If you hadn’t heard yet, I did a defensive domain registration of CaitlynJenner.com on June 1, 2015 which I explained why I did it here. I am still in the process of getting a hold of somebody from the team to transfer the domains, but it’s in the works with several emails sent and tweets from me to them. For some reason it is pretty hard to find representatives and they have yet to reply to any of my contacts.
Somebody in the comments in my why I registered it article asked me what kind of traffic the domain name was getting, but I simply did a redirect of the two domains to the verified Twitter account 20 minutes after the Twitter account went live and didn’t track the traffic numbers in any way. I admit, it would have been interesting to see the numbers. I could have set up the redirect “server side” using a hosting account and tracked traffic that way, but I used the in-house method that GoDaddy offers. I am not aware of a way or if GoDaddy tracks that (traffic) or not for redirecting domain names. I’m sure they have a way.
One thing I can see numbers of is whois searches done on specific domain names in my account. It’s a neat little feature that GoDaddy offers and the reality is.. every time I look at the numbers, I get excited but the numbers really mean very little IMO. I can never figure out “why” some domains see a spike one day or week or month and other months they have very few searches. The reality, for a lot of different reasons the domains see spikes.
There are several things that come into play. If a domain is nearing expire date, you will see a spike in whois searches. Newly registered domains will get a 10-15 spike within a day or two of registering the domains but how do you think those “web development” spamming emails come in? My developed domains always have the highest numbers in general, with DotWeekly averaging about 100-150 whois searches a month. Pattern domains also have higher than general domains and one word generic .com domains always seem to rank near the top of the list.
Well, here are the numbers for the CaitlynJenner.com domain that was registered on June 1, 2015 and today is early morning on June 6, 2015 and the similar domain CaitJenner.com:
Total whois searches for the domain name CaitlynJenner.com: 331 in 5 days which averages out to 61 per day
15 whois searches yesterday total
The big spike would have been on the day it was registered (the report doesn’t break it down by the day), 6/1/2015 and 6/2/2015 with several hundred whois searches on the domain.
How many times I have been contacted to sell it? 3. Twice by phone, once by email, which all 3 times I told the interested parties the domain is not for sale!
Total whois searches for the domain name CaitJenner.com: 56 in 5 days which averages out to 11.2 per day
3 whois searches yesterday
How many times I have been contacted to sell it? 0
I thought the numbers were interesting, so I thought I would share. I would suspect the vast majority of whois searches were done by domainers simply looking to see who registered it, simply out of curiosity. I think it also shows the EMD is the most searched, so “similar” domains just do not have the interest as the EMD. The 331 number didn’t shock me by any means but I didn’t really know what to expect. Remember, these are just whois searches that can be done any place but cue GoDaddy as the domain name is registered with them.
“Remember, these are just whois searches that can be done any place but cue GoDaddy as the domain name is registered with them.”
I thought those numbers were only whois lookups through who.godaddy and queries through DomainTools, who.is etc… wouldn’t count. Just looking for clarification, are all whois searches from any site included in those reports?
@Mike,
From my understanding, a whois look up at lets say DomainTools has to cue whois.godaddy to get the data, as it’s the registrars job to keep the owners information. Since the registrar is the only one with the customers data, all whois searches for a registered domain would have to go through the registrars whois. So this would result in any whois service searches being recorded at GoDaddy in this case.
Surprised you didn’t simply park the name somewhere other than Godaddy to see the traffic numbers which would have been interesting but likely fading away by now. You could have also forwarded the domain to a page on dotweekly and see the traffic reflected in your own stats reports.
@David,
I didn’t register the domain for me, or to make money on it, I registered it to keep it out of the hands of somebody who likely would have done something not so nice with it. My full intent from the start was to register it and give it to Caitlyn, as I mentioned in the the Why I registered CaitlynJenner.com article.
I m trying to register a domain name which whois tells me expired yesterday. It s registered to Namesbeyond who hold 640 other domains. How would I go about getting this domain?