I thought sedo had a policy against pumping traffic to parked names? if so, might be worth notifying them so that other potential buyers are not caught out.

Originally posted by safesys
I thought sedo had a policy against pumping traffic to parked names? if so, might be worth notifying them so that other potential buyers are not caught out.

That is a reasonable suggestion. But some of the so-called high traffic names listed on Sedo are so obscure and low quality, it seems self-evident that they are being artificially pumped up. I would think that domain professionals like those at Sedo could glance at some of these high traffic names and conclude something fishy is occuring with the traffic. Which raises the question: Is Sedo really even checking for traffic fraud?

It becomes a further issue in that Sedo suggests that domains with higher traffic get selected for the "Top Listings". I have some excellent domains that I would like to see in the Top Listings showcase but they don't draw the same traffic as these other supposed high traffic doms.

From Sedo's Top Domains description page (an excerpt) ...

"... Consider ordering a Showcase entry: In addition to the benefit of being featured in a prominent position on Sedo’s Front Page, all domains entered into the Showcase are automatically forwarded to our Editorial Committee for Top Domain consideration."

Apparently a prompt to buy placement and consideration for the Top Domains showcase.

Some are just oddballs that show a lot of views or traffic but not necessarily "browser type ins " (for different reasons) like Safesy explained.
I have one of those and I can assure I wouldn't know how to manipulate the numbers... today views 5500 ... how many type ins ? is anybodys guess?

RobertF - I know. Here are two prime examples that defy logic ...

www.wetoy.com (is 3rd highest traffic dom at Sedo with 13599 daily hits and doesn't even resolve to a site. Not to mention this is like a third-tier domain)

www.the-insurance-tips.com (#19 traffic dom at Sedo. Double hyphenated name! No record of the site in Google. Just a low qual name pulling 2264 hits per day. No way possible.)

These stats must be phony.
- - - - - - -

Take a look at ...

www.coversite.net (#8 traffic site at Sedo)

www.easy4counter.com (#14 traffic site at Sedo)

Again, thousands of supposed hits and no site content. Does not add up.

Quite honestly, how many domains can be notified to sedo? Here is what I do suggest though. Sedo needs to concentrate and put some serious man power to determine the legit traffic and fake or redirected traffic etc. Its not really hard. DomainSponsor has something that can determine pretty good, however, if one is redirecting 10 domains to one there is really no way to tell.

Although, determining the value of the domain for traffic can be difficult at times as there are some domains that really do get some traffic but then if there are fake hits coming in it becomes quite difficult to figure out what the value should be.

Awstats can really tell you exactly where the traffic is coming..if for example its a direct or frame..something like that can be pretty useful.

Good luck!

Originally posted by carlton
RobertF - I know. Here are two prime examples that defy logic ...

www.wetoy.com (is 3rd highest traffic dom at Sedo with 13599 daily hits and doesn't even resolve to a site. Not to mention this is like a third-tier domain)

www.the-insurance-tips.com (#19 traffic dom at Sedo. Double hyphenated name! Just a low qual name pulling 2264 hits per day. No way possible.)

These stats must be phony.

I know they look highly suspicious but so is mine, unless you see hard stats we can only speculate , I don't think Sedo scruitinizes these top domains it will make sense for them to analyze the stats and save a headache or two... after all people are buying these domain on the basis of "high traffic "
IMO this practice is borderline "FRAUD" and is very deceiving to " be calling anything "traffic" ...
even calls to the counter code that presumably existed on a previous site.

but it *is* traffic - you are getting the visitors. the problem is you thought/assumed they would be "type ins".

thats not to say I don't think sedo could do better on how they protect buyers and enforce policies - but there is a burden on the buyer to understand what they are buying too.

Originally posted by safesys
but it *is* traffic - you are getting the visitors. the problem is you thought/assumed they would be "type ins".

thats not to say I don't think sedo could do better on how they protect buyers and enforce policies - but there is a burden on the buyer to understand what they are buying too.

" exactly "... and that's why I took more of a passive stance.
I assumed wrongly but I asked them to verify if the traffic was legit and their response was "it looks fine"...
Bottom line:
Views/Traffic at Sedo mean nothing...
You could be buying "calls to a counter" and not real people traffic whether is from links or type-ins or Se's....
Buyers Beware.

Thanks Robert, Safe, and adill for the posts and information. Helpful to get some clarity on my observations. Still learning about traffic and revenue generation. And I come across these inconsistencies which cause me to pause.

from the horses mouth:
The names listed in our High Traffic List are our most visted Parked sites.

The "Hits" indicate the average number of times per day the domain's page was viewed through direct browser typein, from an old external link, or from an oustide search engine.
"I wonder were "calls to a counter fit...?"

Most wanted is how many times the "offer" was visited from Sedo's main page.

High traffic is supposed to be from type-ins and links from the web.

The truth is that some of the domains are being manipulated. I made an offer on maturevideo.tv because it was getting 12-20k a day. The guy came back with $50k........ I laughed and then I registerd .mature-video.tv . I've had mature-video.tv for 30 days and its got 20 hits. From my experience with other domains adding a hyphen to a popular domain should get you about 2% of the non hyphen traffic.

I checked wayback, ots, marketleap, and google maturevideo.tv doesn't get that much natural traffic.

The "Hits" indicate the average number of times per day the domain's page was viewed through direct browser typein, from an old external link, or from an oustide search engine.
"I wonder were "calls to a counter fit...?"

That's what it is - old links to javascript/images at your domain.

But this wording "average number of times per day the domain's page was viewed" is the interesting bit - because the page wasn't viewed if it was a js/img call.

Originally posted by safesys
That's what it is - old links to javascript/images at your domain.

But this wording "average number of times per day the domain's page was viewed" is the interesting bit - because the page wasn't viewed if it was a js/img call.

Thanks Safesys.
I guess these hits shouldn't be counted under views either ?
currently they are ...my "Moby Dick" got 5500 views yesterday...
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Originally posted by RobertF
So when you are quoting Sedo Stats from the "Domain parking" page to a 3rd party , stats reflected under "views " for a particular domain...
one shouldn't be saying "Sedo Stats _ _ _ _ type-ins " ?
...

Might be a niche market here, maybe pay someone 100 dollars to research traffic before buying a domain, I only reg names so my investment is minimal, but for the vast majority of domainers a service to investigat traffic with right tools might be a good investment