may label all domainers as scammers. I don't defend any parking company or any company. It's not my business. But as a business person, I always develop empathy with any person/entity who does business. That's not to defend any company or any person. It's just empathy and being inclined to reasoning of why there should be no bad faith, scam, etc. I tend to think that the reason should be technical. I tend to be optimistic. I agree with @biggie, it's not good to make accusitions without definitive proofs. Even if you have definitive proofs, industry wide solutions usually work only for in favor of the governments, not for the public. For instance, banking and finance is probably the most regulated industry. Can you tell me any benefits of all those regulations, KYC requirements, etc to average Joe? Zero. All those regulations work for the governments only, they collect more tax and spend those tax funds to their own political carrers, not for the average Joe. So please think twice when you ask for an industry wide solution for any industry.

 

[oldtimer]

Geo location is one of the tons of factors.
A parking company with servers in Germany are going to report different traffic numbers than another parking company with servers in California. The chances of this is very close to 100%. Because server location matters a lot from technical perspective. Anycast? It has its own problems, can never be the perfect solution.

Any traffic data you have will always be less than the actual traffic.

@oldtimer , any profit oriented company will try to max profit and you are looking for an industry wide solution. This is not rational. Because an industry consist of companies which compete each other. How do they compete if they reveal all of their experiences, all data the they collect for long years? That's why private companies have trade secrets and each company has its own way of doing the same business in the same industry. We, as domainers, have freedom of choice, we can choose any provider and dump the ones which don't work. That's the solution you are looking for. I would be careful when asking for an industry wide solution, as someone else may ask for the same thing in the industry you operate in. For instance a domain end user may come to this forum and ask for an industry wide solution to problems his/her faced with a few domainers who try to sell domains. The worse thing that end user may have proofs of bad faith and may ask for an industry wide regulation/solution. Even worse, that person may label all domainers as scammers. I don't defend any parking company or any company. It's not my business. But as a business person, I always develop empathy with any person/entity who does business. That's not to defend any company or any person. It's just empathy and being inclined to reasoning of why there should be no bad faith, scam, etc. I tend to think that the reason should be technical. I tend to be optimistic. I agree with @biggie, it's not good to make accusitions without definitive proofs. Even if you have definitive proofs, industry wide solutions usually work only for in favor of the governments, not for the public. For instance, banking and finance is probably the most regulated industry. Can you tell me any benefits of all those regulations, KYC requirements, etc to average Joe? Zero. All those regulations work for the governments only, they collect more tax and spend those tax funds to their own political carrers, not for the average Joe. So please think twice when you ask for an industry wide solution for any industry.

Thanks for the detailed response,

I understand that domain companies like all other businesses want to maximize their profits,

But can we agree that traffic stats should not be inflated or misrepresented in anyway across the whole Industry whether by companies or individuals.

And I am not asking for everyone to divulge their trade secrets, but can we agree that there is no rational reason for us to be left in the dark about what's going on with our sales landers.

Having true and accurate stats for the sales landers can help domainers immensely in adjusting their prices and sales strategies specially when visitors have to take an additional step to get to the offer or contact page.

IMO

 

[poweredbyme]

Thanks for the detailed response,

I understand that domain companies like all other businesses want to maximize their profits,

But can we agree that traffic stats should not be inflated by anyone across the board.

And I am not asking for everyone to divulge their trade secrets, but can we agree that there is no rational reason for us to be left in the dark about what's going on with our sales landers.

Having true and accurate stats for the sales landers can help domainers immensely in adjusting their prices and sales strategies specially when visitors have to take an additional step to get to the offer or contact page.

IMO

The source of traffic data usually comes from raw server logs. Server logs contain non-human traffic. In order to better count human traffic, javascript is used like google analytics and statcounter do. But javascripts lowers accuracy for various reasons such as privacy extensions of browsers. I run dozens of websites of my own for 20 years or so. Traffic stats I see in the control panel of my ad accounts, analytics/statcounter accounts, server logs always differ a lot like 5x.

By trade secrets, I mean that each ad networks, each webstats provider hypothetically should be running their custom algo in their stats. It can explain discrepancies but not neccessarily mean purposely faking/hiding traffic data. Standardization would inevitably end up with either to reveal those custom algorithms or stop using any custom things.

Each provider may show different traffic figures and all of them may be 100% true. Technically it's possible. Particular visits may be counted by Provider A and B but not by provider C, D and E. I would focus on ad revenue or # of conversions (domain sales). Number of visitors are not reliable. That's what I try to say.

Sales landers will also differ. If you self host landing pages, you probably know that I am correct. Your server and analytics will show different figures. Even 2 different traffic tracker services (ie., analytics vs statcounter) will show you different things. If you haven't tried you can try and see.

Ad stats will also be different. On the same page, different ad networks will show different number of visitors in stats. You can try and see if I am right or wrong. You can try amazon aff ads, google ads, etc. You will see all of them will report different number of visits. Again, I would focus on what makes more $, rather than number of visits.

Those discrepancies are largely technical. I know plenty of those technical details but can not write all of them as it would turn to be a long educational article.

I understand your point. There are bad players in any industry and you have some suspicions. You are not completely wrong and being skeptic is a scientific norm. While being skeptic not a very bad thing, I would first think of possibilities. In order to think possibilities you need to research technical details. Some providers may choose to steal from customers. If I still suspect after eliminating all technical possibilities I can think of, I would dump it.

 

[lock]

Write 2 pages of actual content that relate to your worst domain and it will likely out rank your best domain. Nothing happens without work. If you have so many actual searches broad vs exact you still have to rank that page to actually get the traffic. But that is the job as the buyer as the domainer you could prove it with a starter site and do the right work making you the webmaster but this makes you end user. Stick with domains.

 

[DomainNature]

I think to count real traffic you need to create a website, it's enough one page, add a plugin like Cookies accept and make it cover the whole page, so if the user is real human he will have to press the button I accept so he can view the website. I did this and was disappointed that my web is crawled by bots mostly, they even don't need to press any button of cookie accept, they can bypass that.
Of course humans can irritate that trick as it does with me, I hate when I view a website and some popup blocks the whole content, most of times I skip such websites, it's annoying.

Edit: so those bots are sent by big corporations to grab your content, design, ideas and words, then they use our content free of charge to top their own websites, I m tired to see how I do changes on my web and see it later implemented in their crap of websites. But they are not aware that now I hold top domains which they don't.