- Impact
- 21
I am not very active in domain forums, but I thought it important to write about my recent experience with Bodis, as it may be relevant to other domain investors (and particularly ones that have the same kind of domains we do) when considering Bodis for parking.
My company has been investing in domains since 2014, mostly new gTLDs. We own a large portfolio of them, mostly the kind where the left-of-the-dot keyword and the right-of-the-dot extension together form meaningful keywords (examples: military.equipment, nurse.shoes, snow.shoes, etc.).
We have been using Bodis since 2017, directing hundreds of our domains there. About two weeks ago, I noticed that I could no longer log in to our Bodis account. I opened a support chat and spoke with Troy, who told me that Bodis decided to close our account because one of our domains received a one-day spike in traffic, which Bodis interpreted as us “actively promoting and/or driving referral traffic to our ads”.
Anyone who has invested in our kind of new gTLD left+right “keyword” domains probably knows that some of them occasionally receive temporary spikes in traffic, which are in most cases caused by a combination of the proximity of the dot to the space bar in smartphones, together with most social networks converting these types of mistakes to links. So, for example, if a Twitter user with many followers makes this kind of mistake, the corresponding domain will probably receive a big temporary boost in visits. Here is a random example from Twitter I found by doing a quick search: (in this example, if this particular user had a lot of followers, the corresponding domain would have most likely received a 1-2 day boost in traffic).
I explained to Troy that some of our domains are prone to this kind of spikes, and he agreed to escalate the issue for reconsideration. In the meantime, I tried to search Twitter and other social networks to see if I could find the source of this particular spike, but I was not successful.
Two weeks later, Troy replied that after review, their decision stands. They would not even consider reactivating the account without the domain that had the spike.
Here is what I think Bodis did wrong:
My company has been investing in domains since 2014, mostly new gTLDs. We own a large portfolio of them, mostly the kind where the left-of-the-dot keyword and the right-of-the-dot extension together form meaningful keywords (examples: military.equipment, nurse.shoes, snow.shoes, etc.).
We have been using Bodis since 2017, directing hundreds of our domains there. About two weeks ago, I noticed that I could no longer log in to our Bodis account. I opened a support chat and spoke with Troy, who told me that Bodis decided to close our account because one of our domains received a one-day spike in traffic, which Bodis interpreted as us “actively promoting and/or driving referral traffic to our ads”.
Anyone who has invested in our kind of new gTLD left+right “keyword” domains probably knows that some of them occasionally receive temporary spikes in traffic, which are in most cases caused by a combination of the proximity of the dot to the space bar in smartphones, together with most social networks converting these types of mistakes to links. So, for example, if a Twitter user with many followers makes this kind of mistake, the corresponding domain will probably receive a big temporary boost in visits. Here is a random example from Twitter I found by doing a quick search: (in this example, if this particular user had a lot of followers, the corresponding domain would have most likely received a 1-2 day boost in traffic).
I explained to Troy that some of our domains are prone to this kind of spikes, and he agreed to escalate the issue for reconsideration. In the meantime, I tried to search Twitter and other social networks to see if I could find the source of this particular spike, but I was not successful.
Two weeks later, Troy replied that after review, their decision stands. They would not even consider reactivating the account without the domain that had the spike.
Here is what I think Bodis did wrong:
- Assuming that we were actively promoting and driving traffic to their ads (which we would never do), and then canceling the account without even speaking to us first.
- Not even notifying us that the account was canceled. For who knows how long, hundreds of our domains resolved to a Bodis error page. We may have missed potential leads.