Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones!

Types of Domain Traffic (Search Engine, Direct Navigation, Expired Links)

This is an attempt to summarize the different origins of ‘natural’ domain traffic on the Internet. I am concentrating on ‘natural’ traffic here, so I am not including PPC ads or similar means to generate traffic. I came across three measurable main types of traffic that can be generated by a domain, but I think that there will be more categories added as tracking improves - please feel free to comment, I’d love to hear from you.

1. Search Engine Traffic

This is traffic that originally is generated by means of a search term on a search engine. The user is then referred to the target site from the search results.

You can identify this type of traffic by taking a closer look at who refers your users to your website. In the logfiles you will also be able to identify the queries which lead the user to your site. Often this can be used in order to optimize your site so your users find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible.

In order to improve this type of traffic, one often needs to builds an ‘authority site’ on the topic that goes along with the domain name. This can be done by either blogging, re-posting excerpts from other sites (possibly in conjunction with comments etc.). Another possible source for content are free article websites. To improve this type of traffic, SEO (search engine optimization) strategies can be employed.

2. Direct Navigation or Type-In traffic

The user types the name directly into the address bar of the browser, accesses it from a bookmark or has it set as the browser’s homepage. Many users use domain names as a search term (I know that this is something people often don’t believe, but the right name will generate a significant amount of qualified type-in traffic). So a user actually looking for used cars in Toronto, would directly type “torontousedcars.com” into his browser’s navigation bar. Those users often do not distinguish between a search and entering a domain name.

It would be very interesting to differentiate between bookmarked/homepage and actual typed in traffic, but this is difficult to track without using cookies. For example you would be able to see if an Internet Explorer user bookmarks your site (the web browser will access the ‘favicon.ico’ at this time), set a cookie and identify further visits from the same user by querying the cookie.

Another possible origin for this type of traffic includes Instant Messaging and mail, which could form an additional “Word of Mouth” Category. As Brian (my co-worker) pointed out a couple of days ago, this traffic could also originate from print, TV, flyers and other forms of advertising (I see the URL, I remember it or write it down and type it in at a later time). Currently the only way to track this type of traffic separately would be to use a unique URL/domain for every publication.

3. Typo Traffic

This category monetizes miss-spellings of popular high-traffic domains. If investing into this type of domains, one should be very careful to avoid trademark conflicts etc.

4. Linked Traffic (expired/non-expired)

Domainers will pick up domains that have previously been used for an active website. Often these sites experience residue web-traffic that originates from previous links to the site and also from search engine listings. When the original registrant fails to renew their domain name, the new owner buys these names at the dropped names services. Good names will mostly be sold in an auction.

You will be able to identify this type of traffic by checking the referrer URL in your log files. If a site with this type of traffic just serves PPC ads and no content, you will often see the traffic drop off after a couple of months (as search engines might drop them from their index). If this type of site is developed, it might be able to maintain the benefit from the previously existent site.

Blogster.com Purchased for $100,000, Making it a Top Domain Name Acquisition in 2005

While we normally do not report every posted Domain Transaction, I think it is very interesting to note in this context that more and more of the domain name sales nowadays are accompanied by a Press Release. The public mentioning of those Sales helps to bring more visibility to our industry and can possibly help drive the prices up (which of course is not necessarily in the interest of the people still building their portfolios).

The weekly domain sales report is out at DNJournal.com and the market just seems to get stronger every week. In the past 7 days we had a sale just under $1 million that is the 2nd highest reported in 2005, the highest price ever paid in an expired domain auction (over a quarter of a million dollars) and a tie for the highest .US sale reported this year at $25,000. Read all about it through the link below:

Weekly DNJournal.com Domain Sales Report

Our favourite whois site (iwhois of course!) has become even more… erm.. favourite?

Based on some suggestions (I was happy to help as well), Andrew created the ultimate whois bookmarklet. A part from looking up the whois of the site you are currently surfing, you can also highlight a word or a term on the site you are an and click on the iWhois bookmarklet.

http://www.iwhois.com/bookmarklet/

Due to the recent confusion, I would like to add a link to the Wikipedia Definition of Cybersquatter/Cybersquatting:

Cybersquatting is a derogatory term used to describe the practice of registering and claiming rights over Internet domain names that are, arguably, not for the taking. The Cybersquatter then offers the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price, an act which some deem to be extortion.

The important part in this definition is that a Cybersquatter knowingly infringes on the rights of others for financial gain. While those people still exist today, the large portfolio holders have gotten wiser.

Most of them go for generic terms, they shy away from anything that could be considered a copyright or trademark infringement. Of course they might accidentally still pick up the occasional trademark (after all they cannot screen all of the domains they buy for trademarks in all the countries of the world), but most of them are also quick to give up the domain should they receive a Cease & Desist letter or another complaint.

By the way, instead of always sending Cease & Desist letters right away, it might be well worth your while to contact the current domain owner and see if there is a more peaceful solution.

(picture from sxc.hu)

ICANN told to clamp down on dodgy domain names | Tech News on ZDNet

A U.S. government study into the prevalence of phony Web sites has found that 3.89 million domain names, or 8.6 percent, were registered with false or incomplete information.

Interesting topic, especially in conjunction with the recent discussions on whois privacy at the ICANN meeting in Vancouver. In several countries the current procedure of publishing all of the information in a publicly accessible directory is not permitted by law, unless the people listed explicitly agree.

The study, released Wednesday by the U.S. General Accountability Office, showed that 2.31 million domain names, or 5.14 percent of all domain registrations, have been registered with information “obviously and intentionally false” (such as a (999) 999-9999 telephone number, the report says). The GAO also found that 1.6 million, or 3.6 percent, contained incomplete data in one or more of the required fields.

Now I am wondering though what it took for the study to consider the information invalid or incomplete, and which data they considered required. After all it could also be a registrant’s right to protect their privacy from spammers, telemarketing and identity theft. It also is important to note that domains with false or invalid information are more likely to be stolen at one point or another or can even be deleted by the sponsoring registrar.

“Vendors unwilling to identify themselves publicly are more than likely fraudulent,” Smith, a Republican from Texas, said in a statement released Wednesday.

Erm… I didn’t know that domain names were exclusively owned by ‘vendors’ ;-)

An interesting in-depth view on Communicate.com: The Internet Stock Blog » Communicate.com, Microcap E-Commerce and the Rising Value of Domain Names (CMNN.ob)

The key question for investors in CMNN is how profitable those businesses can be. CMNN’s current focus is its e-commerce sites. Its largest e-commerce site is Perfume.com, which currently accounts for more than 50 percent of revenues (according to info supplied to me by the company). Karate.com and Cologne.com are smaller, and Body.com is due to launch in 2006. (Presumably the latter will sell health or beauty products rather than slaves.) In Q3, e-commerce accounted for $761 thousand in sales out of total revenue of $1.017 million.

[…]

Which brings us to Communicate’s advertising business. CMNN owns single-word domains including boxing.com, stereos.com and mouse.com. It monetizes the traffic they receive with pay-per-click home-page and search ads, splitting the revenue roughly 50/50 with Yahoo! (formerly Overture). CMNN also receives some advertising revenue in the form of membership fees from Importers.com, its B2B trade portal. Advertising accounted for about 25% of Q3 sales.