A month ago I ran a small advertising experiment where I displayed a non-hyperlinked URL. In order for someone to visit the particular site they have to enter the URL by hand (or copy & paste it.)

I am left with some interesting statistics. Out of 4,092 visits, 3,870 were direct visits. The user typed the domain name in the browser’s location field. However, 116 of them, or 2.83%, arrived from search engines. All search engine visits are for the site’s full domain names. This includes domain.com, www.domain.com, and http://www.domain.com, along with a few typos.

Worthless info?

Here is another one. “webpublishingblog.com” and variations only show up twice for the past month’s stats. However, a bunch of other “domain.com”’s are scattered throughout the search traffic data. One of the top search keywords for WebPublishingBlog is plentyoffish.com (due to an interview I did with owner Markus Frind back when no one believed he had a real web site.)

You can draw a few conclusions from this. First, domain names matter a lot whether you are doing paid search or organic search engine optimization. You want your users to find you for your own domain name, and your competitions!

Second, there is a war going on with direct navigation. Toolbars are driving large volumes of visitors who, rather than use the browser’s navigation field, are using the toolbar’s search field. The two largest players here are Google and Ask.com. Considering Ask.com gets their PPC feed from Google, this is all about Google. Microsoft has a home field advantage when it comes to typos, directing Internet Explorer typo traffic straight to their search engine.

Google has a balancing act to play. Google must make as much money as possible while delivering the most relevant results so that one day they themselves don’t become irrelevant. Sometimes they get it wrong.

Finally, this puts domain name parkers at a massive disadvantage. Why? Because they are missing out on all that free organic traffic. When someone goes to Google and types in shoe.com shoes.com ends up being the winner. Domainers are figuring this out (what took them so long?) Be prepared for a lot more search competition when yourkeyword.com swaps PPC parking for content.

How do you visitors find you? No matter what type of web business you are in, the search engines are cashing in on a chunk of your business. You can’t escape it.