Type-in behaviour changing?

[markfromslo]

I keyed a word into Firefox today (the latest version) and it went to the wikipedia page for that word. Then I went to IE7 and it did the same thing. Other words did the same thing.

Maybe I don't have enough espresso in me yet, but didn't the browsers used to pop a .com at the end of the word and display the [word.com] site? Maybe I'm not just remembering correctly.

If so, this is not good for a percentage of the type-in traffic for names that rely on that. I've never purchased a name based upon the browser plugging a .com after the name, just in case things changed in the future (and everything does).

 

[ofclean]

It went to the first google search result.

 

[markfromslo]

It went to the first google search result.

Thanks.

But even so, it's changed now. Just goes to show that you should not pay a lot of money for names based upon how browsers handle typeins.

 

[accent]

..... Just goes to show that you should not pay a lot of money for names based upon how browsers handle typeins.

The devil is speaking in you, man. The value of domains is traffic, traffic, traffic.
Don't you read the other forums? There is no god but generic traffic.

Which, of course, is why nearly all of my domains get almost no traffic, but have good (IMO, of course) appreciation potential.

 

[markfromslo]

The devil is speaking in you, man. The value of domains is traffic, traffic, traffic.
Don't you read the other forums? There is no god but generic traffic.

Which, of course, is why nearly all of my domains get almost no traffic, but have good (IMO, of course) appreciation potential.

I didn't make any comment on traffic. I made a comment on type-ins.

But since you brought it up, I sell domains into the xx,xxx range with no traffic. In fact, all my names I sold for tons of money have no traffic and the average profit is around 2000%.

But, traffic is king, but again I wasn't commenting on traffic.

 

[accent]

Maybe my attempt at humor was a little extreme.

But it does seem that the value is shifting away, to some extent, from type-in traffic (and link traffic disolves over time if the domain is parked).

Search engines are more efficient - the only reason I type in an unknown domain name is if I am considering buying it or one of it's neighbors.

 

[carjamlangley]

http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/295735-explorer-7-and-type-in-traffic.html?highlight=explorer

A thread asking a similar question.

 

[jacal1]

This may be true...

I've noticed this and it actually is a pain for the searcher - sometimes the first few sites are irrelevant. Key in "satellite radios" in IE7. Assume you wanted to buy a satellite radio. The first result is a myspace account. The others on the page are fairly obscure sites incl a blog. Long story short - maybe people who don't already will actually begin to type in .com to try to get directly to a relevant page.

Also, if I'm a widget company, I still want widgets.com for:

1. memorability when I'm advertising
2. type-ins from people who automatically write .com
3. ability for people to find me again
4. The percetion of strength (do you go to financialadvisors.com or financialadvisors.us for your investing needs?)
5. If I have (keyword).net, I will invariable lose business to (keyword).com, but its unlikely the other way around.

My guess, however, is .nets and some country codes will get a boost from this.

One other thing - here's some neuropsychological info:

.com uses a "plosive", or "hard" consonent. This is easier to remember than softer ones like "n" or "i" (.net or .info). Brand names beginning with plosives have higher retention and recall than non. The marketing folks at big companies know this. (Other plosives: K, B, P)

 

[jacal1]

Follow-up to my post above...anyone have stats as far as how many people automatically add the ".com" on the end when typing into a browser?

 

[fonzie_007]

I've noticed increased traffic on some of my .us domain within the past 3-4 months. I'm speculating it is due to the fact the .us extension is becoming more visible to the average web surfer.

 

[markfromslo]

It's obvious that things can can in the functionability of browsers. Who knows what the future brings. That's shy I would never pay huge bucks for something based on type-in traffic. There has to be other factors.

Right now, FreeHoroscope.com is at $45,000 (note, now $103K) on snapnames with 15 minutes to go. I have not checked the traffic, PR figures. But if most of its value is based on suspected type-in traffic, It's overpriced.

I've got Horoscope.cc and given the same site content and inbound links, it would show up higher than FreeHoroscope.com on a horoscope search. I won't get type-ins, but maybe the .com will not in the future either.

---- new merged message ----

I just checked and FreeHoroscope.com (which is now at $103K) has a PR of 0 and no link popularity. Its OVT is around 75k, where just plain horoscope is around 1.3 million. OVT of FreeHoroscope.com with extention is 213. I tried typing "freehoroscope" into the address field and it went to search results.

Browsers will change. The internet will change. Everything will change. You cannot predict how we'll get to sites in the future.

103K for this name, to me, is another sign of a mania that is going to have to have a severe correction. $103K+ for this name is a foolish risk not worth taking. Wish I could go short domain names just as I'm short the homebulders, the S&P and various individual stocks.

--

I guess i should have held off. $118K.

 

[jacal1]

Businesses

One of the earliest lessons of business school is that you want to your customer to go through the fewest steps possible to get your product. The more steps, the more chance you lose them during that extra time or effort.

Due to the change, when people type in to the browser now without using an extension, they basically get a search results page. They have to read through the results, and then they have to click on something that looks good. Then they might have to click the back button and try again, etc. This is at least 3, usually more steps. I tried it with bostoncars (without .com), because I am truly in the market for a car and I live near Boston. It took 10 steps to get to a good site.

Now, if more often than not typing directly into a browser (product).com leads directly to a desired site, then a correction will happen and more people will use this method and comapnies will search out the .com name. (bostoncars.com was a vehix-type site - very helpful)

(Its even more obvious with that initial firefox example - that would get really annoying if the page that pops up is not a commerce site, but you wanted to buy something.)

