DS earnings down ?

[DomainEngineer]

Hi,

We have a lot of domains (x,xxx) parked at DS and earnings have been good and steadily going up month after month.

After 7 PM EST yesterday, my earnings hardly moved even though the visitors grew quite a bit.

I have sent email to my contacts at DS and waiting their response. I have asked DS to investigate whats happening.

Today again, I see visitors are ok but all other stats are way down:

- Click thru % is down by 2 to 4%

- Rate Per Click is about 40% less than average

- Total earnings are almost 50% less than what they are at this time of the day i.e. at 5PM EST

All my traffic is type-in and very high quality mainly insurance/casino/poker/credit/loans/drugs etc. DS is quite good for all these categories.

I otherwise have a great month so far. I like DS and their high quality service. This type of continued problem never happened so far before. It may have happened every few days for an hour or two but not this many hours in a row.

There seems to be some problem in stats collection that started 'after' 7PM EST yesterday (3/22/05) and it still continues like that.

Just wondering if someone else having any issues?

Thanks,

[ParkQuick.com]

They have been fluctuating more this month than last month for me. I moved a couple to other places to compare, and they are doing better - but that can change too. It's so hard to tell what is happening when they don't have real time stats. I never know over a period of several hours at times whether things are really stagnant or whether DS just hasn't updated their stats.

[DomainEngineer]

They have been fluctuating more this month than last month for me. I moved a couple to other places to compare, and they are doing better - but that can change too. It's so hard to tell what is happening when they don't have real time stats. I never know over a period of several hours at times whether things are really stagnant or whether DS just hasn't updated their stats.

I know DS updates stats 'truly' the next day. The hourly stats are just computer estimations.

I am not sure if anyone else has real-time stats either?

But the problem is that its used to be so steady and projectable but now a days it seems their stats estimation system is doing something weird.

I have added lot of more domains (in 100s) and uniques are slowly going up but revenue is going steadily down. Not only that many times the stats just get stuck and hardly update especially during the last 6 to 8 hours of the day.

I have brought these things to their attention. I think stats issue is the single most important issue to be fixed asap. I won't mind them displaying the entire days stats the next day instead of hourly but at least then they can make sure that the stats are correctly displayed.

Lets see how it happens today so far my uniques are ok but earnings are terrible. I hate to look at them like this, thats why I suggest 'next day' stats update...lol

Thanks,

[ParkQuick.com]

As best as I can tell, sedo, Domain Hop, Traffic Parking and TrafficZ provide real-time stats.

DS just announced that they are upgrading their system, and that they will temporarily be estimating instead of "updating hourly" as they claimed to do in the past. I think you got their attention.

Their announcement:

February 24, 2005

DS Site Notice

We are happy to announce that we will be upgrading our system. In the meantime, stats for the current day will be ESTIMATED. We assure you that the tracking of our data will not be affected, but you may see numbers adjusted and updated throughout the day due to the processing of this data. Complete and final numbers will be available at 3AM the following day for previous day's stats.

I know DS updates stats 'truly' the next day. The hourly stats are just computer estimations. I am not sure if anyone else has real-time stats either? But the problem is that its used to be so steady and projectable but now a days it seems their stats estimation system is doing something weird.

I have added lot of more domains (in 100s) and uniques are slowly going up but revenue is going steadily down. Not only that many times the stats just get stuck and hardly update especially during the last 6 to 8 hours of the day. I have brought these things to their attention. I think stats issue is the single most important issue to be fixed asap. I won't mind them displaying the entire days stats the next day instead of hourly but at least then they can make sure that the stats are correctly displayed.,

[cyphix]

About time!

[DomainEngineer]

As usual, DS listens and improves.........thats why they are #1 in PPC space.

Thanks,

[Banned: Dark_One]

DS is number 1

[hiOsilver]

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle said that Google and Yahoo are both finding that PPC bids are down in the first two months of 2005 as compared to bids during Q4 2004. Of course, it may depend on the category, as some types of traffic is not very seasonal.

[clemzonguy]

Another point of consideration is that DS servers are a little slow at dynamically coming up with the page in the first place. I have tested a few pages throughout the day and it takes sometimes 5-7 seconds of load time (sometimes not at all) versus fabulous which is like 2-3 seconds with very little downtime. I have starting using the DS PR servers and not really seen any improvement. I even forwarded from the fabulous DNS over to their page and noticed a drop in hits compared to their stats. People are normally not going to wait for a slow page to load which is going to mean a loss in revenue.

PS: Just tested a site that failed to load at all.

[Domainut]

As best as I can tell, sedo, Domain Hop, Traffic Parking and TrafficZ provide real-time stats.

To my knowledge, These services do not report realtime stats, they provide stats based on an algorithm of the previous days bid prices for each term (and IMO there is always a safety cushion included).

Google does not report realtime stats, so this is the only way for them to make us think we are recieving real time stats.

__________________________________________________ _
www.ParkingIncome.com
Project in the works.

[DomainEngineer]

My visitors are going up but CTR (Click Thru Rate) has dropped by 2.5 %, RPC (return per click) has dropped by about 10%, and RPV (return per visitor) has dropped by 22% in last 10 days or so at DS. It is a HUGE DROP in my view.

I hope it goes back to normal as we have entered new month.


LATEST UPDATE:
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In fact I have suddenly a major drop in the visitors and other stats yesterday. I have sent detailed email to DS explaining how their total system malfunctioning (stat colelction and proredirect) keeps making me suffer losses.

Waiting for DS answer.
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Thanks,