Is type-in dying or already dead?

[petrosc]

The questions raised by Francois are very interesting and got me thinking. There is a strong point in what he said in the initial post.

As technology evolves and computers integrate more and more in our lives, the percentage of computer literate internet users rises dramatically. If we take for a fact that the less computer literate a person is, the more type-ins he is going to make then we must agree that according to this theory the type-ins will actually start to decrease over time.

If the type-ins are made by these less-literate people, then we must assume that most of these people fall in the 25+ age category. People younger than that have already received strong IT education in schools. These people, of 25+ are today's buying power and this is why type-ins are so valuable. As we move on to the future though, these people will be replaced by a new generation of computer savvy users who will have no need to type-in anything as the search engine technology will be so advanced that it will be 100% easier and more efficient to find what they need by simply searching for it.

This was one theory.....
On the other hand though, we have to consider why people use direct navigation in the first place... The reason is that they are expecting to find a website wit the information they need inside. If they stop typing in names at one point, it will only be because they do not find what they want using direct navigation. As time moves on though, more and more of these websites will be developed on the generic names and less and less generics will be parked. This means that chances of someone finding what he is looking for when he types in a generic term will be increasing over time and if someone gets used to finding what he is looking for this way, then he is more likely to keep using direct navigation in the future. This may indicate that the type-in traffic will increase over time or remain stable the very least.

The above two theories are in contrast to one another and only time will show which will prevail.

We, domainers, hold the future of direct navigation in our hands. If we start developing our generics, we will have a bright future. If we keep parking them then we will come to a point where we will realize that all this time we have been sabotaging ourselves.

Just my thoughts...

 

[PRED]

The questions raised by Francois are very interesting and got me thinking. There is a strong point in what he said in the initial post.

As technology evolves and computers integrate more and more in our lives, the percentage of computer literate internet users rises dramatically. If we take for a fact that the less computer literate a person is, the more type-ins he is going to make then we must agree that according to this theory the type-ins will actually start to decrease over time.

If the type-ins are made by these less-literate people, then we must assume that most of these people fall in the 25+ age category. People younger than that have already received strong IT education in schools. These people, of 25+ are today's buying power and this is why type-ins are so valuable. As we move on to the future though, these people will be replaced by a new generation of computer savvy users who will have no need to type-in anything as the search engine technology will be so advanced that it will be 100% easier and more efficient to find what they need by simply searching for it.

This was one theory.....
On the other hand though, we have to consider why people use direct navigation in the first place... The reason is that they are expecting to find a website wit the information they need inside. If they stop typing in names at one point, it will only be because they do not find what they want using direct navigation. As time moves on though, more and more of these websites will be developed on the generic names and less and less generics will be parked. This means that chances of someone finding what he is looking for when he types in a generic term will be increasing over time and if someone gets used to finding what he is looking for this way, then he is more likely to keep using direct navigation in the future. This may indicate that the type-in traffic will increase over time or remain stable the very least.

The above two theories are in contrast to one another and only time will show which will prevail.

We, domainers, hold the future of direct navigation in our hands. If we start developing our generics, we will have a bright future. If we keep parking them then we will come to a point where we will realize that all this time we have been sabotaging ourselves.

Just my thoughts...

Nice post, i agree :yes:

 

[fatter]

I guess I disagree with most on is it better to develop or have a parked page.
Just to give an example i have a few misspells of quads. Lets say your are thinking of buying a quad and land on my page. there are links to kawasaki yamaha honda, racing quads, work quads etc it is like having a mini mall, also different tracks, quad insurance, quad parts. To me being a consumer i would prefer this than landing on just one vendors site. I also have a poultry name
where different links appear from mcmurray hatchery to books on this breed of bird etc.

So far regging names for there typein value has been profitable for me making 10k on about 200 names, I have never purchased a name and have sold a few
my profit would be much higher if i chose to sell more I turned down an offer for 10k this year so 20k would have been a great year but i choose to increase my inventory instead in hopes that ppc increases more. By the way all my names are low traffic on a good day I only get 100 views

 

[DomainingCom]

Petrosc,

Great post, and well written.
You perfectly understood the problem.

