Let’s be honest: how many people do you know who still type in random keywords because they expect a relevant website to appear? I for one don’t know anyone who fits this description and I’m sure you guys will have a hard time thinking of someone as well but does this mean type-in traffic will disappear?

Well… no.

You see, there’s more than one category of type-in traffic. The previously mentioned one, let’s call it navigational type-in traffic (people who type in domains rather than performing searches via search engines, for example), may very well end up disappearing but there are categories which will most likely be here “forever” (at least for as long as the Internet as we know it exists).

For example, confusion traffic will most likely not disappear. In other words, if you own an amazing domain such as BestInsurance.com, there will be lots and lots of websites on similar domains such as MyBestInsurance.com, TheBestInsurance.com, BestInsurancePolicies.com and so on.

Each such website will probably lose some traffic (even if only a little bit, depending on the promotion method: if most of its traffic comes from search, the traffic loss will be minimal but if most of its traffic comes via venues such as billboards, radio/tv ads, word of mouth and so on, the traffic loss might be quite substantial) and the better your domain is, the more websites on similar but less valuable domains exist.

I could provide other examples as well but I’m sure you get the point. All in all, the likelihood of type-in traffic disappearing altogether is extremely low in my opinion but certain categories of type-in traffic such as navigational type-in traffic may very well face extinction 🙂