bikegremlin said: Google seems to prefer WHT to other forums. And even LET to LES.
Looking at backlinks, LET and WHT still dominate pretty much everything else and Google still relies heavily on backlinks (although, they became very good at filtering spammy links). According to Ahrefs: 1.027.117 backlinks for WHT, 280.034 for LET and just 47.040 for LES. And, some even quite valuable ones in favour of LET (in SEO terms), such as Wikipedia and news outlet links. So, Googles preferences might stay that way for a while.
However, from my view as a provider, it seems that LowEndSprit and the other green one are the only ones with active readers (or at least, readers that would care for my services): as a rather new player in the unmanaged VPS space, I recently posted an initial offer simultaneously in multiple related forums and pretty much the only ones that drove a significant amount of clicks and sales were LET and LES.
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bikegremlin said: Google seems to prefer WHT to other forums. And even LET to LES.
Looking at backlinks, LET and WHT still dominate pretty much everything else and Google still relies heavily on backlinks (although, they became very good at filtering spammy links). According to Ahrefs: 1.027.117 backlinks for WHT, 280.034 for LET and just 47.040 for LES. And, some even quite valuable ones in favour of LET (in SEO terms), such as Wikipedia and news outlet links. So, Googles preferences might stay that way for a while.
However, from my view as a provider, it seems that LowEndSprit and the other green one are the only ones with active readers (or at least, readers that would care for my services): as a rather new player in the unmanaged VPS space, I recently posted an initial offer simultaneously in multiple related forums and pretty much the only ones that drove a significant amount of clicks and sales were LET and LES.
Interesting numbers, not at all surprising les is only at around 20% of the back links if LET but also quite encouraged by that as it is not even 10% as old as LET.
@deank said:
There are two types of traffics on places like WHT, LET, and here.
The first type is deal seekers who don't generally participate in its community and only post when one has to in order to get free stuff.
The second type is those who seek deals but also participate in discussions. You want this type of members more than the first. WHT lost and LET is losing this type of members.
Then there is someone like me who just exist to troll the shit out of idiots and freeloaders.
@bikegremlin said: it seems to me that LES is still, unfortunately, miles away from WHT
I agree with everything else,
After reading this, I had to check if the last word of my original post was chaned to "an angel" - would have made a great laugh/prank.
just wanted to pick up on this point specifically. While by volume that may well be true, by engagement, LES is lightyears ahead of WHT, it has been over 3 months since anyone even commented on an offer on WHT, go back 7 years or so that simply did not happen.
It is hard to even give away hosting on WHT because literally no one looks at the offers and all of the view numbers are clearly and obviously bogus.
No reason to doubt that - as I had said, providers probably have a better view of this.
Just to clarify (for my own curiosity):
There are less engagements in terms of fewer people clicking on the offer links, not just fewer comments, right?
Provided that is the case - there is still one more point (correct me again if I'm wrong):
Google seems to prefer WHT to other forums. And even LET to LES.
When googling hosting related stuff (at least from my country), I get WHT and LET more often.
This too will surely (hopefully) change over time. But it is still not the case.
So, provided a service/topic does get discussed on WHT, that's what Google will more often show when querying.
Didn't do any testing on this, it's mostly my subjective impression. Again - could be wrong.
We did some experiments and CTR was around 0.4% after 1 month ish for VPS on WHT.
On the 0.01c shared hosting offer it was 0.01% after 1 week and I happen to know bear had a look at it because I got a warning on the first iteration of the offer
@AnthonySmith said:
Interesting numbers, not at all surprising les is only at around 20% of the back links if LET but also quite encouraged by that as it is not even 10% as old as LES.
Absolutely! Actually, quite impressive ones given the age of LES, in my opinion.
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Years back and I am going back probably 15+ years on WHT, the forum software couldn't prevent bumping of threads, so commenting on offers was not allowed to preserve the order of the offers. The comments went into a moderation Q and rarely made it out as there were so many, I don't think they ever changed it. Hence you will rarely see comments on offers as they probably don't even look at them to approve unless bored.
Years back and I am going back probably 15+ years on WHT, the forum software couldn't prevent bumping of threads, so commenting on offers was not allowed to preserve the order of the offers. The comments went into a moderation Q and rarely made it out as there were so many, I don't think they ever changed it. Hence you will rarely see comments on offers as they probably don't even look at them to approve unless bored.