...


Fatter,

The type-in you are talking here is typo type-in and not search type-in.
If you assume the person was looking to buy a squad then your parked page is probably acceptable.

The worst is when you are searching something specific (not necessary commercial) and you are landed to a very general page of commercial links (parked page).
If I am looking for squad painting and I type in squadpainting.com and land to a page showing similar content then your (simply because there is not sponsored links for squad painting) then probably I will find the page of no interest.

When the term is very generic probably parked pages can be acceptable and just play the role of a filter to better target your search.
When the searched term is more vertical, there is a lot of chances your parked page does not respond to the query, which is annoying.
It should be interesting to check if the average CTR on parked for very general generics is better then for more vertical generic terms.

...

If you are making 10K monthly with 200 names purchased for reg fee then I say Bravo!
You did a great SEO, or are some of these domains popular generic names?

 

[petrosc]

If you are making 10K monthly with 200 names purchased for reg fee then I say Bravo!
You did a great SEO, or are some of these domains popular generic names?

I think what he is saying is that he made $10k profit, not from parking, but from selling some of the 200 names he hand regged.

 

[Luc]

I'll throw my 2 cents into the pot...

In my opinion, type-ins and generic one/two word .coms are the most valuable domains and they will continue to grow in value AND traffic.

True, many people are using search engines, but at the same time many are stupid and think the address bar is a search engine. As more and more people gain access to the internet, typeins will continue to grow in value and traffic.

Also, surfers are now aware of parking pages and they tend to close them down almost immediately, kinda like the ignore reflex people have/had with banners since 2000. This results in lower revenue and clicks, but not necessarily lower traffic.

Personally, I've noticed typeins for my domains increase over the years.

However, there are unforeseen circumstances which can severely reduce the value of typeins. For example, a few months back Google announced that they are testing a free wifi technology to allow anyone free access to the internet. Their proprietary browser would force users to search for everything through google instead of having an address bar. Not sure what will come of that, but people love google and they love free, so I can imagine quite a few using such a service. If they use it, it will not help typeins because all traffic will be from google and not the address bar.

The internet is still young. I believe that generic and quality typeins will continue to climb for a few years, until something newer and better comes along.

Luc Lezon

 

[DomainingCom]

Hi again Luc,

Thanks to have posted your opinion.

...

Thanks to your data mining you have some numbers of GREAT interest for everyone here.

What I woud like to know is if it's possible and you have the authorization of your company to do the following:


From all the type-in you tracked what is the % of .net .org .biz ... relative to the .com


Probably more a keyword is long and less type-in it receives.

I am wondering if you have a table giving the following:

domain length , % type in

This way we will notice the impact of length in type in.



The same with:

Search poipularity , % type in

This way we will know that for example domains with terms having a search popularity of 60,000 use to get x% of type in.



Because we will know the impact of TLD in type-in then we will be able to roughly simulate the % of type-in a domain should have.



By the way did you already think to compute these calculations with your data?

I imagine it may takes few days to calculate all this if possible.

...

 

[NameYourself]

I think what would also be of greatest interest to everyone would be:

Total Visitors: YR1, YR2, YR3
Click Thru Rate: YR1, YR2, YR3
Revenue / Click: YR1, YR2, YR3
Total Revenue: calculated based on above 3

as the totals over the years for the same exact group of generic type-in names. That is how to see the trend. I believe average RPC has been on the rise, but I'm also curious about the Total Visitors, and CTR (click-thru rate).

This will tell the trends of these 3 things:

Is direct navigation increasing (Total Visitors Yr1, Yr2, Yr3)
Is PPC landers killing the future of those visitors clicking (CTR Yr1, Yr2, Yr3)
Is PPC Revenue increasing or decreasing (Avg RPC Yr1, Yr2, Yr3)

These numbers would tell the trends, but only on the same batch of a large number of generic names that have been parked using the same company for a number of years. Anyone have large enough data to answer these three questions?

