Godaddy auctions - traffic stats.

microphone head

microphone head

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Oct 21, 2012
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To those of you who have a lot of experience with buying auctioned domains at Godaddy: I'd like to ask - how reliable are their stats in terms of traffic & value.

I realise that different auction types will most likely have differing reliability, but can someone explain precisely where their stats come from and if they're reliable please? How much can I rely on the 'public auction' stats, or what percentage of traffic is likely inflated for sale purpose?

Expiring auctions - are those stats based on anything more or less solid or are they all from the same source?

The reason I ask is because when you do a real background check on those domains, some of them are a crock of shit - stuff like domains that clearly don't have the suggested traffic volume, domains that appear to have been hit with a black & white animal - had their time and now bombed etc. and other sorts of things. There are also ones that seem to check out ok on the standard checks, but I'm not at all familiar with how GD work in terms of data sources.

If any of you can throw some light on this and clarify these things a bit I'd be most grateful!

(I'm not a domaining chap at all, but keep looking at it.)
 


I'm interested too.

What is obvous is although Godaddy is shit overall, but their traffic numbers are usually more accurate than ones of other auctioneers. Other ones just take these numbers from the ceiling.

But anyway, it's a mystery where they can get them numbers. And of course as you said the numbers can be inflated etc.

So i'd say we can see this traffic figure as one of additional indicators, but i would not rely on it.

From another hand, you should remember CCarter's case when he bought that domain with traffic... An there really was traffic.
 
Here's my take and my experience from it. All "Expired Auction" domains are measured by the amount of traffic going to the current Godaddy "This domain has expired" page that is up on the domain. There would be absolutely no reason for anyone to attempt to inflate those numbers since only Godaddy has something to gain (except for lulz). That's why I state to only go after domains that are definitely "expired auctions".

With all the domains I've won, the amount of traffic is usually within 50% to 150%. What that means is if I see an "EXPIRED DOMAIN" stating 10,000 monthly visitors are hitting the "Godaddy domain has expired" landing page I would estimate that the number can vary from 5,000 to 15,000 monthly visitors. Now this is 90% recurring and direct traffic. By now all search traffic has died down.

What a lot of Godaddy auctioners like doing is reviving the old domain by going to archive.org, scraping all the content possible, links, etc. And letting it sit for a month or two to get back/revive it's original search traffic as well. I personally don't do that, but its a great tactic. If done correctly, and you get an additional 30 to 40% extra traffic, then you are pretty much in the 8,000 to 19,000 monthly visitors in my example after a month or 2.

Now here is a kicker, remember, someone let that domain expire, so if they figure out that the domain expired, whether it's a month from now, or even 2 years from now and pull the plug on the referring traffic, which there is a possibility that they control the domain(s) that is sending the recurring traffic, your traffic can die. I've had a couple of domains I bought where the original webmaster realized they lost the domain and began pulling the backlinks that were producing the recurring traffic.

With that in mind, if there is direct traffic coming from offline marketing, that traffic can get pulled too. The person might still control the facebook, youtube, twitter, and other social media accounts that can send traffic as well as articles, web 2.0, etc. (ProTip: To Revive emails enable the catch all option in your email setting. You'll find old emails accounts - can possible get access to the social media accounts that were connected, and other goodies ;) ) How many times has this happened to me about 10-15% of the time. It is a chance you are taking.

Also, I'm not a big fan of buying expired domains with PR, for the same reason, I had one domain that was a PR5 and it dropped to a PR2 after 2 years when the old webmaster pulled the top backlinks since she controlled the source.

Now if you are thinking about buying "closeout" domains or domains that people are auctioning off themselves, then it's a huge gamble. The webmaster can inflate the PageRank or inflate the traffic by going to a website like trafficswarm.com and buying cheap traffic to send the Godaddy traffic stats through the roof. Everyone on Godaddy sees it and thinks, it's a great deal, bidding war starts. then once the domain is delivered, all cheap bullshit traffic is pulled or the backlinks increasing the pagerank are pulled.

To solve the problem Godaddy should put stats on the origins of the traffic, and more details if possible, but in the end it would only take money out of Godaddy's pockets if they were to do that. ;)

This is just from my experience, hopefully that clarifies things. Good luck bros.​
 
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CCarter said:
All "Expired Auction" domains are measured by the amount of traffic going to the current Godaddy "This domain has expired" page that is up on the domain.​
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This explains everything. Thank you chief.

