TrafficZ Traffic Concern

[i-0.com]

I've noticed that my traffic has been down of late so I did some research and found the following from Alexa:

Alexa Traffic Details: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...w.trafficz.com

Alexa Traffic Graph:


The data presented represents a significant drop that reflects that of my own. I reviewed a few other traffic sites featured in this forum and found that their traffic was steady or increasing.

Another concern of late is the wild fluctuations of daily revenues that go on for days. I'll review stats for the previous day and it'll reflect one value and then these values will fluctuate up and down, mostly down, for days to come. I don't understand this and have been unable to get a satisfactory response from my inquiries.

Does anyone have any feedback on this?

[David G]

IMO, that graph only represents traffic going to the TrafficZ website and not traffic to parked domains (which could be up, not down). It may mean TrafficZ is less popular or possibly people are not checking their stats as frequently as in the past. It may not even be accurate as I do not have a lot of trust in Alexa stats anyway, especially since they are heavily biased toward domainers, website owners and webmaster traffic.

P.S. Not positive about that being correct, anyone know for sure?

[dotNetKing]

I noticed today that they are trying out new things, and at first sight, the first attempts seem to have had a negative impact on my earnings, unless there are other factors including normal variation at work.

On checking, income is at least 20% down today on a normal weekday.

I hope they work out what works best quickly and we see a resulting overall increase in income.

[David G]

Their targeting seems extremely poor invoving some names.

For example, i.e. re a domain name Mary.us - about the female name Mary of course. The TrafficZ ads are always targeted toward the word Marry as in I want to marry you. Naturally the CTR and income is zero since visitors are looking for the girl's name and finding something much different for ads which they never click.

Even though I added 100% keywords regarding the girl name and also added my own htm content only about a girl name Mary (as permitted by trafficz), and the name is spelled right everywhere (Mary) it all has a zero effect on the ads displayed.

When I complain to tech supt they actually tell me since Mary is a typo for Marry as far as their Yahoo feed provider is concerned that little can be done and I should convert the page and domain pretending it's a typo for marry as in getting married. How ridiculous is that anyway, where they want me to use a non-best-use for the domain! This issue makes me think twice about how smart it is to use Trafficz as it may happen with other names too.

[dotNetKing]

Their targeting seems extremely poor invoving some names.

Although I like trafficz, I have to agree that their targeting does seem to be very poor for some names.

I get envious when I see the likes of enom, GoDaddy and google landers with *appropriate* one-click links that I normally can't hope to have on my trafficz pages.

I'm talking about domains which aren't just one worders, but the algorithms of some of the other PPC companies have a very successfull effort at extracting a decent meaning from the domain name, rather than examples like "mary" being taken as a mistype of "marry".

[David G]

Although I like trafficz, I have to agree that their targeting does seem to be very poor for some names.

I get envious when I see the likes of enom, GoDaddy and google landers with *appropriate* one-click links that I normally can't hope to have on my trafficz pages.

I'm talking about domains which aren't just one worders, but the algorithms of some of the other PPC companies have a very successfull effort at extracting a decent meaning from the domain name, rather than examples like "mary" being taken as a mistype of "marry".

I am extremely envious because the member I purchased the name from had it with Sedopro and the ads were extremely good and all about the girl's name. He said it earned $15 in 1-day, but over the immediate next 3 days I earned ZERO because Sedopro's ads were so well targeted vs TrafficZ non-targeted.

P.S. Mary,us was only an example and not my name but a very similar scenario and category of name so it is an excellent example.

[actnow]

I noticed today that they are trying out new things, and at first sight, the first attempts seem to have had a negative impact on my earnings, unless there are other factors including normal variation at work.

On checking, income is at least 20% down today on a normal weekday.

What new things are they trying?

My daily revenue is down 25% for the past couple days.

I contacted them but have not heard back from them.

And, ironically, my Goldkey numbers are doing "ok".

[dotNetKing]

From my location, it seems all, or almost all of my landing pages have automatically changed to what they call d2r pages, i.e. initial landing pages with links in the centre that take you direct to sponsors.

However, the links are very generalised ones - you know - the sort that says "the best resources on the web for frackle sproglets", and I assume they pay very low, maybe as little as a 10th of a cent?

Previously I normally only used the website format if there were (proper) d2r links, and used themes or angle for the rest, where at least I had control of what links appeared on the left hand side.

My income is also down round about 20-25% over the previous week.

It seems that this change of landing pages is not for all the world. A friend in Spain seems to have the previous system working for pages he visits.

[RepCentral]

I never thought to look at Alexa to gauge popularity of a parking site.
Doh! It makes sense though. There are great trends about our industry from those stats!
It helps to look at a larger time window and see what is going on.
Link of TraffiZ Vs. Sedo Vs. Dnforum
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...l=trafficz.com

Notes about the graphs:
- It looks like a giant spike of popularity hit the parking vendors at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006.
* Should we call this the great domainers glut of '06?

- Popularity peaked around the beginning of 2006.

- Popularity tempararily crashed around mid summer.
* Could be related to the lawsuit against Google and Yahoo for click fraud

- Now popularity is settling down on a linear path toward normalcy
* Casual domainers loose interest after being suckered by worthless domains

Anyways, smart kudos all around. I think it is funny to watch the domainers that were saying "Any minute now, the internet will run out of domain names and you will have to pay 1 million dollars to us just to have a name for ads." How ludicrous! But it whipped lots of people into a frenzy!
The smart people then sold off a lot of their garbage names right around the top (early 2006) and dissapeared.
DCG (God bless him) was warning people not to buy domains from sites like DNForum. Honest!
He knew that the glut was causing garbage sellers to come out of the woodwork!