 

[jimbaggs]

The payouts get smaller because he who has the pie also holds the knife. The big boys of the PPC industry all the way up the food chain of the advertising channels simply keep more money for their own operations. Want higher payouts? Find a way to cut the fat, the middleman and potentially the food provider.

Acroplex you are sooooooooo right.

Have I mentioned to anyone lately that Klickerz will soon be opening its on ad network? And that we'll be reorganizing the coop membership procedures so that we really will become YOUR company that YOU will have a say in the management of and that YOU will take a share of the profit?

Don't look to MSN to save the domainers bacon. They're going to be just one more frat boy at the gang bang. Bend over some more domainers cause here it comes again.

The ONLY way we'll come out ahead over the long haul is by organizing our OWN network, cooperatively owned and managed for the benefit of each and every one of us. I've already done 80% of the leg work to get us there and now I'm counting on the community-at-large to come together and decide on how the rest is going to get done. Y'all know how to reach me. Lets get this done!

 

[Luc]

Francois,

I don't have revenue numbers for the domain data I've mined but I do have typein traffic stats for month-to-month for the last 1.5 years at least and scattered data before that.

I'll make some scripts to analyze these and put the results up on premiumdrops within the next week or two.

Thanks for the great suggestion.

 

[DomainingCom]

I know luc,

I was only thinking about this ovt data you have been mining.
This is why I did not ask you about revenue but only results you can extract or calculate using this db.

It's very kind you accept to share the results.

...

 

[DomainingCom]

I performed few tests using the Overture tool.
For the few samples I run it look likes the monthly search type in was <1.5% of monthly search popularity.
And it appears the dot com names must be really short and very popular.
Also when these params change quickly the search type-in effect simply totally vanish.

Luc, please take a moment before you left to the conference to run these queries I asked you.
I am sure we should get very interesting numbers to discuss here.

...

 

[bdss]

cybertonic...could you share your test data here with us..should be interesting to see some stats

 

[Whizzbang]

Hi all,
I thought that I'd add my two cents worth as well. I must admit that it's an interesting thread!

I personally believe that parking will be alive and well for a long time to come. The reason why I believe this is:
1. Developing a site is not just some pretty graphics etc but IS properly developing a business based upon a business plan. You can't have thousands of businesses but you can have thousands of parked domains.

2. I believe that type-in traffic will continue for AT LEAST a further 5 years because I believe that IE7 will be around for 5 years. I have found that type-in traffic is increasing largely due to the growth rate of the Internet... yep .... it's still growing!

3. As more domains are properly developed more typos etc. will have traffic. There are still a LOT of domains out there (even in the .com space) that have traffic and haven't been registered. If you have a 10 letter domain with up to 40 different letters/numbers/symbols per letter possition then you have 40 to the power 10 possible domain names. The problem is that we just haven't developed the tools yet to analyse this volume of data to determine where the gold is.....but I'm working on it!

4. The MOST important activity that a domainer needs to consider is NOT development but optimisation of existing traffic. Since speaking at DomainFest on optimisation we've had lots of domainers ask us to optimise their portfolios with our technology. We've only just released out of beta the technology for domainers that we've been using for years on our own domains (shameless plug here - http://www.parklogic.com). Basically it's a - we optimise and then share the upside with domainer type of technology.

5. The single biggest opportunity for domainers in acquiring new domains is the ccTLD space. Once you get around the restrictions (some ccTLDs you can't....which is a pain) there is lots of opportunities.

Cheers!

Michael

-------------------------------
http://Whizzbangsblog.com - a blog on domain optimisation
http://parklogic.com - domain optimisation

 

[typist]

cybertonic,

you may find this interesting:

Sustainability / Growth - Case Study With Detailed Findings

Internet Commerce A S S O C I A T I O N

ICA Growth & Sustainability of Direct Search Traffic

ICA completed an analysis on organic growth of direct search portfolios from 2002-2006 to understand traffic trends. Data set shows robust traffic consistency and growth over a wide range of domain names and the ICA analyzed over 100,000 web property sample set.

Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) on direct search portfolio demonstrates traffic growth of >30% CAGR from 2002-2006.

