The Huffington Post just seems have discovered people really do type in domain names into the navigation bar and it seems there is even money to be made in owning domain names.
Wow
Who would have thought?
In an article entitled “Why Your URL Bar Matters, and Why Silicon Valley Should Take Note” goes on to say:
“If you use the Internet, you’ve likely used something in the last month, but it’s not something at the top of your lips: the URL bar. It’s also called the “address bar” or the “direct navigation bar” among techies. Here’s why it matters — a lot.””
“Traffic on domains varies enormously from #1, Facebook.com, to tens of thousands of ‘parked domains‘ that receive just 1-2 visitors or even none. Some ‘parked domains’ don’t get ‘clicks’ because the domain owner ceased business, or because he or she may be deceased.”
The article goes on to cite a Fairwinds report, that “manual direct navigation in the URL bar accounted for 38% of Web site traffic”.
“WebSideStory’s StatMarket division (now a part of Omniture) estimated, prior to 2008, that more than 67 per cent of global Internet users arrive at Web sites through direct navigation. ”
“That means that direct navigation is almost as important as Google in reaching your destination of choice.”
This 38% stat is suspect. The FairWinds report, which is five years old, actually just cites a Forrester report, which is seven years old. A lot has changed in seven years.
Domainers need to understand what these people are talking about when they talk about direct navigation. I don’t think they (domainers) do. Howard Neu’s “Man On The Street” video was a pretty classic example of being somewhat clueless on what the discussion is all about.
A website measures its navigation metrics in a number of ways.
One of them is the number of people who direct navigate, instead of coming in from other sources (links, search, bookmarks, etc). Direct navigation is critically important, so it’s equally important that your online identity be memorable and simple, since a lot of people will be typing it into the address bar. This is what they’re talking about when they talk about the importance of your domain name.
‘Domainers’ see an article like this and think its some grand endorsement on the sorts of ‘curiosity browsing’ type in traffic thats apt to occur with big, generic keywords on .com and that domainers happen to own (and are trying to sell)
That isn’t what they’re talking about here, it’s almost never what they’re talking about. The domainer-domain narrative is not the same as the business-domain narrative, even though domainers don’t seen to realize it since it involves similar jargon with homonymic properties.
@Berkens:
We’ve launched Beta version of DomainingLive.com and every hour there’s a new show for you. Of course there’s the tribute to domain king Rick Schwartz of which you Berkens and your wife, Monte, every who is who is there, it’s our featured broadcast of the day, and …
Just live it tune to DomaininfLive.com
Do it Live!
DomainingLive.com 2013
Roughly 60% of our traffic comes from direct navigation and we don’t advertise at all. Running almost 600 unique viewers per day; we’ve been live for 7 weeks.
“Some ‘parked domains’ don’t get ‘clicks’ because the domain owner ceased business, or because he or she may be deceased.”
Huh?
Very disjointed article.
“The article goes on to cite a Fairwinds report, that “manual direct navigation in the URL bar accounted for 38% of Web site traffic”.
That is a VERY accuate number that NOBODY wants folks to know about. Especially Google. Type-ins are my specialty and my focus since 1995. My number has always been around 35%. So very close.
Now I will admit this is on my high end of estimates. But with a basis. Google and Yahoo have admitted to 15%-20% privately. So that is the minimum and 35% is about maximum. And that range has been very constant over the years.
It is pretty safe to say that about 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 of ALL INTERNET TRAFFIC is the type in rate.
The best way to validate value of a domain is via typeins. Always has and always will. You can’t ignore the weight this gives a domain. It is not 100% of the weight, but it certainly is a major component for SAFE domain investing.
I find it difficult to believe that Twitter, Facebook and the proliferation of smart phones haven’t significantly changed the ways internet users discover web sites since 2006.
Maybe the author has been on a 7 year vacation without Tv or internet access
Doesn’t sounds too bad actually
Gordo
I own 75,000 or so domains and almost every single on gets some traffic every month.
Since all the domains are parked non rank in the search engine so where have I gotten hundreds of millions of visitors from over the years?
Links?
each domain gets some traffic some get like 4 visitors a month or a couple of hundred of course some get thousands or many thousands, some could be links but there is definitely an amount of pure type in traffic even to longer terms, has always been so, percentage of traffic that is type in can be debated all day but itis meaningful without a doubt at least 10%.
and typo domains like the facbook.com kind of domains according to Alexa get serious traffic all typo’s all direct navigation all meaning that people were directly navigation to the right site but had fat fingers or just can’t spell
I’m sorry, but as good as it sounds, I cant bite.
When you navigate to the author’s company’s page, the first (and largest) sentence reads:
“We capture the world’s freshest respondent data, so that you can make the best decisions.”
Even better, the company’s tagline is:
“Real-time Interactive Worldwide Intelligence.”
Seriously? Then why the hell does he keep citing 4-7 year-old data?
Plus it’ poorly written and horribly disjointed making it very difficult to get through.
This is an obvious attempt to build links back to the company website, but for reasons stated above, I didnt even make it to the 12pt copy.
This quote looked rather odd:
“Based on my anecdotal review of Internet registries, such as GoDaddy, there are approximately 400 million such domains and growing. ”
Godaddy is not a registry. And 400 million domains is a bit high. As for the experts stopping counting subdomains, well the experts in the search engine business do count them.
Direct Navigation (as in domainer terms to a website that may be there because the domain name is a category killer or typo) is not quite the same as someone directly navigating to http://www.facebook.com because they visit it every day. There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking and conflation in that article.
Hello, Envious
This is FREE Traffic into infinity, not the first page of a crapshoot.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)