Most in the domain industry know the trickle-down effect has been definitely felt as domain name parking revenues have fallen since last year by about the same percentage, if not more. Talking to parking companies lately there are good indications we’ve hit bottom and things will now start to get better. This is to be seen.
Analytics data indicate that the share of search traffic coming from paid listings is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic. In the four weeks to May 9, 2018, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2018 – representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
– Robertson Davies, “A Voice from the Attic”, 1960
As happened with many other industries, it also seems to be that the future may be similar to the past, with a little change. Once it was TV, now it is the web. Once it was radio, now it is podcasting. Once it was CD’s, now it is MP3’s. Once it was a Walkman, now it is the iPod. The content/concept are similar or identical, the medium and delivery are changing. When the TV and the web came together, consumers are able to surf channels by visiting different web addresses. So in the future, would that make domain names “surfing channels” on your TV screen? While it may be the case, how good channels are is largely Dependant on their content. If you surf your tv channels today, you will see it doesn’t really matter if you landed on one channel or another, the next one is a click away and if the content isn’t there, then you are quickly gone. Same is the case with developed domain names and websites.