Certainly has not been the case for quite some time, at least the last 10 years I have been there, just tested it:
probably just set off an alarm in bears house. hehe
@AnthonySmith said: Certainly has not been the case for quite some time, at least the last 10 years I have been there, just tested it:
I think that is more to do with your account age and so on, if I posted it would be the same. I am probably wrong, it has been so long since I wanted to post in an offer. But I know it was true in the distant past.
The reality though is that WHT has long since had its day, so has forums like LET and this one to be fair, all competing for the exact same members with very few new ones. Each ending up with a small band of enthusiastic posters but mostly lurkers just looking for deals.
That said, back in the day WHT was a significant client builder for me and many others of that time, it really was the only place you would find when hunting for hosting. Rackshack forums used to be where all the providers were, even if you didn't actually buy from Rackshack and all the customers were at WHT.
Between 2004-2008 (My Peak), I was easily adding an extra £45-50k to my revenue every year just from WHT in new business, that resulted in a lot of long-term customers. That has all changed now for many reasons. So it continues to drift as long as the activity and advertisers remain. So I won't knock them too much, they were good for me in the past.
I suspect there is some substantial view count manipulation going on. Not sure if it's by the owners of WHT or if it's bots/crawlers/scrapers or whatever, but there's simply no way that actual humans are looking this many times and the rate of conversion is so low.
@deank said: WHT at its prime, which I think was around 2000 ~ 2005, was a fun place to be.
The early years were amazing, I loved it. So much going on and so much to play for at the time. Social media wasn't a thing, everyone wanted a website so they could host a guestbook and were willing to pay good money to do it
It will be that. Just had a quick look and there are 881 'guests' online, it will all be bots. They could stop that but then it all adds to the sense of it being busy. and gets that view count up. Doubt they are intentionally manipulating it themselves.
It will be that. Just had a quick look and there are 881 'guests' online, it will all be bots. They could stop that but then it all adds to the sense of it being busy. and gets that view count up. Doubt they are intentionally manipulating it themselves.
Could it not be just people who came there after a google search?
At least in part?
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@qps said:
I suspect there is some substantial view count manipulation going on. Not sure if it's by the owners of WHT or if it's bots/crawlers/scrapers or whatever, but there's simply no way that actual humans are looking this many times and the rate of conversion is so low.
Yep.
I've talked to multiple hosts that see 1600 views on a thread and get maybe 2 - 3 click-thru's.
Somethings amiss and I don't think it's just crawlers since some categories don't get the traffic at all. It only happens in the categories with high cost stickies.
I reported the scammy behaviour of one of the providers on WHT (also on LET; recent adverts) and commented on one of their offers. Was basically told to piss off by a moderator. Think that was about 3 years ago now. Meh, ain't missing out, methinks.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
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I visit every 3rd day. To post ads. It is copy pasted stuff.
Stopped responding there ages back. You will either gat canned response that says , click my signature or bear will send you a special notification for being too honest.
I must admit the old days, when we had people like Keith, Martin, Sajan, @Lee, @ChrisMiller, Curtis and some other bunch, it was fun. I was known for being a trouble maker. Ahh the good times.
Comments
One of guys. It split into a few hosts of its own.
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Looking at backlinks, LET and WHT still dominate pretty much everything else and Google still relies heavily on backlinks (although, they became very good at filtering spammy links). According to Ahrefs: 1.027.117 backlinks for WHT, 280.034 for LET and just 47.040 for LES. And, some even quite valuable ones in favour of LET (in SEO terms), such as Wikipedia and news outlet links. So, Googles preferences might stay that way for a while.
However, from my view as a provider, it seems that LowEndSprit and the other green one are the only ones with active readers (or at least, readers that would care for my services): as a rather new player in the unmanaged VPS space, I recently posted an initial offer simultaneously in multiple related forums and pretty much the only ones that drove a significant amount of clicks and sales were LET and LES.
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Who wouldn't love LESbians?
No men would refuse it.
♻ Amitz day is October 21.
♻ Join Nigh sect by adopting my avatar. Let us spread the joys of the end.
Never visited WHT unless Google/DuckDuckGo or a link on LES or HostedTalk brought me there ...
Interesting numbers, not at all surprising les is only at around 20% of the back links if LET but also quite encouraged by that as it is not even 10% as old as LET.
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Good points. I had not considered that angle.
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We did some experiments and CTR was around 0.4% after 1 month ish for VPS on WHT.
