Google Tells Domain Tasters To Eat Cake

This is very good. It will cut off a large share of domain noise and junk out there.

John,
You are the "making money online" guru.

If you google me, you know I have the experience to say this.

Though you are way off on google losing money on this. It is the opposite. Since most of the reputable advertisers no longer advertise on extended network, moves like this will actually help convince advertisers back to the extended network. The money that is left on the table will allow higher click rates on what is left, as conversions will increase.

If you check Florida lawsuit about domain tasting, it amount to about $5,000,000 a month in revenue, that Google PAYS out. Granted they keep some but there net loss is little.

Stopping domain tasting is a GREAT THING, that will only help with Trademark Disputes and the like.

This move should have been made at least 1 year ago.

btw. did any normal people manage to cancel a mistakenly registered domain name at no charge within 5 days?

Yes, there are lots of parking monetization models but the best one I've tried so far is in my name.

I guess it's hooray? :mrgreen:

Nice to see you take your point of view on this John - I'm a regular reader (direct and RSS) of your blog and it's to follow a Canadian success story.

However, while Google is a major player in the domain parking space, they are far from being the only one - and possibly far from being the dominant one.

If anything, this will drive the domain tasting/kiting revenue model to a multitude (dozens) of Tier-2 and Tier-3 parking PPC/CPA players....

A search for "domain parking" on any of the current search engines (facebook, google, amazon, a9, mahalo, live, yahoo etc etc) reveals PLENTY of monetization methods.

All this being said, I think that ICANN (amongst others) must address the abuse of the 5 day refund window.

Robin

Thanks for posting john.

Smart move by goog...ty 4 the update

Thanks for telling us about this "trend"... Certainly some of these black-hat guys may be raking in the money, but once they're caught it will be their very own loss.

Earning money that way is certainly low ethics...

Thanks for explaining. As always: excellent blog articles. :-)

Was dropping links when Google was earthless
When meta tags had purpose and backlinks were worthless
When the SERPs was dirtless and before TLA had surfaced
Underground before Matt Cutts had his hands on PageRank
Quality content
Pre links exchange and splog posts
Keyword researches
Before the links was purchased
Matt Cutts stands in person
No care for spam or hijacks
Selling links at a yard sale
PageRank merchants
G don't care

Unconscious servers its disaster time
When spam hijacks SERPs AdSense spirals like blackholes

I'd rather Google have fixed their affiliate network instead. I still see spam in there and they are a long way behind CJ, and perhaps even pepperjamnetwork on that front.

I hope google DIE - they banned my adsense acc yesterday and I had only just hit $30 a day! Ta hell with google, helloo adbrite!

I agree with everything said before. I had a domain name that was farily premium. Stupidly, I let it go, and within about half an hour, it was snapped up.

I hate squatters, and domain tasters, they kill domains from using them for useful purposes. Imagine if shop fronts weren't allowed to be occupied for real businesses, but instead for people making money on property? People would go insane! Why should poeple do it online?

Incidentally, here's a fantastic story on cybersquatting:

http://calloftheday.net/?p=149

I think that this was a good idea for Google. These parked domains make a ton of money for people and the truth is, it's just a domain sitting there getting clicks; there's really no content on it; there's really nothing on it that suits people other than potentially getting more clicks. And doesn't Google constantly try for more targeted clicks?

Now, when it comes to the topic of domain tasters, I think that it is absolutely ludicrous. I don't think someone should be allowed to buy a domain name and then decide five days later he or she does not want it. If you bought the domain name, you should have to keep it for the year. But, I guess the truth is, the problem with domain tasting is that it's people trying to profit from it for five days before saying they don't want it.

So, with Google's three changes to their program, the first being the way the ads can be clicked, the second being the affiliate program and finally this, I can say that they've got a 33% success rate in doing things the right way. The first two things were stupid, but I like this. That's just my opinion, though.

I just blogged about this after checking my RSS reader and saw domaintools post. Its great news as Domain Tasting sucks for sure :)

Well atleast it's good to know google is doing something that doesn't involve increasing their profit.

I think this is a great move on Google's part. Now more domains will be available to the rest of us. However, I'm sure there are other monitization methods available to do this kind of thing, Adsense was just the easiest.

I was pretty bullish on Google stock before they made the clickable area change and now this. Changing the clickable area has lowered ctr rates and revenues for publishers (and Google I presume) and this will have the same effect.

The only way G can continue to grow earnings while at the same time cannibalizing their revenue is to increase their cut of the revenue share - which may turn publishers away and into other advertising programs.

Great to see Google doing something about it. I doubt it will end unless the other advertisers like Yahoo and MSN follow suit but it's definitely a good start.

And hopefully it would be much easier for us to get the domain names that we've all been searching for now.

Looking at it from the other side of the argument, Google is challenging every user who tries to make money using them! Cutting the Affiliate scheme for the US, changing the Adsense clickable area, this...

I see their point from a business point of view but as someone who makes money online it looks like they're closing the door on entrepreneurs. Domain parkers may be the bottom of the Internet food chain but still, this'll hurt a lot of people.

I am relatively new to the whole blogging family, but in the short time I have been in it, it seems to me that Google is terribly anal about how things are done. I can't believe they ever allowed this practice on principle (even though it was profitable). It seems to be very self contradictory.

I never knew domain testing exists but that is abusing the system and affects genuine interests. Good that Google is putting a stop to this. Cheers :smile:

Millions in Lost revenue a month, but maybe by cleaning up the act the cpc will start to increase?

Domain tasting makes the market so much more frustrating. Good domains are hard to find, and if we have companies test driving domains for 5-day periods, it'll make finding domains even more difficult.

Good riddance. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has tried to register a domain name for useful purposes only to find out that it's already taken by a parking company.