Huge number of websites barely visited, report finds The Internet, famously, has a long tail, but a new analysis has revealed another characteristic of this vast slew of obscure websites. Huge numbers of them are never visited. Analysing visits to several million websites during the last quarter of 2009 for its State of the Web report (registration required), cloud security startup Zscaler created a Hilbert curve-generated ‘heatmap’ of active and inactive IPv4 sites from real customer data.

Due to my other Internet activities I had relegated my hundreds
of domain names to a low priority and seldom gave them much
thought. The exception was for some minor research for topics to
create websites for a small number of domains. Fortunately, a
registrar who caters to those with many domains managed most of
my names. Part of their service is providing a number of
statistics on each domain name. In addition, the names (URL’s)
host a directory website where I can make a few cents (if I’m
lucky) if visitors to the website click any of the links.

A few days ago I decided to take a quick look at some of those
domains. I had a new idea for a few possible websites and wanted
to see which ones were getting enough hits to warrant further
consideration. As I created a report showing traffic on some of
my domains I was amazed to find one of my domain names had a lot
of impressions (website page views). Where normally that name
had a few impressions each day it had several hundred that day
along with several dollars of profit where there usually was
none.

That was the first time I had noticed such a drastic change in
one of my domains in such a short period of time – one day. The
previous day there were the normal few views and no money to be
made from that domain name. I asked my co-worker if he heard
anything in the news involving video games since the domain name
showing unusual traffic was related to video games. He said no,
he had heard nothing. Since he was a thirty-something and was
usually aware of such things I first thought it might be just an
aberration, but it was unsettling nevertheless. As a stock and
options investor, I am very familiar with the effects of news on
those financial instruments so news was the first thing to cross
my mind that might change the activity on a domain name so fast.

Later that evening, right before turning off my home computer, I
thought of that domain name again and took a quick glance at its
statistics. Wow! There were a lot more impressions and many more
dollars showed as profit off that surge of hits.

About that time my son, nineteen and an ex video game fanatic,
who was in Korea (I was in Southern California), came on and
sent me a message via Instant Messenger. We conversed a short
while then I asked him if he had heard any news about Xbox
because by then I was suspecting something big must have been
said in the news related to that specific video game platform.
My domain name XboxStars.com was going wild with hits, compared
to its usual half-dozen hits or less each day. He said, “Dad, I
think they announced they are coming out with an Xbox 2″.
Immediately I knew that was why my domain was getting so much
action. It was reacting to the news! Maybe even over reacting.
The news had probably been released that day. I never really saw
the actual news related to that announcement, but I later
checked some of the video game sites and their forums and there
was lots of talk about Microsoft’s announcement related to Xbox2
to have some games created in Japan and speculation that some
version or prototype of Xbox 2 would be at a well known game
convention the next week.

I followed the impressions and clicks for the next few days and
sure enough, the action had it been graphed, would have looked
like a huge peak, rising very high and then falling like a rock
in just a matter of a few days. Until that day I had never
realized a domain name could react to news. Here is how it
played out.

Date Domain Impressions Earnings 02-25-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.00
02-26-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.00 02-27-05 XboxStars.com 4 $00.00
02-28-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.00 03-01-05 XboxStars.com 261
$97.77 03-02-05 XboxStars.com 483 $30.33 03-03-05 XboxStars.com
404 $28.15 03-04-05 XboxStars.com 569 $22.05 03-05-05
XboxStars.com 2 $01.22 03-06-05 XboxStars.com 4 $00.00 03-07-05
XboxStars.com 4 $00.00 (as of 03-07-05 9:00 am)

I had noticed some domain names had ups and downs before, but
never associated that with potential news affecting the domain
name. One especially, but with not so pronounced activity, I did
a cursory check on, and found out the name is related to
football. Although initially the name Insidend.com didn’t sound
related to a sport I guess the “inside” and the “end” could be
construed as being related to inside linebacker and end zone,
defensive end, or tight end, etc. That’s a far stretch, but then
again football is an extremely popular sport and is often in the
news during football season. Whether or not football is
affecting this particular domain remains to be seen, but now
I’ll be on the lookout for such possibilities when I register
new domain names or see huge changes in activity on any of my
domain names.

I had better do some follow up research on other domain names
that seem to have a lot of fluctuating activity. Take a hint
from my experience. If you have any domain names that could be
subject to reaction to news events you may be able to plan a
strategy to capitalize on certain events depending on the
circumstances. This could be especially profitable if you are
selling something on a website with such a name.