A very interesting domain name is currently at auction at Godaddy.com.
The domain, according to Godaddy receives 335,000 visitors a month.
That’s Right
335,000 visitors.
That is the highest represented amount of traffic on any domain I have personally seen on Godaddy.
The current high bid is $18,000.
Godaddy.com values the domain at $61,000.
The auction ends on December 10th.
Alexa.org ranks the site as the 104,413 most popular site, however Alexa says only 5% of the traffic is coming from the US.
The majority of the traffic is coming from German (32%) where Alexa ranks the site as the 26,224 most visited and Algeria (21%) where it is the 3,400 most visited site.
Compete.com does not show any ranking for the site.
Like I said
Interesting.
That’s worth digging up the previous owner for a $500 offer.
I believe that myhotterseaRchbox is a malware that, when your computer is infected, pops up in your browser and forces you to type in your keywords in it’s search box.
JS
Well that would certainly account for the traffic ,but it seems strange if Alexa figures are correct, that only 5% of the traffic is US based
OK, After a small investigation – It look like it was some kind of virus that was pointing people to this domain/page – The previous page on the domain look like a simple search engine box.
You can read this thread I found – http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/405546-myhottersearchbox.html
In this page you can see a small icon of the previous page.
http://www.statbrain.com/www.myhottersearchbox.com/
Great Post !
Arbel
Nice work
I guess i’ll leave it to you to give the good news to the 7 people bidding on this domain that has driven the current price up to $18K.
As I have said before number one rule in making money in the domain business, don’t piss your money away
Well Said Michael !
Another important thing is to do a small investigation on any domain you want to acquire, specially if we are talking about big bucks… 🙂
I agree about the 5% stat, strange.
Hello Guys,
I was one of the bidders on this domain. However, i knew the info that Arbel said yesterday. Even the traffic based on my own test was coming from a software that is prepaid and when then new owner have this domain he will see that the real traffic on this domain is on 700 per month and it is not from type-ins.
There is lots of companies that sell you traffic on portion basis and this is the case of this domain name.
thanks,
Nidal Elkadri
MediaWebPlus.com
Gdaddy, should pull the domain if the traffic is derived from malware or virus software. Promoting all of the traffic along with an appraisal touting the value of the domain based on that traffic should only be done if the traffic is legitimate. I am sure if they pulled the name or disclosed the questionable traffic issues to the bidders the bids would be different. Correcting this problem would be a good pr move for them.
Best.
I wouldn’t bid on this domain name. Not even using MHB’s money 🙂
Good research Arbel!
The strangest part is how proactive GD is at suspending domains that spam and/or are malware related. However, I guess that doesnt stop them from wanting to make a few xtra bucks on it since its expired. Keep in mind GDs spam fee is around $250 or a $75 fee to xfer the domain away. Also, the fee doesnt relate to hosting the domain with them, just as a registrant of the domain thru GD.
Oh yeah, it would be a good idea to watch the domains activity and see if it actually gets paid for or if the high bidder backs out. If the high bidder doesnt and the 2nd highest bidder doesnt the domain will go to registry redemption and perhaps be deleted.
That’s enough ranting for now.
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sites like SEDO and GoDaddy auction are TOO giant now, so, it’s not easy to find the best domains
when I’ve listed my domains on SEDO and GoDaddy often their pages have had very few visits because they are like an OCEAN
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Buyers need to treat these traffic estimates with a grain of salt. There are far too many auctions with artificially inflated traffic, malware etc.. You really need to do some serious research before putting your hard earned $$$ on the line.
Hi Mikey,
Excellent article! This is a watershed piece you’ve written to prove up the failure of “old school” domain hunting. You’ve helped blow up the old thinking to be… old thinking. Pretty much dead thinking.
I’ve purchased “high traffic” expired domains back when I was dumber in 2004-06, with many of the domains getting 20,000 – 40,000 visitors a month. The domain names were “odd,” but I saw the stats, so I believed…
Big mistake. Not only did that traffic not convert, but it died within 90 days, and I was left with nonsensical domains failing to convert that huge drop in traffic. What an eye-opener! I saw the obvious on why those domains were “expired” in the first place!
(Freebie Frank Advice) I now buy domains based on a LOGICAL ANALYSIS of their GENERIC DESCRIPTIVE TERMS and their NICHE CATEGORY VALUE factored by prodserv price points. Include a few other proprietary evaluation processes, and I’m making a lot of money building and reselling those domains, with the sweet spot being I bought them OOTB.
NEW DOMAINERS: Use your brain, don’t expect “high traffic” expired domains to pay off for you, or ANY domain claiming heavy traffic where that domain name doesn’t make sense. There are still tens of thousands of valuable generic descriptive domains, even if they’re longtails (avoid more than three words and 16 characters, no numbers/hyphens).
