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Anybody have this effect??
Thank you!
We had a discussion on this a few weeks back. The balance of opinion was that the vast difference of the user groups of Google web site and AOL web site could explain it.
In our case where we have business to business sites, I put it down to the AOL profile being predominantly consumers and home users, less tech savvy, and probably at lower job levels/less education. (sorry the latter is possible a bad stereotype!)
Do people with shopping sites do better as a percentage from AOL?
Also, although AOL has a vast user base, who of that base actually use the search, (seeing google.com is search only, and AOL is a portal) or are they more likely to use what is "spoonfed" to them on the various AOL/entry pages.
Singular keywords seem to be more prominently clicked through here at AOL but I suspect the lesser traffic is a result of Google's search superiority.
Onya
Woz
1) AOL is the #1 visitor domain in my server logs.
2) I get quite a few questions and other e-mails from AOL users.
I can't help wondering if every AOL user with an I.Q. higher than 50 isn't just using Google for search.
Also home education (consumers) but like you not many here either.
Keyword phrase against keyword phrase Aol actually can be stronger. But there are a lot less phrases searched for on Aol. It appears that the Aol user is less savy as to how they do their searches. They use the big "Keywords" that are more competitive. Where as Google users seem to be more specific.
Aol users "Green Widgets"
Google users " Green Widgets red trim"
Just a thought ..
I see NO shortage of hits to my sites from AOL IPs
I haven't run with hostnamelookups enabled for a while; does anyone who does feel like sharing some percentages?
I recently did a poll of relatives and aquaintances who use AOL (only about 40 people, but it'll probably be indicative of the whole sort of accurately) and asked them what percentage of their time connected to AOL did they spend using "the Internet." All but 4 of them said 100%. When asked what their five most frequented areas of "the Internet" were, they were as follows:
1) E-mail
2) The (Insert Topic) Discussion Board / Chat
3) (Insert Name) News Site (+/- 85% of which have an AOL dedicated presence, so I'd assume they were on the AOL version of the site, not the web version).
4) Finding new sites
5) Stocks/Sports/Weather
Now, as you can see, #4 is the ONLY item on the list above where these AOL users actually leaves the AOL service and hits the web. And even then, I'm not certain how many results actually put them into a web browser window.
Google users are on the web, so you'll get more traffic from them. AOL users don't get to the web unless there's absolutely nothing relevant in AOL. It's a numbers game, really.
G.
The original reason no longer really applies - loads of international points of presence - so I guess I stay with them out of habit.
But I can't remember the last time I used AOL's search. I have five browsers running most of the time (Moz, Op, IE, NN, Lynx), and they all have at least one Google SERP window open.
I don't know if I'm typical of AOL users in general, but most of the ones I know use a proper installation of IE (not the one on the AOL CD) and search with Google.
When using a browser integrated with the AOL client software, AOL members make web requests through a set of caching proxy servers. If the servers have a current copy of a requested web object, it will be served to the member directly from the cache server instead of the request going over the Internet to the origin web server. AOL will cache most types of web objects ...
With a standard version of IE on any modern Windows system, no need to use AOL for web browsing.
That'd get you a rough ratio of AOL users using the "built-in" browser vs third-party ones.
I'm near the top for an important single keyword (actually a European city name) and also for several major keyphrases, so--if your hypothesis is correct--I should be getting more AOL traffic than I do on those search terms.
FWIW, my Google-to-AOL referral ratio is about 20:1.
Turns out that I get around 8% of SE referrals from AOL now. Beforehand, I was getting 90%ish from G and Yahoo, now the 90% comprises of those two and AOL.
At a guess, those who use AOL previously switched over to Google for searches, and now use AOL. Just a guess.
And hardly 1 visitor per 2-3 days from AOL. What is the problem??
Your page is cached.
-If you track by using an image it won't be logged, the image is cached.
-If you track a script..it won't be logged..the output will be cached
- If you track by looking at the raw logs...nothing will show up, everything is cached.
There is no good way of tracking referrals from AOL as far as I know.
sounds like a good explanation (and I could do with a good explanation because I've been disappointed too) but there are folks here who are reporting a 10-fold increase - surely aol cache system should affect all sites in the same way? no?
Since the switch from Inktomi ?..that would indicate Google does a better job at indexing a large part of the web then Inktomi I think.
I know I have many more pages indexed by Google then by Inktomi..so my traffic increased at the change.
i meant the recent use of google results by AOL - i.e. since this happened, some folks have suggested a 10-fold increase in AOL derived traffic.
Sometimes AOL is above Yahoo, sometimes Yahoo is above AOL. But Google is always on top. :)
I haven't read the suggestions you mention so maybe I misunderstand something.
Because Google has a larger database then Inktomi it is likely that many sites now have more pages indexed, that could explain a possible general trend in traffic increases.
Next to that an individual site can of course simply have had better positions in Google then in Inktomi.
Cached items do have a refresh time (& policy), so you log part of the traffic..but only a small part. Still this number will increase when you get more hits of course, just much slower then if you would track real hits.
