Online Advertising
Type-in traffic
Type-in traffic is a term describing visitors landing at a
web site by entering a word or phrase in the web browser's address bar
rather than following a hyperlink from another web page, using a browser
bookmark, or a search-box search. For example, if you are interested in
widgets, then instead of doing a search for 'widgets' you might type 'widgets.com'
in your address bar to see if such a web site exists, and, if so, what
content is there. From another perspective, if you are in the business
of selling widgets, then owning the domain name 'widgets.com' and having an active website
at that address would be a desirable thing, as you could take advantage
of the targeted type-in traffic that this name receives. That simple
example holds true for virtually all products and services.
Most web browsers formerly defaulted the
top-level domain to com, thus entering 'mysearchterm' in the web
browser's address bar usually would lead the user to http://mysearchterm.com/.
This behavior changed depending on the 'default search engine' setting in the
web browser's properties, so entering 'mysearchterm' in the address bar could
also lead to an error page or to results from a search engine. Today most error
page traffic has been taken over by browser manufacturers such as Microsoft and
Netscape for the purpose of displaying paid search
advertising. Much of MSN's high ranking as a portal results from the error
page traffic delivered from their dominant Internet Explorer browsers.
In the last few years advertisers, publishers and ad networks such as
MSN, AOL, Google and Yahoo have awoken to the power of displaying relevant
advertising to highly targeted type-in traffic from domain names, browser address bar searches and error traffic.
In November 2004
Marchex acquired the generic domain name portfolio of Name Development Ltd.,
a little known
British Virgin Islands company, for 164 million dollars, predominantly for
its 100,000+ domain name portfolio. This portfolio generated 17 million type-in
traffic visitors each month.
In 2005, Highland Capital, a
venture capital firm, acquired a controlling interest in
BuyDomains, paying an undisclosed sum for its domain name portfolio.
In August 2005, industry trade journals such as
dnjournal,
dnforum and
domainstate reported that sale volumes and prices of existing generic
domain-names were rising rapidly as a result of type-in traffic
monetization opportunities. Small webmasters can buy a domain name with type-in
traffic and utilize Google's
Adsense
product, or any of several traffic aggregators such as
Namedrive,
Fabulous,
DomainSponsor, or
Skenzo to display relevant advertising to the trickle of visitors coming to
their domain names. Many small
publishers
are generating thousands of dollars each month in revenue with very little
effort by building websites that serve relevant advertising to their type-in
traffic visitors.
Google's entry into the small publisher monetization space came as a result
of their purchase of Applied Semantics in 2003. The
drop registrar phenomenon is directly related to the value and desireability
of type-in traffic domain names.
Type-in traffic does not differentiate between
trademark traffic and generic traffic as it relates to domain names. For
example, the act of registering coca-cola.com for one's own commercial gain
would be considered cybersquatting. However, the act of registering softdrinks.com or cola.com
would likely be a defensible acquisition of a generic domain-name for type-in
traffic generation or resale business opportunities.
Also see:
Home | Up | Type-in traffic | Domain parking
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