Wow. Too wild. It is like we had our own micro-bubble that burst.
Don't believe me?
Slashdot (slashdot.org) just ran an article on how a domainer is making lots of money and others can to with parking and Pay-per-whatever. Alexa "Slashdot.org" and see what the popularity is. It's practically a census of the number of people in the general tech industry. That article is the "jump the shark" article. I have read Slashdot for many, many years and these types of articles are run when the air is being released.
The good news is that maybe we will get some sanity for those that hang on.

[Dr Nump]

landing.trafficz.com - 91%
trafficz.com - 4%
landings.trafficz.com - 4%
Other websites - 1%

I have to agree that neither TZ kick out a huges of traffic in the last few months nor their customers move their traffic to others parking site . Revenue is drop incredibly , maybe 30% lower ! I dont know what TZ currently doing , but they should make it faster .
For relevant ads , if TZ do not do well , then you may move those names to others site . All of we know that there are no parking program do good for all names .
Regards.

[namestrands]

Yeah. Drop of over 50%.. was told it has to do with Yahoo targetting their ads to specific countries and also that CPM pounders are now being tracked One Impression per IP every 24 hours.

I hate to say it but it looks like the trafficz gravy train has now ended, since thursday CPC, RPM has been wiped out.

sedo, NameDrive are now 20% more earnings than Trafficz. Unless something changes, I dont think Trafficz and Parked will be able to compete with the Google Feeds.

Shame.. such a great program, but we all have to go where the money is and it looks like a ship jump over to NameDrive (once they sort out their connection issues) or dare I say SEDOPRO...

[dotNetKing]

I agree with you Namestrands.

I find it very sad.

The only factor at the moment that might keep me with trafficz.com is that I rely more on sales than PPC income and I find they serve my purposes for that.

Also, it would be a lot of work to move over 1000s of domains and then set (and check) keywords.

[David G]

...I hate to say it but it looks like the trafficz gravy train has now ended...

I am a new TrafficZ client but see incredibly poor targeting of keywords. An oddity is the Title, Keywords and even html content you can enter as an option is basically worthless as they tell me the problem is Yahoo has already PREDETERMINED what ads go with the names, regardless of it being best or worthless. Have already moved a few names away and will likely move more next week even though they are very low traffic names anyway.

[namestrands]

Also, it would be a lot of work to move over 1000s of domains and then set (and check) keywords.

I have to move over 3000 names.. but I know that it will be worth it in the long term.

Agree that trafficz has a simple sales function that works, but alas the big sales are few and far between, AfterNIC and sedo do tend to attract the big corporate spenders that we all love. AfterNIC more than ever are really doing some great partnerships with some of the Big Registrars.

It is a tough decision as I have been with trafficz for some time, but it another case of the spammers and scammers destroying the Biz for the rest of us, its all getting more stringent.

If your are in it just for the sales then I would suggest developing your own parking/sales page and using searchfeed or miva for the PPC ads.

Very dissapointing result this month, I have seen my revenue half of what it has been for the past year even with double the amount of names.

I guess its just another rise an fall in the domain industry, ironic as PPC spending has never been so high, someone somewhere is making the money, just not the honest domainers it would seem.. PPC, Parking Programs, Domainers its a symbiotic relationship or at least it should be.. however this Symbian is looking for a new Host..

Sorry Trafficz.. its been a great ride and I do wish you back on top, think I might try one of the underdogs for the rest of the year.

[Samuel]

A very thoughtful and factual thread about parking industry as of today.

I wish every sincere domainer read this thoroughly.

Thanks to all you contributors.

Sam

[Lizzy]

Dear valued TrafficZ clients,

As many of you have probably noticed by now, TrafficZ is currently experiencing some technical difficulties which have resulted in reduced CPC rates across the network. Our network engineers have identified most of the issues, which are primarily associated with new traffic routing algorithms, recently implemented at the request of our search engine partners to improve traffic quality. Specifically, we are seeing that a small portion of the visitors to TrafficZ landing pages are being improperly routed to our second tier partners, rather than our primary partner, Yahoo!, resulting in less relevant, lower-value clicks. We are working around the clock to get everything back to normal, and we expect full resolution shortly, at which point all traffic will be routed to its proper destination.

Now for the important part of this message... Rest assured that all TrafficZ clients will be fully and properly compensated for any decrease in revenue associated with this issue. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at support@TrafficZ.com.


Very truly yours,
the TrafficZ team
support@TrafficZ.com

[actnow]

I have been complaining about my cpc for weeks.

I did notice yesterday that my cpc is slightly coming back from being down
40+% for weeks.

[RepCentral]

I noticed something odd about a week ago but I guess it didn't trip the right alarm at TrafficZ.
All of my adult ads had some strange bland text that was keyword mistargeted.
Good to see that they figured the issue out.

I know that transitions to new systems can be painful at times. TrafficZ will recover and we'll all give them a try again on the next go around when sedo goofs.

[namestrands]

What happened to the compensation for last month? That appears to have not been added?

[Lizzy]

Dear valued TrafficZ clients,

Just to clarify... as promised, TrafficZ did compensate all clients for the minor service interruption in August. You may view this credit by clicking the “list payments” tab in your Domain Manager; there you will see a “Revenue Adjustment” credit on 8/31/2006. Please note that TrafficZ will also be crediting all affected accounts for the intermittent issues during the past week or so; you will see the credits in your Domain Manager prior to the next payment cycle. Again, we apologize for these issues and appreciate your patience and understanding.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at support@TrafficZ.com.


Very truly yours,
the TrafficZ team
support@TrafficZ.com