Direct Navigation Survey: Do You "Do It"?

Under what circumstances? For what topics? How often? What results?

[Webwork]

A member has asked a wonderfully straightforward question in another recent thread [webmasterworld.com]:

I have *never* typed in keyword.com or keywordkeyword.com and expected what I want to come up. I just can't imagine who does, and for what kind of stuff. Can you shed some light?

It IS a compelling question. For all we talk about direct navigation I don't recall ever seeing a detailed study of who is doing it, when they're doing it, why they are, etc.

So, let's do a study! Let's all be direct navigation scientists and lab rats! :0)

In the spirit of Alfred Kinsey allow me to ask: When do you "do it"? Why do you do it? With what subjects have you done it? What was your experience?

Me?

I do it all the time. I've done it with multiple partners. (IE 7.0, Firefox, Opera, Safari; Oh yeah! Like that Safari!)

I do it when I'm in the mood . . . to travel (I'll search City+Hotels.com, City+Tours.com) . . or if shopping for niche products . . or when looking for information on a specific topic . . etc.

It's only a small percentage of my total "search activity" BUT I'm most inclined to do it - to go direct - when I'm in the hunt for something, narrowing down my choices, close to making a purchase and, finally, looking to perform a "search engine validation". In other words, I double check the SERPs by typing in logical domain names for websites that are on topic.

Ironically, now that I pause to reflect on my own behavior and experience, it's obvious that my own behvaior comports with and supports the anecdotal reports that direct navigation traffic tends to convert better. I'm a poster child for why it works.

When do you do employ direct navigation?

[edited by: Webwork at 10:05 am (utc) on May 19, 2007]

[vincevincevince]

I only ever use direct navigation when I already know the domain name I want. I used to use it to check for domain names but realised it wasn't a good method for doing that.

[callivert]

Several reasons:
1) already know the URL of a site I like (e.g., webmasterworld)
2) have been told URL by someone else (e.g., check out your free credit report at...)
3) want to know about a particular brand or trademarked product, and for speed, skip search. major brands are almost always brand.com
4) major organizations are always organization.org
5) checking for domain availability
6) reasonable guess at existence of a site e.g., keyword.com, especially if the keyword is tech related, e.g., "programming language".com or .org
...or is an important search word, e.g., "common but serious illness".com
7) for the heck of it. and actually, a friend worked in an office where they would play a game of finding the most bizarre url that actually had a site on it. the only rule was: direct navigation only.

I think i'm more likely to direct navigate when I get a sense that search won't get me where I want to go quickly enough.
Caveat: I should add that I've been online since there was an online to be on. My surfing habits were formed when you couldn't jump all over the place with google (and when it was still called surfing), so my habits might not translate to new internet users.

[jtara]

Only when I already know (or think I know) the domain name in question - previous user, saw it in a magazine article or newspaper, etc.

Further, I consciously avoid generic names when they come up in search results, as my experience has been that they are generally of low quality, and won't contain what I am looking for.

[callivert]

probably off-topic, but I don't consider parked domains to be bad, or spam, or in any way comparable to MFA or any variant of spam. Here are my reasons:
1) parked domains, by definition, don't attract visitors through advertising, links, or any other means. In fact, it's a violation of parking TOS to create links to a parked domain. Instead, they just sit there silently and hope that someone goes directly to them
2) if you type in a domain and get a parked page, well, that's the risk you take when you direct navigate.
3) And if there's no parked page you just get thrown back to the search engine of your choice, and therefore the advertising network of your choice.
These thoughts don't apply to typosquatting or name- or trademark squatting.
But generic parked pages = harmless.

[Maccke]

I do it once in a while, but mostly when doing some deep coverage of a topic.

[scraptoft]

I can only recall doing it once.

I joined the local gym and wanted more information on my workouts.
I typed in a very common keyphrase (with .com) for that subject and have been a returning visitor to this website ever since.

I now have a huge interest in this subject and wish I owned the domain as it's type in potential is huge - IMHO - obviously because I directly typed it into my browser.

[mikeyb]

Same as for vincevincevince and jtara, only if I already know the domain name, either from previous use, or from seeing somewhere.

I don't ever recall simply typing in a domain name when looking for something.

I will use a search engine, then usually bookmark the site if it will be of use in the future... then will promptly forget I've bookmarked it so search again!