WSJ Outs Google’s Domain Parking

Posted: May 2, 2006

For those familiar with Google’s AdWords program, opting out of domain parking (or at least setting a different bid) is one of the most requested features.

First, let’s take a look at Google’s Domain Park Program:

AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google’s semantic technology to “understand” the meaning of each domain name. Powering over 3 million domain names, AdSense for domains is the industry’s leading parked page service.

Source

While these ads seem to be contextually relevant, they are actually classified under ’search partners’ for purposes of AdWords. So, instead of matching ads to content, Google’s seems to be assuming that when someone types in a misspelling or parked domain name, that they are actually searching for a product.

Unfortunately, the mindset of someone searching vs reading a webpage vs randomly typing in a domain name is very different. And hence, advertisers see domain park convert very different from the other two user mindsets.

Based upon AdWords settings, if out opts out of domain parking (search partners), they also opt out of very good distribution like local.google.com, froogle, and the major - AOL.

However, the most common reason I see people opt out of the search network isn’t AOL’s conversion rate, it’s domain parking.

If these domains were part of the contextual network, one could easily block these sites with Google’s exclusion tool. However, Google seems resistant to that idea, and hence, more sophisticated advertisers sometimes realize it’s a necessary evil to opt out of AOL because domain parking isn’t converting for them, and sends a lot of traffic.

If you’re looking for domain parking in your log files, keep an eye out for anything related to sedo, oingo, or domainpark. There are more, however, oingo seems to be the most common referrer that sends traffic from domain parking.

It’s long been a hidden secret that Google rarely talks about. However, the WSJ recently published a very good article about domaining, hopefully, bringing this aspect of traffic more into the mainstream mind consciousness.

WSJ Article.

Related Information:

« Google AdWords New Feature: Choose Your Time Zone - Change Wisely

Wichita State Usability News »