When buying a keyword domain name, it is important to know how many people search daily for the keywords that make up the domain name. You might have the most targeted website for the keywords, rank number one in the search engines and have the best website design, but if nobody is searching for those keywords on a frequent basis, it will be difficult to earn a return on your investment.
Many people reference Google’s search results to cite how much information exists for certain keywords. While Google will show how many times the keyword is mentioned on the Internet, it fails to show how many people are actually searching for it. Using Google for this can be misleading, because there can be much more information about a topic than people searching for it.
The Overture search tool was a good indicator of the number of searches that were performed monthly but Yahoo has eliminated that tool. I’ve used Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery before and both offer good indications of what keywords people search. If you own the domain name of these keywords, you have a strong search engine optimization advantage over everyone else. Once you upload relevant content and have someone optimize your site, you could see an increase in revenue.
Another Hat Thrown into Yahoo Ring
According to today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, another potential Yahoo suitor has entered into negotiations. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, owners of popular social networking site MySpace, has begun negotiating with Yahoo to combine these two Internet powers. The article mentions that News Corp. could receive a stake in excess of 20% of Yahoo.
In recent weeks, merger and acquisition talks involving Yahoo have included many suiters, including Microsoft (who made a $44.6 billion offer), Google, AOL, and possibly others. These talks have helped push up the value of Yahoo stock over the past couple of weeks. In my opinion, the acquisition talks are a sign of strength for the domain industry, as it shows other companies with Internet experience are bullish on Internet advertising and search. While this ultimately may not be the best for PPC income, I think it shows faith in our industry.
Google Using Auto-Fill
Today I noticed that Google appears to be using an auto-fill application in at least one of their foreign landing pages. When you perform a search on Google’s Korean portal, Google offers to help you fill in the remainder of your search for you. This also allows the user to see how many results are listed for each keyword.
Hybrid Development: Increase the Value of Domains
While some domain names have high paying keywords, frequently the traffic isn’t significant enough for this to make a major impact on the name’s value. When the name is parked, you may generate a decent amount of revenue from targeted type-in traffic. However, unless something out of your control happens, there really isn’t much of a way to increase traffic to the name with a parked page.
One way that may boost traffic, increase revenue, and consequently increase the value of your domain name is to build a stripped down website. This is a hybrid development project where you add limited (but relevant) content, which should help you with your search engine placement. As a result, more people will find your website, and they may be more likely to click on the Adsense links, generating additional revenue. The more you continue to update your site, the more likely it is that people will find you and return.
In my opinion, the key to this is developing these hybrid sites in areas that are of interest to you. This will encourage you to post more often than if it was a mundane topic or something you didn’t care about. The more passionate or knowledgeable you are about a topic, the more likely it is that people will find you. The job of Google, Yahoo and other search engines is to present their users with the most relevant website based on their search query. If you are able to provide this, you will be placed higher. Of course there are things that make this more complicated, but that is the general idea.
Industry Veterans Launch TheDomains.com Blog
MostWantedDomains.com, a closely held company founded by domain industry veterans Michael and Judi Berkens, just launched launched their blog, TheDomains.com. One of the features they created is the “Domain Parking Stock Index,” a weighted average which tracks all public companies which either own large domain portfolio’s and/or make a significant income from parked domains or PPC revenue.
The initial DPSI index includes Google, Yahoo, Baidu.com, Dark Blue Sea, Marchex, and Banks.com. It will be interesting to see if the DPSI becomes a barometer for the health of the domain investment business.
I wish Mike and Judi all the best with their new blog, and I look forward to reading their insight.
Hypothetical Auto-fill Possibility
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the Yahoo Finance website uses an auto-fill tool when searching for stock quotes. When you enter a “B” into the “Get Quotes” search bar, Yahoo automatically presents the following options to choose from:
- B Barnes Group Inc. NYSE
- BIDU Baidu.com, Inc. NASDAQ
- BAC Bank of America Corporation NYSE
- IBM International Business Machines Corp. NYSE
- BEAS BEA Systems Inc. NASDAQ
- BA Boeing Co. NYSE
- BRCM Broadcom Corp. NASDAQ
- BBY Best Buy Co. Inc. NYSE
- BX The Blackstone Group NYSE
- BP BP plc NYSE
I have no idea if any company is planning to do this, but what would happen if an Internet browser did the same thing for the browser bar? Imagine entering “CN” into your browser and automatically being given the choices of CNET.com, CNN.com or another popular websites that begin with the letters CN. I really have no idea if this type of thing is in the works, but it could spell trouble for typo domain names, and could be a boon for generic .com names.