Is is possible to snag a quarter million hits the day after you register a domain name with no marketing budget?
Is it possible to get a quarter million hits from type-ins and referrals the day after you register a domain name?
The owner of canucksriot2011.com says that’s how much traffic he’s gotten, according to a report by The Tri-City News.
The site posts pictures of people involved in the Vancouver riots after the Canucks hockey team lost to Boston this week for the Stanley Cup. It is designed to identify the perpetrators and get justice for the massive costs (perhaps both physical costs and the damage to Vancouver’s reputation).
250,000 page views sure seems like a lot. But the paper used the term “hits”, which could include a hit for every photo posted on the site.
Still, in a city of this size and with the help of social media, the claim doesn’t seem too outrageous.
I’ve reached out to the owner to get details.
Snoopy says
If someone talks about “hits” either they don’t know much about measuring traffic or it is deliberately misleading. That could either be coming from the site owner or the journalist who wrote the story.
Andrew Allemann says
@ snoopy – typically the journalist 🙂
Adpals says
Maybe he has a cool digital counter at the bottom of the page that shows how many visits they’re getting.
Just so you know, I’m being sarcastic…
Jamie says
Stories like this help drive the numbers.:)
Unique photos, hot topic and a little link sharing and I can see a short traffic surge to the domain/site.
The problem.. what’s the point of all the traffic if you don’t cash in (not saying they didn’t, but nothing was brought up about that aspect).
VancouverRiots.com (reg yesterday) or VancouverRiotPictures.com (avail) would have been better domains though. 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
@ Jamie – not everyone creates web sites for profit, ya know…
Jamie says
@Andrew,
The smart ones do 🙂
Gnanes says
Site is getting database error. He should’ve got better hosting.
Andrew Allemann says
I got an email from the site owner…he said it was hits based on data from host’s server logs, so might not be page views. But he’s struggling to keep the site up thanks to worldwide attention.
Steve M says
Whoa nellie!
Could this be a(nother!) suuuuuuuper geo opportunity in the making?
You know: [geo]Riot/s.com?
With the end of the world just around the corner … just think of the possibilities!
ItalianDragon says
I saw the photos yesterday as Australian media were reporting it so it’s normal to get a huge number of visitors for a few days but then they’ll leave for the next story.
Jay @ SEO Domain Names says
That’s intense. Register a domain name and get a quarter million hits the next day following.
@Steve M – LOL. – If the end of the world were just around the corner, you are here talking about monetizing it. HAHA that’s hilarious if you ask me.
@ItalianDragon – yeah, it makes sense that they will leave for the next story. Just think though, if you could follow each story and have an ad or two on the actual page you could be getting millions of impressions with each story. Choosing the right domain name for your website could prove to be pretty profitable.
Nice article by the way.
bob says
This site will receive 250,000 average for one day
125,000 average for 2 days.
34,000 average for one week.
glaxxon says
It is possible. I myself have experimented with trends related sites and if you have an exact match name for the event with a little relevant content, you can get huge amount of traffic.
But yet again this is just short lived. The traffic will then go down slowly till its totally gone. So you need to monetize it in the right way & at the right time.
Ed says
light bulb moments. thanks for the post.