Since the purchase and July 1, 2009 launch of the Candy.com website, the domain name has been gaining ground to a Page 1 listing in the major search engines for the popular search term Candy.
On Aug 12th 2009 I had reported that Candy.com ranked #2 on Page #4 for the search term candy. As of today, Sept 14, 2009 Candy.com continues to climb in the natural search engine rankings for the search term candy. On Google.com, Candy.com now ranks on Page 2, in the 7th spot!
A 2 page jump is a big deal IMO and I’m sure the search engine traffic is increasing as well.
I did a check on Bing.com as it keeps getting more popular and Candy.com holds a Page #2 ranking in the 5th spot.
A search on Yahoo did not show Candy.com at all for the search term candy and I was several pages in (5+).
Google IMO would be my main focus as they hold the highest search volume and Candy.com is making SEO and the domain name Candy.com work for them! A page #1 rank is not all that far off IMO, for a very popular search term.
As the rankings keep getting better, traffic will continue to increase which will also help retain the SERP.
Although they did spend $3 Million + 2% royalties to the past domain name owner, the generic domain name is showing it’s value in Search Engines and the traffic the site is now getting.
According to Compete.com, Candy.com for the month of July had over 64,000 monthly unique visitors. I would say a majority of this traffic came from the press release of the domain Sale and not all new candy shoppers.
The candy site took a big hit in traffic in the month of Aug, with nearly a 50% decrease in traffic down to 32,000 again according to Compete.
Even at 32K monthly unique visitors, that is nearly 30% more traffic then when the domain name was simply parked and getting around 9.7K monthly unique visitors. Again, I only see this traffic going up as the site ranks better in search engines and the Candy.com brand keeps spreading.
It has been fun to watch the power of this generic keyword domain in action and keep gaining ground on the "brandable" domain names that currently rank ahead of it.
Tia Wood
It also helps that they affiliate with Commission Junction. A few of my clients are affiliated with them through CJ.
Rick Schwartz
“Even at 32K monthly unique visitors, that is nearly 30% more traffic then when the domain name was simply parked and getting around 9.7K monthly unique visitors.”
Not sure where you get this number but it is not accurate at all. The domain was getting 24k monthly Unique Visitors in May and that is not exactly prime time. That’s the problem with a lot of tools out there, They just don’t give accurate information.
Jamie Zoch
@Rick,
Thank you for clearing up the numbers. I was basing the numbers off of what Compete.com shows.
Ross
@Jamie
Yeah compete is hit or miss with getting the numbers right. I had been climbing for a while on compete and the stats were pretty much right on. I had one of my biggest months for a site so i decided to check it on compete.com to show advertisers, it had actually put the visitors at half of what was the real number.
Tim Davids
I’d love to know how many orders they’re getting and ave size…maybe they will go public someday and we can all buy a share and debate the reports