My clients learn this the first week, and save on average, five times what they would have lost if left to their own devices, compared to my retainer fees over a three month period. I recently had a person contact me wanting to buy “expired domains with traffic in order to immediately receive revenue” from said traffic. I refused to lie to him to get hims as a client, so when I told him this path was no longer a viable domain investment solution, the poor guy wanted to know if I could refer someone else to advise him how to buy expired domains “with traffic”… Domain investing isn’t a hedge fund, it’s honest work. Talk to Elliot if you think I’m misleading you.
I am so disgusted seeing the continuing lame promotion of old style domain “appraisals” based on “traffic stats” I could just go off and verbally sever heads. I’ve owned both types of domains, and I can state truthfully that I’ve made more money selling a generic descriptive domain with little traffic but strong generic branding for its niche than a domain based on “multiples”. If someone approaches you with an offer to buy or sell you a domain and uses the word “multiples”, RUN.
If you’re buying a domain, you better KNOW what to expect from the analysis of the domain itself, as a word or phrase, and forget what past stats brag about. Stats will be obvious if you understand the domain evalation process, you will KNOW what to expect and work hard to implement the bare bones essentials of domain value building. If you own a one word “natural” of a common prodserv, then it’s already a “given” that the stats will be there. But if you’re searching for domains that bark out “high stats” but have no relevant connection to any prodservs, then you’re wasting your time and money.
Domain Investing is for “thinking people”, and “expired domain traffic stat” hunters are chumps, unless they’re very very lucky.
Stephen,
Couldnt agree more… The traffic could be proxy traffic for all you know. I mean come on… do you YOURself use MYHOTTERSEARCHBOX.COM? No.
Is it a generic term like Toaster.com? Now Toaster.com Might just get that amount of REAL reafic.. No…
Ok so we have a four word (My Hotter Search Box) term which for all you know could be fake hits (proxy traffic) or based off a link from a major website which could expire (could be a paid link) at any day.
And even if the traffic was good… What would the CPC be on it? Not much…So its a race against time to recoup your 18 grand. Let ALONE make a profit.
Junk term. Junk traffic. Honestly I wouldnt pay reg fee for it… Too bad someone has to learn an $18, 000 lesson soon.
-Matt
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your additional input on my take on fake traffic domains. Since Atom Bomb (Adam Strong) stole my verbosity title last week on another subject (and he did such a great job too), I wouldn’t post that much info unless I was trying to win it back! Hopefully I got my point across without too much redundancy. I’m hoping that A-Bomb doesn’t come in after my post and blow me out of the water.
cheers
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it’s every day much harder understand WHY some domains are sold well and WHY other domains aren’t sold
if the “best names” are sold at high prices, WHY some very good names (I believe to own some of them) never are sold?
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Did anyone alerted the bidders? How to find there contact information?
Open
Godaddy does not show the bidders ID or any other info that would allow anyone to contact them. They just show the bidders as “bidder 1″ bidder 2”, etc.
Hopefully they are reading this blog
#1. I was watching that auction today the high bidder pulled out a couple of hours ago, so its back down to around $805 right now.
#2. Godaddy really sucks a big one. I was trying to compare what my domain would be worth next to that domain. I get around 13,000 unique visitors a month based on my plesk desk and I am running on a dedicated box so I have plenty of resources to make sure it’s tracking properly. Of coarse free domain appraisals are junk, and I had estimates from some broken sites to some very strange estimators. Long story short the free sites said I had a site worth between $3000-$350,000.
Based on what I found this site worth I tried to run a estimate down of what Godaddy might appraise my site for. So 4 hrs ago I ordered a domain appraisal.
I got back a really big pile of junk. Godaddy says my site http://www.thelucrativeinvestor.com is worth $80 at https://domainaftermarket.godaddy.com/appraisals/appraisal.aspx?a=B9F19279-FCE7-4A68-B921-3C342398F2AC
Now this is a site with over 50k backlinks, 2 years old, has a semrush ppc value of 6k a month http://www.semrush.com/info/thelucrativeinvestor.com
I also rank between #6-#15 at any one time for the word “investing” on google a $3000 a day PPC word according to Adsense. I beat out aol, motely fool, and other high networks. However my site is only worth $80, funny considering that spam one we are talking about above is worth $26k, and who every buys it with catch hell from the remains of it.
I want to call up Godaddy and inform them that my site although small makes $800 a month free and clear after expenses, why the heck would I sell it for $80. So anyway I did create listing on godaddy auctions and will go live sometime later on day or tomorrow, hopefully people will see that true value of what it’s worth.
Sorry for the long rant just it sucks that godaddy let’s virus site get on there and also says good sites like mine are worth pennies. Best of luck to everyone with their money and in life.
That 7 people would have bid that up to 5 figures is quite funny, and sad too. 🙂
hottestsearchbox.com is available for registration for just $10.69 at Godaddy. It’s shorter and cheaper.
I would be very interested to know if any one out there know s where godaddy get its traffic estimates from?