 

[markfromslo]

Agreed on the least steps the better, obviously. However, most people that just key in a name with no tld into the address field are the non-savvy computer user, like my grandparents, for example. They don't pay attention to what does what. They find a field and key something in. Sadly, most users are like this. There is a vast population of people that work this way. Hell my neighbor thinks the Internet Explorer is called Google! These are the masses.

But aside from that, you're missing something very important. You do not know if browsers will in the near future still go to the .com site. Google and various other smart companies and university labs are constantly improving the search's artificial intelligence to find the most appropriate site. I predict this will cause browsers of the near future to not simply go to the .com site, if it even goes to a site at all, but go to whatever site it feels is the "best" site for the keyword. It might not even have the keyword in the URL for all we know. It could simply look for the "best" site however their artificial intelligence deems it. If you think about it, it's a very archaic algorithm that assumes a .com for the word keyed is the BEST site for the user.

This will change and leave those who factored in type-in traffic into their purchase price holding the bag.

One of the earliest lessons of business school is that you want to your customer to go through the fewest steps possible to get your product. The more steps, the more chance you lose them during that extra time or effort.

Due to the change, when people type in to the browser now without using an extension, they basically get a search results page. They have to read through the results, and then they have to click on something that looks good. Then they might have to click the back button and try again, etc. This is at least 3, usually more steps. I tried it with bostoncars (without .com), because I am truly in the market for a car and I live near Boston. It took 10 steps to get to a good site.

Now, if more often than not typing directly into a browser (product).com leads directly to a desired site, then a correction will happen and more people will use this method and comapnies will search out the .com name. (bostoncars.com was a vehix-type site - very helpful)

 

[jacal1]

I think we agree...

I guess all I'm saying is that as people get more savvy, and/or frustrated with the extra steps, they'll type in to browsers and include the ".com". That would still go to the specific .com site, not the "best" site.

I do agree that we'd lose the % of type-ins that don't already or in the future type in ".com" after their words.

 

[markfromslo]

I guess all I'm saying is that as people get more savvy, and/or frustrated with the extra steps, they'll type in to browsers and include the ".com". That would still go to the specific .com site, not the "best" site.

I do agree that we'd lose the % of type-ins that don't already or in the future type in ".com" after their words.

I think that there will always be the unsavvy. Just as they attempt to catch up, the technology will advance, and they'll be lost again.

But I strongly believe the "best" site is not always the .com site and Google, Yahoo and the rest of them know that and will be reacting accordingly. With the proliferation of TLD's, the chances are higher than ever that better sites exist that a .com site.

BTW, FreeHoroscope.com is now at $185K. I think this is likely the most overvalued name I've seen yet. What's really funny is that people now expect things like horoscopes to be free on the net. That's why it's about 20-1 that they simply key horoscope over "free horoscope". And that ratio will get larger in the future.

 

[estibot.com]

Horoscope (sadly) is a huge keyword, and I would wager that 200K is a reasonable investment to some big company that wants to start a horoscope site that will dominate the web. But I think some here are forgetting brandability - I don't think they're going for the type-in traffic, but a nice keyword combo for searches plus a memorable dotcom - domains don't get much better than that. Granted, it's a little long and I'm also surprised at the price, but it's that end user magic. Also, those who look for horoscopes are prime target population for certain type of advertisements so there is definitely money to be made in a high-profile horoscope site.

About the type-in traffic - type-in traffic these days means typing the whole domain, e.g. domain.com - not typing in just the keyword. many people (about 15%?) type in the keyword plus tld (e.g. flowers.com) when they are looking for flowers. 15% of say 1 million internet users looking for flowers is 150,000 potential customers typing in flowers.com. With 1 billion internet users in the world (out of which 23% are in North America, 31% in Europe, and 39% in Asia) it's worth going after that 15% who type-in.

I recently regged a few keyword.cctld (obscure cctld) domains (one of them flowers.cctld in that language), and those are already the ones getting the most type-in traffic of all my domains, and clickthrough rate is around 50% for the parked ads. People actually do type in keyword.tld when looking for products. If I was selling a product, I'd sure want product.tld and would pay big $$ to acquire it.

Many browsers have long done a search instead of going to the .com, but since the user types in the .com as well (in Europe usually .tld), then type-in traffic is alive and well regardless of what the browsers do. Just typing in keyword without tld is actually not type-in traffic - it's mostly made up of those accidentally typing the keyword in the address bar instead a search box.

Of course, I agree with the above posters that things change, and maybe in a few years we'll do all our surfing in Second Life without any domain names. Search engines will still be there.

Josh

 

[jacal1]

Thanks, Josh

Great post - appreciate the insights...that's what I'm here for.

Do you know that 15% to be a true figure from somewhere, or is it just an estimate?

Thanks again!

 

[MinionDH]

Of course, I agree with the above posters that things change, and maybe in a few years we'll do all our surfing in Second Life without any domain names. Search engines will still be there.

Now there's a scary thought

 

[carjamlangley]

I think the power of flowers.com (as an example) is in the authority and type-in traffic is a nice bonus. Even if all the type-in traffic left flowers.com for some reason, it wouldn't lose any value because the name tells the world that it is THE place to go for flowers, anything else is low budget.

 

[markfromslo]

I think the power of flowers.com (as an example) is in the authority and type-in traffic is a nice bonus. Even if all the type-in traffic left flowers.com for some reason, it wouldn't lose any value because the name tells the world that it is THE place to go for flowers, anything else is low budget.

True. But FreeFlowers.com is another story.