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In the previous two articles on clicks we've explored some of the problems that exist in counting clicks. To resolve this problem I believe that the most important issue that needs to be addressed in the definition of a click is the separation of a click from revenue. Clicks and revenue are two completely separate items.
The definition of a click should be ALL clicks made by users on a parked page. Not some or only the filtered ones but ALL clicks. Clicks provide a measurement of the interactivity of the users and this can often impact the value of a domain for a potential purchaser who wishes to apply the domain for a business. Without reporting ALL of the clicks many parking companies are inadvertently robbing domainers of the potential value of their assets.
 As well as reporting ALL clicks their should also be reporting for ALL PAID CLICKS. This is the total number of clicks that are actually generating PPC revenue for a particular domain.
ALL CLICKS should be set in concrete and not alter as this is information that the parking company is absolutely aware of while ALL PAID CLICKS may fluctuate depending upon the response from the upstream advertising partner. Notice in both these definitions for ALL CLICKS and PAID CLICKS that the revenue has not been mentioned.
In a previous article I used the example of my friend clicking on two separate advertisement for a domain within a couple of minutes. Under this proposed definition the domain report would be, two clicks and one paid click for a single view. This would provide a click through rate of 200% for clicks and 100% for paid clicks.
Domains with a large difference between clicks and paid clicks would likely be those domains that have users coming from the same IP address.
For example let's imagine that I have a mining related domain and BHP (world's large mining company) only uses 5 gateway IP addresses for their 100,000 employees. I could potentially have 100 clicks and 10 paid clicks for 50 uniques (using the current definition) giving a CTR of 200% and 20% paid CTR. Consistently large differences in CTR and paid CTR would suggest a domain that is being visited by users from gateway IP addresses.
I believe that the separation of clicks, paid clicks and revenue is key to developing a consistent standard across parking companies. By separating these definitions parking companies will be adding value back to all our domain assets.
I hope that this chapter in the transparency and standards series gets your brain going and that together we are all able to bring about a level of standards into the domain parking industry.
Previous articles in the series:
Part 1 - Parking Company Standards
Part 2 - The journey to transparency
Part 3 - Traffic definitions and reporting
Part 4 - Current Traffic Reporting Problems
Part 5 - What's a click?
Part 6 - Do parking companies swallow clicks?
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