Traffic collapse - Why does this happen?

[fuzzy]

I park a few domains on Sedo. Most do not attract much parking traffic - some will earn their annual reg fee.

Very occasionally, a new listing will begin to attract good traffic with handy CTR (15-40%). The traffic seems fairly organic (insomuch as it starts to increase a week or so after the domain is listed and the increase in volume consistent from day to day).

However, those new listings that do attract better than average traffic do not do so for long. 3 days to a week after the daily traffic begins to gain momentum - it abruptly decreases (sometimes quite dramatically).

I haven't been able to determine why this occurs. One thing I have noticed (though not in every instance) is that the sudden decrease in volume occurs slightly after a sudden increase in EPM by (by 3-10x!).

It feels to me like a traffic management problem (strong low-EPM traffic being wasted in an attempt to capture high-EPM traffic).

The strong traffic rarely returns after the collapse.

Any thoughts at to what is going on?

Here is a (very dramatic) example of the traffic patterns I am describing:

 

[TestCase]

I suspect it's mostly bot traffic. That's what most of mine seems to be at Sedo.

It's especially noticeable with new registrations - everything registered in the last 6 weeks and put at Sedo seems to follow the same pattern you describe. My oldest dn's at sedo rarely get any bot traffic -- but they may just be crappy domains! LOL

Along with your graph, there might be a pie chart to the right of it telling you the source nation for your traffic. And below the graph there may be a list of referring links. Do you have any of these?

Most of my traffic seems to be from (Mother) Russia and China sprinkled with a little from India. A month or so ago it was mostly Brazil and other South American and Central American countries where the traffic originated.

Most of the current referrers are via Yandex & Baidu.

 

[fuzzy]

Hey TC, thanks for your reply.

I had this thought it was bot traffic, but didn't realise bot traffic clicked through.

below the graph there may be a list of referring links

In the case of the example traffic I used, there is no pie-chart showing (which is not the norm).

Most of the current referrers are via Yandex & Baidu.

It looks like Yandex indexed the site 9-10 days ago - yandex as a referrer but only shows the one unique/visit.

 

[fuzzy]

there might be a pie chart to the right of it telling you the source nation for your traffic

@TestCase, 98.18% of traffic was from the US as it turns out.
2 referrers listed:

• yandex (1 view)
• about:blank (1 view)

384 uniques, 194 clicks before the traffic was switched off.

Some of my other domains attract bogus Baidu and Yandex traffic, but the visits listed against their urls are high. Also, almost no clicks.

 

[WatchDogue]

Appreciate the well worded questions and, the excellent answer TC.

Was analyzing our DNs on Sedo recently via their traffic info tabs and they basically follow the same patterns as Fuzzy described.

Russia, China and Brazil lead the pack of countries where " visitors " came from and Baidu and Yandex are the leading referring URL links.

Thanks!

 

[fuzzy]

Russia, China and Brazil lead the pack of countries where " visitors " came from

@WatchDogue and/or @TestCase , can bot-traffic click-through?

 

[TestCase]

@WatchDogue and/or @TestCase , can bot-traffic click-through?

I can't swear that they can or cannot, but I assume that they can.

Even if they can't now, the makers/controllers of bots are ALWAYS trying to find ways to make them less visible as bots and more "human like" in their capabilities. (Remember when they couldn't read captchas?)

One of these days when I have spare time (and I'm not so lazy...) I'll create my own landing pages with analytics so I can have a better understanding of what's going on with these unused dn's. One of these days...

On a side note, I do find it interesting that some of the Yandex & Baidu referrals appear to be from mobile links.

hxxp:\\m.baidu.com\s?wd=vr...
versus
hxxp:\\www.baidu.com\s?wd=vr...

Are you showing any that seem to be mobile?

 

[WatchDogue]

Re your question Fuzzy I'm frankly uncertain if bot traffic can or does click- through.

 

[WatchDogue]

Re your question TestCase - did a quick check of several names with higher traffic re " mobile links", as signified by the " m. " .

Found only one referring URL to date with the " m. " - and it was a Facebook link, rather than a Baidu or Yandex link.

 

[TestCase]

Re your question TestCase - did a quick check of several names with higher traffic re " mobile links", as signified by the " m. " .

Found only one referring URL to date with the " m. " - and it was a Facebook link, rather than a Baidu or Yandex link.

Interesting...

My Baidu referrals are pretty much equal 1:1 on each domain that is visited -- for each m, there's a www referral as well.