ProTip: To Revive emails enable the catch all option in your email setting. You'll find old emails accounts - can possible get access to the social media accounts that were connected, and other goodies ;)
Click to expand...

Wow, this is a damn gold nugget. Somebody please move this post to Enlightened. +Rep
 
The thing is, during my analysis of some of these sites I've seen some issues I can't seem to work out or find suitable explanations for, even in the more 'trustable' expiring domains. Other auction types I don't even look at to be honest.

For example: Have a look in the expiring auctions right now. The domain with the most traffic is reported as being just shy of 960k+ / month.

  • Godaddy: 965406 - traffic / $349,500k - value.
  • Quantcast: 117.4k / month (including just 2 visits from mobile devices) According to them the site was averaging 30k UV/day until a couple of weeks ago.
  • Alexa rank: 2,368,014 / not enough data.
  • Looking at the site in archive.org - I find it hard to imagine that even that number of UV / day natural traffic, but let's just say it did and has now been fucked by whatever means.
  • The link analysis of it doesn't really make much sense either, with just 4 in Jan increasing to 26 (via a small drop) in May. Digsitevalue records 20 UV / day All from UK, but I'm not sure how their estimate is calculated.

There is some seriously strange or contrasting data here, and Godaddy have it still value it at nearly $350k.
I'm just not seeing how this works out, and yes I'm fully aware that I'm no master of domaining or stats but is there any light you can throw on why these figures are so disparate?

Take a look and see if you can work it out - I'm very interested to hear expert opinions on it. I'm not bidding on that one anyway but definitely would like to know what's going on there! I would have thought Godaddy may have access to a more true data from various sources such as advertisers etc. to get a "valuation".

So you can see why I'm confused as to where their data comes from!
edit: Of course it's true value will be seen in 9 days and will be nothing like that.
 
I'm looking at the site right now, if you look at the archive.org from November of 2011, at the bottom there is a copyright notice that links to another site. When visiting that site it appears to be a former Heroku App. So that traffic can be spam bot traffic that the owner was using, possibly to launch spam for other sites. A robot(s) (with multiple IPs, proxies, etc) might be going crazy at the moment trying to access the former site that expired. Possible part of a spam network. Looking at the additional data, the site "appears" to be a former magazine of some sort, but unsuccessful one.

Bot traffic also accounts for the hits being reported, that's why I used a 50% - 150% estimate. I personally think it was a part of a spam network with bot traffic that the spammer let expire. Nobody in their right might would let a website with nearly a million REAL monthly visitors expire.

Also, don't every take into consideration's Godaddy's "valuation". There is absolutely no social or other indicators that website has any traffic other than direct traffic (which I assume is bot traffic of some sort).

Additionally, just copied and pasted some of the content into google to check for duplicate. Results was 13.5 Million duplicate results for one phrase!. The duplicate content appears on classic spam websites with classic spam layouts - example oakley85bairogx16 | A great WordPress.com site (http://oakley85bairogx16.wordpress.com/).

It's spam bro, anyone bidding on that shit is going to have a hell of a surprise.​
 
Ok. That's pretty much what I thought it would be - it was clearly not real traffic (the lack of mobile visits was a very loud alarm bell for me of course ;) ), which is why I'm not just piling in buying up a domain without thorough background checks. Didn't think to track the copyright notice though.

Again - like everything, data is only really ever truly valuable when it's supported with other data to give it meaning and put it in context.

I'm assuming then that the other stats data taken from other services can somehow filter that? Or is just that because it's actual visits hitting GD's server that they're the only ones who can actually see it?
 
microphone head said:
I'm assuming then that the other stats data taken from other services can somehow filter that? Or is just that because it's actual visits hitting GD's server that they're the only ones who can actually see it?
Click to expand...

GD has the real raw data, if they wanted to make it available it would help out tremendously, but at the same time it would reduce their income once people realize X amount of traffic are bots.​
 
Well yes - it's parked on a GD server so they definitely do, just a bitch that they don't provide stat sources - would make things that much easier / quicker, but then again - they'd be a bit silly to really.

Hopefully this example has made something clear for others looking at GD auctions - their reported traffic volume may not be as it seems, in this case it is wildly exaggerated. I'm going to put a watch on that domain, will be interesting to see what it finally does go for.
 
so, i am interested with it to but where I should start to bid from godaddy auction?i prefered to be godaddy domain reseller bro
 
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