New Flippa red warning - inconsistent traffic data

**Clinton** · February 4th, 2010, 04:16 PM

On this listing (may get deleted)

WARNING: Inconsistent traffic data (hover)

Hover and it says

The listing owner claims the site has more unique visitors than it has page views

**daveslutzkin** · February 4th, 2010, 06:26 PM

There are actually four of these warnings, added in the last week.

As you mentioned, one is for when the site claims more uniques than page views. Another is for when it claims more profit than it has revenue. A third is for when the site is claimed to be established before the domain registration date. And the fourth is a warning when a domain was established less than 60 days ago.

The aim here is to help out new participants, and point out stupid sellers.

**benitez17** · February 4th, 2010, 08:42 PM

Originally Posted by daveslutzkin

There are actually four of these warnings, added in the last week.

As you mentioned, one is for when the site claims more uniques than page views. Another is for when it claims more profit than it has revenue. A third is for when the site is claimed to be established before the domain registration date. And the fourth is a warning when a domain was established less than 60 days ago.

The aim here is to help out new participants, and point out stupid sellers.

I like the warnings, but I'd rather see the auction deleted. Putting up a warning like that makes it almost impossible for the seller to sell the site based on their incorrect data (which is a good thing), so deleting these auctions isn't going to really hurt their chances of a sale in that listing.

Are there any plans in place to put a warning in the profile of a seller who has one of these problematic listings?

**hooperman** · February 5th, 2010, 03:17 AM

Originally Posted by daveslutzkin

There are actually four of these warnings, added in the last week.

If you can code the warnings, you can code the prevention of entering those details. Why let users enter erroneous data in the first place? Validation for crap data should take place at point of entry, not after the event.

Who writes your specs, anyway?

**Clinton** · February 5th, 2010, 04:53 AM

To play devils' advocate...

With the page views being less than the number of uniques - I can see situations where that genuinely happens. Sites being established before the domain reg date can also happen. For example, my site experienced-people.co.uk shows as regd in May 2006 but archive.org shows history for several years prior to that. How? Can happen when a domain expires and is then re-registered. Flippa's warning on this could flag a potential phoenixed drop-catch (not that the average Flippa buyer would even recognise the issue there).

And the fourth is a warning when a domain was established less than 60 days ago.

I think that's a very good addition! It goes way towards removing the starter/templates from the orbit of buyers who are definitely not looking for one of those.

Another is for when it claims more profit than it has revenue.

For the life of me I can't work out how a business can have more profit than revenue. It could be waiting for a huge settlement claim from some litigation... and that wouldn't show under revenue. But even in situations like that I can't see how the monies due can be classed under "profit".

**hooperman** · February 5th, 2010, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by Clinton

With the page views being less than the number of uniques - I can see situations where that genuinely happens.

I can understand that the other warnings could be left as warnings (apart from revenue < profit) and not errors, but I can't think of an instance where pageviews < uniques. Each unique has at least one pageview... How is this possible?

**Clinton** · February 5th, 2010, 05:14 AM

widgets/calls from other sites. You can have parts of your "content" show up on other sites. That could count as a page view in some stats without showing as a unique visitor hitting your domain.

<added>I probably didn't explain that very well!

**hooperman** · February 5th, 2010, 05:25 AM

Originally Posted by Clinton

widgets/calls from other sites. You can have parts of your "content" show up on other sites. That could count as a page view in some stats without showing as a unique visitor hitting your domain.

Do you mean like a whole page (including traffic stats code) published on someone else's domain, or hotlinked images, or something else? Just trying to get my head around this. (do hotlinked images counts as uniques?)