Dot Com Domains For Landers? (44)
This may sound insane.
But after playing cat and mouse with Google SB flags on my lander domains today: 'whatever.blue (5 months no flags!) Flag. ->
Dammit, I'll switch to my ready-made backup whatever.casa (45 minutes later flag) ->
Shit. Okay, let's try something I haven't had active on cloudflare yet whatever.fun (30 minutes flag) ->
Fuck. Assholes.
I'll use completelyunrelateddomainimnotusing.com ... no flags yet.
But as a side effect, I noticed the .com domain is wayyyyy faster for all my landers. Like, visually noticeable, not just dicking around in gtmetrix.
And it got me thinking. Well, .com are fucking expensive, no way I'm paying $8 a dot com domain to get flagged all the time.
But what about getting some cheap .com from godaddy or 1on1 and using those? They're like $0.99 a pop.
Obviously, those domain sellers are targeted towards renewing a year later and fucking you on the renewal fee.
But affiliate domains usually don't last nearly long enough to worry about that.
Any downsides to that? Anyone do exactly this?
Anyone confirm that .com are way fucking faster than shit-tier domains?
I've never used anything else than a .com or .net or .org for my LPs, so can't really confirm nor deny your theory about the premium ones loading faster, but would definitely love to hear from others who have experience with the less premium ones.
BTW: I've used the coupons from godaddy and other sale offers from other providers many times, then canceled them once the renewal was up... blackfriday is great for stocking some up 
Yes, but it will save you 100/150ms, so that's worth it when the rest is optimized
I go with .com because that is the best balance of speed/trust/international. .co is faster but more expensive.
Here is a benchmark:
https://bunnycdn.com/blog/is-your-fa...tld-benchmark/
If you want to investigate more, you can search for:
- top level domain latency
- tld performance benchmark
- gtld vs cctld
- gtld vs ntld
But be aware, you are going to end up in really geeky discussions on hackernews or similar :-)
And a good tool to test secondary level domains (the ones you buy)
https://www.dnsperf.com/
Ah hah!
Special thanks to @jeremie for being awesome as usual
I had an inkling about this, and it’s possible I even read about before. But never gave that much of a shit in the past because I wasn’t doing much pops/push where speed wasn’t of the essence.
Then when I did start doing pops, I was getting flagged constantly and just wanted the cheapest shot possible to burn through.
Now that things have (hopefully) stabilized, the pros of having a dot com at an affordable price outweighs the cheap shit.
I made some good use of godaddy in the earlier days of the internet, when men were men and godaddy hired female race car drivers to get half naked on their ads and went elephant hunting. But I stopped using them because of their renewal fees and... something else, I forget because it’s been so long.
If I’m simply using them for cheap, throwaway .com domains, are there any down sides?
Any other uber secret domain sellers that you super affiliates are using?
I usually just go with the cheap ones that are on sale, that still sounds good and are not super spammy like .xyz etc.
Yes, the money is made once the renewal hits, but I usually just let them expire and get new ones once they expire.
Usually I get new ones much earlier.
Don't know what do you run, but I have to say flags arequite rare for me, than they used to be.
Has to have something with verticals, scripts etc.
I also can't find reason why from technically point of view .com domains could be visibly faster than other ones.
I used many other before (but never .xyz) and never noticed any problems and visibly speed differences.
But from my begin of journey with paid traffic (damn, it's over 2 years already) I use .com domain and I NEVER had this domain flagged. In the same time I don't run POP traffic as you do, so maybe it's easier to get flag there.
The only one domain I get flagged was domain on Monetizer which contained word "hot". It's funny because it was just part of word "shots". I just randomly get this domain name in some generator.
And what is interesting Monetizer didn't approve me this domain on the beginning 
Because it contained banned word such "hot".
I don't know but maybe Google or whatever also have similar systems where there are some filters for words in domain? So anyway, I'd go with .com and safe words in the future, if I'd get my domain flagged.
I can imagine big guys with loads of ads and domains prefer cheap domains since they burn them like women burn candles. If you run on loads of domains I can imagine 8 euro vs 1 euro per domain is a big difference, hence they probably go for cheaper extentions. But these extensions will have a bad reputation too. Anyone serious and legit running stuff on domains, if it's FB, Google or Pops will always go for .com I can imagine. All other extensions raise eyebrows maybe. (ofcourse .co.uk, .nl, .be etc not - real geo extentions).
