Inflated Afternic Stats? What Is Being Done About It? Don't Get Ripped Off Like Me!

[WeBuyThe.Com]

I bought a name from Afternic after monitoring traffic for a week or so.
The traffic seemed to be steady - about 300 UV/day. The day after I completed
escrow and transferred the name into my account the traffic dropped to 2 UV/Day.

When I questioned why traffic dropped to zero I got these responses:

Seller: Hi, that is because i have deleted that domain's link from my other websites.

Afternic staff: "There is a chance that the traffic went down because the
seller may have been purchasing traffic"

So here we have a seller that has admitted to manipulating traffic
and a rep at Afternic that seems to condone it.

Here is Afternic's traffic policy: http://www.afternic.com/trafDisc.php

Important Notice Concerning Traffic
Sellers are not allowed to purchase traffic to parked domains, redirect
other domains to their parked domains, nor take any other action to temporarily
inflate their traffic statistics. However, Afternic cannot always detect such
activity and cannot guarantee or warranty in any way the accuracy of the reported traffic.
If you are aware of an Afternic listing with manipulated traffic stats, please let us know.

1. Does afternic not care that buyers, who rely on stats, are being cheated?

2. Why do they ask us to notify them of manipulated traffic if they aren't going to do anything about it?

3. How can they expect anyone to trust stats on parked names if they allow this activity to re-occur?

[jasdon11]

Sorry to hear about that - why don't you name and shame the seller?

My Afternic renewal is coming up - I won't be taking it.

[snicksnack]

Hi,

have a look at sedo's "top-traffic" domains. I think it is a list of the domains with the most "fake" traffic.

[denny007]

Yeah there is some Turkish group (or maybe just one guy) doing this on Afternic. Basically they are NOT breaking TOS, they do not drive traffic directly to the domain, the domains are linked from their other sites. After some time they delete links to domain they sold and traffic dismiss. Got burned $550 from them. One of them is even member here - Siber

[stojanfl]

Do they send the traffic through links or direct type-in traffic is being simulated ?

stojan

[WhoDatDog]

Type-In traffic never drops off. If I ever buy a name because of high traffic it will have to be a generic name with type-ins. If the name was any good he wouldn't be selling.

If you think you are going to get the best of a deal with someone who has tons more information than you do then you are mistaken. The informed seller always crushes the less-informed buyer.....this happens with most every product in the world.

This story plays out over and over.....just like appraisal scams. Over 90 percent of the numbers associated with traffic names and appraisals have no basis in fact....and are unreliable.

[denny007]

Do they send the traffic through links or direct type-in traffic is being simulated ?
stojan

They have some very busy adult sites with free celebrity/adult photos and they put links on these sites, which create quite a traffic for those Afternic listed sites.