How to make sure you're getting ALL traffic directed at a domain...

[Edwin]

You need to do ALL the following before being able to determine how much traffic a domain is getting:-

A) Make sure the domain name resolves to a tracking system that counts all visitors (not just US visitors, for example)

B) Make sure that the domain name alone resolves i.e. domain.com will resolve

C) Make sure that www.domain.com resolves

D) Make sure that "wildcard DNS" is turned on for the domain. In other words, that ANYTHING.domain.com resolves. Depending on what it was formerly used for, 95%+ of the traffic to a domain that used to be a site may be going to subdomains and not to the root domain.com!!

E) Make sure that you have a suitable 404 error trapping page in other words if a visitor tries to go to http://www.domain.com/some_missing_page.htm that you actually notice the visitor, count them and do something useful with them!

 

[TrafficMonsterRRR]

Item E) is one even some seasoned domain owners forget!

Pay attention to it! Often times over 1/3 of your traffic may be looking for missing pages (remember, someone else may have owned your high traffic domain before you did). A previsouly popular page may have been an obsolete combo of words, directories and scripts.