This bad reputation will maybe also influence speed, performance etc? I know can FB punish you on so many factors, most likely other traffic sources have similar methods/tools to validate and judge your funnel.
There is another option, that I am talking air and it doesn't make sense. 
Some ad-compliance tools (geoedge/adsecure/netcraft just examples) have a specific flag for that kind of extensions in their reports, so yes, like stickupkid said, it does certainly cause some issues on certain sources - if not issues, at least more suspicious approvers.
To @jaybot: if you c&p the LP to new domains, flags are likely to happen much faster. The same looking LP with different code will get flagged less, if at all, than the same looking LP everyone is ripping from spytools (confirmed by lots of A/B split tests with high volume of traffic).
Originally Posted by fjk87
Originally Posted by caravaggio
Yes, .com domains can resolve faster.
That´s why I only use .com for my tracking links.
For LPs I mostly use cheap domains because of getting flagged but even there I only use few specific domain endings where I have good experience.
There are other cheap domains where I also had more issues so I avoid them.
I never made a direct comparison between .com and others in terms of speed so can´t tell much about it but I also didn´t face real issues with my domains so far.
When I have good and higher volume campaigns running that bring in good profits I often use .com domains specific for these campaigns for some additional benefit.
For testing or running lower volume campaigns or low payouts I prefer cheap domains.
Changing some code can really help there.
Originally Posted by caravaggio
I used many other before (but never .xyz) and never noticed any problems and visibly speed differences.
But from my begin of journey with paid traffic (damn, it's over 2 years already) I use .com domain and I NEVER had this domain flagged. In the same time I don't run POP traffic as you do, so maybe it's easier to get flag there.
The only one domain I get flagged was domain on Monetizer which contained word "hot". It's funny because it was just part of word "shots". I just randomly get this domain name in some generator.
And what is interesting Monetizer didn't approve me this domain on the beginning
Because it contained banned word such "hot".I don't know but maybe Google or whatever also have similar systems where there are some filters for words in domain? So anyway, I'd go with .com and safe words in the future, if I'd get my domain flagged.
If you're running a popular or reputable one which gets looked up all the time, then it doesn't matter at all. But if it's some random lander an affiliate is pushing, it makes quite a big difference (yes, even in the same geo, as different providers will have different default dns lookups).
Anyway... looks like all the domain sellers only let you snag a dot com for $1 on the first domain at the moment.
Now, I could be a true affiliate and simply make up a bunch of new accounts to get the discount but, meh... too much effort to save so little
Originally Posted by jeremie
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
Originally Posted by caravaggio
- gTLD: generic TLD such as .com / .net / .org
- ccTLD: country code TLD such as .fr / .de / .ca
- nTLD: new TLD, where any one can apply to have his own extension, for an affordable USD 200,000 fee.
Some cities have their extension (.nyc / .paris / .budapest), some companies too (.amazon / .softbank). Google as the .app / .dev / .soy ...
And other extensions are for sale, such as the wonderful .horse or the funny .accountant (or .accountants if one is not enough). See the full list here: https://ntldstats.com/tld/
Each extension's owner must maintain top level domain root DNS servers that contain the updated list of all registered domains. The main difference is that these small nTLD extensions with a few thousands domains registered, usually only have the minimum number of servers required by ICANN, while the gTLD and ccTLD have much more servers that replicate the list all over the world, thus having a lower latency. The difference is not that much, but enough to be noticable. You can minimize that effect by increasing the DNS TTL which by default is 86400s, which, if you run lots of traffic in the same region, will lead the local providers to cache your domain in their DNS server.
Now, let's vote! What shall be @jaybot new tracker link?
1) tasty.pizza
2) little.horse
3) cheap.vodka
Originally Posted by jack_l
"The biggest shockers were the .info and .org domains that showed really poor performance especially in the 85 percentile range, despite being one of the oldest and well established top-level domains with millions of registered domains each. After some further investigation it appears 4 out of 6 of their nameservers are performing extremely poorly which is the reason for the poor results."
Originally Posted by jeremie
Originally Posted by jeremie
Fuck it, let's combine them all!
Holy shit. That's one expensive domain!
