The one thing I lack is the finer details with the amount of journals and sites I peruse daily. In other words, I forget where I saw it, what magazine, what website, who said it etc.

That leads me to apologizing to whomever the writer was the recently posed and responded to the question, “why stats?”

I have to agree with this to the nth degree.

A while back I had cautioned many not to rely on stats alone.

It would have been foolish to think if Candy.com and Toys.com sales were determined by their “stats”.

Yet it seems many domainers are so anal about the stats that they literally want to set the course of their live sand budgets based solely on stats.

This is very risky if all you plan on doing is buying the domain and parking. Sure, you want to know the stats so you can see what revenue you can expect.

The issue here is most stats can be faked and manipulated to entice someone to base their sole discretion on the stats alone.

The only stats I  know of that can not be manipulated and faked is age and website history. I am sure I am forgetting some other key points that I focus in on. However, I want to keep your attention on everything else used to portray stats.

Think about it a minute. If you had one domain that you wanted to sell real bad and wanted to pump it up, this could easily be done simply by redirecting (forwarding) domains.

Within days we’ll see incredible traffic, link numbers, possibly a high CTR, mediocre PPC, Page ranking, Alexa back links and back links in general – all of these are manipulated values and prone to fakery.

Obviously there are many types of domainers and I am not sure where I fit in.

I wrote a post the other day entitled The Art of Domaining: Don’t Say a Word that I apply to my domain choices. Basically, my philosophy is does the name stand on its own? Sometimes stats can be a crutch. It is as if the name needs a supporting cast to be thrust in the limelight and given consideration. Stats are in fact the supporting case in domaining.

Naturally the names like Candy or Toys need no supporting casts. That is how I look at a domain. Explaining what it means or providing a definition is not terribly wrong because many times the name may be new technology or terminology (CarbonFootstep dot com) or the meaning of the word or term does not translate well into all languages (Gaadi dot mobi). These I would consider adding clarification. If someone else is familiar with these terms or words then there is immediate recognition. The names would not need any clarification or a supporting cast.

My view certainly is going to differ from the many other techniques folks use. But, come on…when you see a domain less than one year old with traffic of 20K a day, PR5, 30.9K Google and Yahoo backlinks, and Alexa back links at 16.5, isn’t that a little suspicious? Would you not then aske questions?

Okay, so those stats suddenly become important to prove to yourself or someone else that the stats may be fake. Get back to the basics. Think a minute. What drew you attention to the name to begin with? What was the first thing you thought of when you saw that one particular domain amongst all the others listed?

It was the word(s) itself. When you saw the domain name you were immediately interested and had to look into it. It was the word(s) that captured your attention. Now you want to know stats. Why? Because stats  suddenly become more import than the word(s) itself. It is almost as if you have to justify making a purchasing decision based on stats that are so easily manipulated.

How many times have you purchased a name to have those glorious stats drop of all the charts? How many times have you read about someone’s dissatisfaction (after the purchase) wanting to know happened to the traffic, PR rank, and backlinks?

If someone is so keen into stats then this tells me they want to do the same thing the current owner is doing – parking.

I want to know and rationalize to myself what can this word do in regards to building a site, is it marketable, is it brandable, and would someone want to visit the site. To me, I am the end user and every name I buy is a potential site. I do my best to focus in on words or phrases that make sense, are keyword rich, and have inherint interest to others.

I want to think that if I buy this name will I want to live with it. Essentially, living with it means, Hey buddy. You bought it. Now you are stuck with it. Do I want to be stuck with it or have it stick to me?

If I can answer yes and have a concept what a site would actually do and what a site would look like then there is a good chance I would buy it.

I am the end user. Hopefully someone else will see themselves as the end user based purely on the word(s) itself.

Not once have I ever sold a domain to an end user and has “stats” ever been brought up. Personally, I would much rather have an unsolicited email in my inbox from an inquire to buy a domain than receive an offer from Sedo. Chances are if the domain offer is from Sedo or any other listing/auction/parking service then it is another domainer making the offer.

Those unsolicited emails are sweet music to my ears.

And hopefully generate a sale or two in the long run.