Fake Screenshots?

[sunja]

Hi all,

I see a lot of requests for traffic stats and stats screenshots, and I was just wondering how often you get faked details? I mean, it would be pretty easy to fake a screenshot of a webpage to artificially inflate your CTR or your traffic.

So... how many of you have encountered faked stats? Is it something that just doesn't happen? Or if it does, how often, and what do you do about it?

Just researching, thanks for taking the time to read, and please respond.

yours,
-sj.

[gingeman]

I have purchased names previously where the revenue has been nowhere near that shown in the screenshots of the previous months. Impossible to tell if the stats were inflated due to paid traffic or click fraud etc or if the screenshots were faked. Make sure you do your research and if it is a name costing a lot of money to you, request a traffic test, or a return after one week if not seeing stats that were advertised.

[netdevil]

That is why I don't ask for stats screenshot as it is just a formality stuff.

Respected and old members with good feedback are more safe.

[ps123]

I bought a domain last year. Seller had a screenshot with 150 clicks/month on sedo. I got about 30 clicks in all of last year on sedo.

Inflating traffic and clicks is not a very time consuming job for someone who knows how to do it. So the repo of the seller matters a lot.

[tinner666]

Clicks, as in visits? Or clicks as in Revenue?
The other places are full of 'visit' my site stuff and virtual dollars for visits. Some may be to inflate for google, etc. Some may be to inflate for a sale.

[Vinternatt]

I think buyers must want a 3 or 5 days extremetracking test. Seller inserts an extremetracking code to a simple page and buyers can have a look at traffic for 3 or 5 days. This is a good solution to see the amount of unique traffic, traffic sources and geo-informations I think.

[sunja]

Clicks, as in visits? Or clicks as in Revenue?

Well.. both, really. I was thinking more in terms of editing the screenshot to make it seem like you had a higher CTR or more revenue than you actually do, but also to make it seem like the site gets more traffic.

The other places are full of 'visit' my site stuff and virtual dollars for visits.

I'd not thought about the possibility that people might actually fake the traffic instead of just producing a fake image (eg via photoshop, or editing the saved html). Hmm.

[Restecpa]

Unless you trust the seller, screenshots which can obviously be easily manipulated (not that stats can't) are not to be taken seriously, not without doing more research of your own first. I guess such reported stats can be a good selling point and attention grabber that makes you consider certain domains more seriously, but if the sole reason for somebody buying a certain domain is traffic, then I guess one should know better...

I'd say use common sense, but unfortunately common sense cannot be applied 100% of the time. There are exceptions, which can for no apparent reason (at least to most of us) generate more traffic than is to be expected, however most of the time if it looks like a rat, smells like a rat and sounds like a rat, it probably is a rat. And I'm not talking just about domains either...

Sellers often fall under that category as well.

[Tim Schoon]

got a faked revenue name 2weeks ago.. didnt get a refund, $400 down the drain.. happy it only was a small rev name

[LintonInvestments]

Who did you buy the name from? Would be good to get these names out in the open so we can avoid getting scammed.

Haven't been scammed yet but have been very careful with our research.

Thanks.

[Acro]

$400 down the drain

...or "down the toilet"