On the 0.01c shared hosting offer it was 0.01% after 1 week and I happen to know bear had a look at it because I got a warning on the first iteration of the offer
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Absolutely! Actually, quite impressive ones given the age of LES, in my opinion.
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Congrats Sir
Cool. Very cool, WHT.
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Years back and I am going back probably 15+ years on WHT, the forum software couldn't prevent bumping of threads, so commenting on offers was not allowed to preserve the order of the offers. The comments went into a moderation Q and rarely made it out as there were so many, I don't think they ever changed it. Hence you will rarely see comments on offers as they probably don't even look at them to approve unless bored.
Certainly has not been the case for quite some time, at least the last 10 years I have been there, just tested it:
probably just set off an alarm in bears house. hehe
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Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Dustin!
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I visit WHT & LET only when someone sends me a link on discord to some drama thread & LES at least once a day
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I think that is more to do with your account age and so on, if I posted it would be the same. I am probably wrong, it has been so long since I wanted to post in an offer. But I know it was true in the distant past.
The reality though is that WHT has long since had its day, so has forums like LET and this one to be fair, all competing for the exact same members with very few new ones. Each ending up with a small band of enthusiastic posters but mostly lurkers just looking for deals.
That said, back in the day WHT was a significant client builder for me and many others of that time, it really was the only place you would find when hunting for hosting. Rackshack forums used to be where all the providers were, even if you didn't actually buy from Rackshack and all the customers were at WHT.
Between 2004-2008 (My Peak), I was easily adding an extra £45-50k to my revenue every year just from WHT in new business, that resulted in a lot of long-term customers. That has all changed now for many reasons. So it continues to drift as long as the activity and advertisers remain. So I won't knock them too much, they were good for me in the past.
WHT at its prime, which I think was around 2000 ~ 2005, was a fun place to be.
♻ Amitz day is October 21.
♻ Join Nigh sect by adopting my avatar. Let us spread the joys of the end.
I suspect there is some substantial view count manipulation going on. Not sure if it's by the owners of WHT or if it's bots/crawlers/scrapers or whatever, but there's simply no way that actual humans are looking this many times and the rate of conversion is so low.
The early years were amazing, I loved it. So much going on and so much to play for at the time. Social media wasn't a thing, everyone wanted a website so they could host a guestbook and were willing to pay good money to do it
It will be that. Just had a quick look and there are 881 'guests' online, it will all be bots. They could stop that but then it all adds to the sense of it being busy. and gets that view count up. Doubt they are intentionally manipulating it themselves.
Could it not be just people who came there after a google search?
At least in part?
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member
BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
Certainly in part but then it is constantly that high and higher at all times of the day so I would bet more on bots.
You can also set session timeout to a really long period to boost the guest numbers. Setting it at 15 min (from 5 min) can triple the guest numbers.
It was a common trick in Vbulletin era.
♻ Amitz day is October 21.
♻ Join Nigh sect by adopting my avatar. Let us spread the joys of the end.
Yep.
I've talked to multiple hosts that see 1600 views on a thread and get maybe 2 - 3 click-thru's.
Somethings amiss and I don't think it's just crawlers since some categories don't get the traffic at all. It only happens in the categories with high cost stickies.
Francisco
I reported the scammy behaviour of one of the providers on WHT (also on LET; recent adverts) and commented on one of their offers. Was basically told to piss off by a moderator. Think that was about 3 years ago now. Meh, ain't missing out, methinks.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
I visit every 3rd day. To post ads. It is copy pasted stuff.
Stopped responding there ages back. You will either gat canned response that says , click my signature or bear will send you a special notification for being too honest.
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I must admit the old days, when we had people like Keith, Martin, Sajan, @Lee, @ChrisMiller, Curtis and some other bunch, it was fun. I was known for being a trouble maker. Ahh the good times.
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It's been a few weeks at least, if not months. I did quite enjoy the "Running a Webhosting Company" section when I browsed tho.
Now I only log in to post an ad because the last 6 end up having a broken link.
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I visit WHT shared hosting forum every few weeks to check for new offers. I have to wade through a lot of junk to find what I want.
(cheap shared EU hosting with unl domains).
regarding replies to threads, I sometimes ask questions regarding domains, but it's maybe 1 out of 3 times that I get a reply.
I visit there once a while. Not for long, though.
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visited and read articles and post aeons ago, i still lurk at leb
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