And I thought dot com was expensive
Originally Posted by jack_l
Originally Posted by jeremie
I think you could just upload the exact same lp on both the .org and .net version and then split them 50/50 in the tracker... would be interesting to see results... I'll let you know when/if I do it! I imagine the trust factor and speed factor would both affect it so is very interesting question...
how do you check if your domains have been flagged?
Originally Posted by blackbeard
Originally Posted by jaybot
I just checked on Sucuri and I see that my domain is also blocked but only by McAfee. Not sure if I should change it anyway? When you usually change it Jason?
The red warning screen is from Google Safe Browsing.
Nonetheless your domains can get flagged by other platforms as well.
Then you won't see the red screen but your campaigns could get rejected anyway.
Originally Posted by jack_l
// Measuring DNS lookup time
var pageNav = performance.getEntriesByType("navigation")[0];
var dnsTime = pageNav.domainLookupEnd - pageNav.domainLookupStart;
Originally Posted by caravaggio
But.
If you get a McAfee or Norton (or whatever) flag on your tracker domain, it's only a matter of time before Google flags it too. Then it's time to prepare your new tracker domain and start moving over.
Use virustotal. If there is anything flagging your domain, you better change the domain. Virustotal is pretty much included in every compliance service/check there is on the planet, so anything that has you flagged there will cause trouble, no matter if it's some crappy tiny anti virus service being included there or google safebrowsing flag.
Originally Posted by jaybot
But I already changed it ask you advised. It was easier than I thought. Actually I wanted to change it anyway to cover my tracks or whatever
Sometimes I think I should change domain regularly but maybe that's only my obsession.
It doesn´t matter what I do, after an hour or so my domain got flagged by Kaspersky.
In the end I just didn´t care about it because it had no real impact on my performance but it was strange that it was always (and only) Kaspersky that flagged my domain.
Quick question: What is SB?
Originally Posted by frenchies
https://safebrowsing.google.com/
Since we are talking about banning domains, is there any way to help prevent a tracker domain from being flagged?
A landing domain being flagged is much easier to deal with. But having a tracker domain flagged is a pain, you'll have to change each campaign link on the traffic source
Originally Posted by s3ks3k
In this case, you only need to change in the landings. A small python script that goes over your files and makes the switch and you are good
Originally Posted by jeremie
Sorry, I don't quite understand. Even if you go redirectless, you still have to replace the links individually on your traffic source right? The python script is only to replace the tracker url on the lander.
If you are going redirectless, you point your traffic source directly to the lander (not the tracker, which is why it is called redirectless/direct, because there is no redirection). Then, the tracker pixel on the lander registers the visit. If your lander's domain get flagged, you still have to updade the traffic source (only for the campaigns using this domain) + the campaigns inside the tracker.
But if you tracker's domain get flagged, you only have to replace the lander domain on your landers, which is easier to automate.
Hmm, I'm not sure if going redirectless can actually solve the pain point - which is having to change the URL the traffic source is pointing to. If i have 100's of campaigns across different traffic sources, once a domain is flagged (no matter if its redirect/no-redirect) it will still be a pain to do.
Currently in my
Originally Posted by s3ks3k
Originally Posted by jeremie
Then it would probably be easier to just deal with one domain to replace.
I have done what you're thinking of doing – I bought a few hundred (500-600) mostly .com domains in large chunks quite a few yearz ago for...uugh...reasons & purposes.
$0.99 a pop, some even cheaper. No downsides as far as I remember.
Just don't forget to disable auto-renew.
Also, definitely disable GoDaddy / whatever provider email notifications – not nice when cheaptastyhorselittlepizza.com is about to expire!!1 times a few hundred.
Just checked my domains and according to sucuri my tracker domain is blacklisted by McAfee...
I have observed a decrease in my LP CTR, but if this was related to this, my "Click loss" would have also increased right?
Originally Posted by roiter123
You can appeal to get it removed from McAfee BL. See here:
https://community.mcafee.com/t5/Cons...ge/ta-p/548238
As far as clickloss is concerned, it depends how McAfee work. I am not going to install it just to test. But looking at the following test video, it looks like to me that the request to the server is still sent, and McAfee blocks when the page is about to be displayed (you can see in the browser top bar that the title is changing during 1/2 sec before McAfee is triggered, which means the page has been requested by browser and received). In the case of a tracking domain, that means that the page visit would be counted by the server (because it has received the request), so you would not see clickloss.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
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