Sample data set is representative and statistically significant for the entire universe of the 5-7M .com domain name market that consistently generates direct search traffic.

http://www.internetreit.com/ica_growth_4.pdf

 

[petrosc]

cybertonic,

you may find this interesting:



http://www.internetreit.com/ica_growth_4.pdf

wow typist this is very good information thank you very much for sharing the link. Amazing...35% annual growth in direct navigation from from 2002 to 2006, unbelievable

 

[Gerry]

I find it odd that some Parking companies don't really like the type in traffic because they can not identify the source. This makes very little sense to me.

What they are saying in a round about way is if it is redirected from the popular search engine Yahoo, google, or whatever...this is an identifiable source. If 100 people equates to 100 different IP addresses, this is apparently the "unidentifiable sources" referred to.

To me, this represents pure and true traffic. It would be hard to pass this off as bots.

In essence, I think some of the parking companies have some growing up to do and be more proactive in the approach to type-in as being valid rather than suspect. Hundreds or thousands of hits from the same source, regardless of the source, would be suspect in my opinion.

Discounting large numbers of traffic from a large number of sources makes no sense to me. One of my websites has 10,419 different IP addresses registered. That to me represents a healthy mix of traffic sources indicating that there exists a decent reach to my clientele (this is a medical specialty site for US based health care professionals).

Using such stats and knowing their sources helps to identify my strong markets as well as my weak markets. Knowing this information allows me to shift my advertising strategies and concentrate my efforts towards those markets or regions that I want to reinforce and build up.

I think branding and marketing plays a crucial role in type in traffic. Name recognition is paramount. When is the last time any of us used a search engine to find ebay or to search for google. For that matter, when is the last time any of us even used the www. as part of the URL.

Personally, I think type in traffic is very good and hopefully will continue to grow.

 

[typist]

I think some of the parking companies have some growing up to do and be more proactive in the approach to type-in as being valid rather than suspect

which parking companies would that be?

usually, the opposite is true: most parking companies prefer pure type-in traffic, and regard other sources, including link traffic, as potentially suspect, and usually less valuable.

 

[DomainingCom]

Thanks Typist,

But what is the value of this document when you see so absurd numbers?
For example: "two third of users come from direct navigation"
I call this a STUPID LIE and it's take readers for IDIOTS!

If you have been running internet services you know/notice very well that most of the traffic come from search engines.

My little research outlines that average search type in is at best 1.5% of search popularity.
This percentage is only for the shortest dot com generic domains.
When the term is longer the percentage quickly fall down.

I am wondering why nobody denounce this big lie about the importance of direct navigation compared to search engine traffic.

...

 

[Gerry]

which parking companies would that be?

This assumption comes from a previous and older post that I really don't care to revive into another flame war. Safe to say, it is one of the one regularly visited by members of this forum. That thread is still posted.

I am wondering why nobody denounce this big lie about the importance of direct navigation compared to search engine traffic.
...

I think it is safe to say both are valuable, neither should be discounted. Is type in traffic dead? Depends on many factors.

I do a tremendous amount of direct advertising and promotion to my audience. I am branding my site. In the meantime, I think due to the popularity of my site and the direct type-ins, my site is very highly ranked in Yahoo and Google and slightly ranked in MSN.

http://www.ceuq.com/ 96,483
http://ceuq.com/ 92,175
http://search.yahoo.com/ 3,525
http://search.msn.com/ 2,185
http://www.google.com/ 1,551
http://www.ceuquick.com/ 837
http://ceuq.wikidot.com/ 730
http://www.rcsw.org/ 688
http://www.ceuq.net/ 553
http://www.ceuq.org/ 552
http://www.ceuq.biz/ 370

I do rely on search engines, but I will not pay for advertising on them. It may be against the norm in most peoples' minds, but I have a specialized market and it is a waste of money and effort. Money is best spent with direct advertising to my customer base.

Now, how many of those from search engines folks are now doing direct type in? Not sure. But if it had not been for my effort to direct my advertising budget to my market and brand my site doubtful my site would be as successful as it is having to rely solely on search engine