Forum Moderators: martinibuster
This week I decided to go to their site to look at some new products. I read the domain name off the paper catalog. It is a three word domain name with the last word being "supplies" and it's not a particularly good domain name.
I typed in the domain and was surprised to end up on a MFA page with the typical ads and links to more ads. That's when I noticed I had typed "supply" instead of "supplies."
Someone has registered the "supply" version of this niche market domain and put up a MFA page. I don't know who is doing this, but I can't help but think of liquor and the Kennedy family income when considering the PPC empire someone is building.
I no longer wonder why Google doesn't do something about MFA's - now I see why. It's a Golden Goose for them.
Now, I wonder why they even bothered shutting down a few accounts after June 1st? What did they find wrong with the arbitrage model of those accounts?
By the way, I'm still not convinced it was a massive crackdown as portrayed. I think it was a relatively few accounts and it just got a lot of hype.
FarmBoy
Google seems to welcome parked domains in its adWords program.. so this no surprise.
In any case, type-in traffic on parked domains is a different issue from click arbitrage, and unless I'm mistaken, Google's parked-domain program is part of the search network (not the AdSense network).
So these guys pay 'content PPC' and earn 'search EPC'?
Oh my God.. I am in the wrong biz...
So these guys pay 'content PPC' and earn 'search EPC'?
Pay content PPC? Was it advertised with AdWords? I thought he said he typed it in. Most parking programs prohibit sending PPC traffic (although of course, lots of them get through anyway, as we've all seen)
I have a client with "supplies" in his domain name(s), and most of the supply versions are parked. I was pretty ticked about finding my ads for the client on those pages, but then when I looked further, we've gotten conversions off those sites.
Many posters in other threads have complained that parked pages are advertising on the content network. I have also seen some on my site with domains parked with godaddy..
Maybe not in this specific case of the OP..
Many posters in other threads have complained that parked pages are advertising on the content network.
Could be. My point was simply that these issues can get muddled. Even recognizing the difference between a truly parked domain and a hosted domain that looks like a parked domain may not be easy. The more annoying Web entrepreneurs are like viruses: They mutate into new forms when they come under attack.
Maybe not in this specific case of the OP.
Then I guess you're in the wrong thread. ;) Best to stay on topic, thanks.
By the way, I'm still not convinced it was a massive crackdown as portrayed...
I don't know the extent of the arbitrage crackdown, but judging by the dot info backlinks to one of my popular sites, I'd say there was a significant drop. Checking the backlinks to one of my sites that had been plagued by so many scraper spiders my shared server crashed every evening, necessitating a move to a dedicated server, the amount of dot info backlinks is about a sixth of what it used to be.
I typed in the domain and was surprised to end up on a MFA page...
To repeat what someone else said, that's not an MFA. It's a direct navigation domain. Searching through typing in a browser is called Direct Navigation, a subset of search. Don't feel bad about being confused by that, it's a common misunderstanding and many people, including some who should know better, make it.
;)
Well noted your comments. Pls accept apologies.
To repeat what someone else said, that's not an MFA. It's a direct navigation domain.
I thought MFA (Made For AdSense) referred to the page where the person landed, not how the person arrived on the page.
If I have a domain name that I think people will type in directly and I put AdSense ads and little else on the destination page, that's a page Made For AdSense IMO.
If I have a domain name and associate it with a page where I've put AdSense ads and little else and buy traffic from AdWords or other sources to send to that page, that's still a page that has been Made For AdSense.
According to a Verisign report that Mattg3 cited, some 25% of 135 million domains, or about 31 million, are parked.
Considering that many registrars now put PPC ads on a parked page when someone registers a domain and doesn't do anything with it, that number doesn't surprise me.
I wonder what percentage of parked domains have PPC ads?
In any case, type-in traffic on parked domains is a different issue from click arbitrage...
I understand the difference, but it doesn't make any difference to the point I'm making. And that point is there are a LOT of pages where a person can end up and see PPC ads and little else, regardless of how the person arrived on the page.
What are the future implications of that? I have no idea.
FarmBoy
I typed in the domain and was surprised to end up on a MFA page with the typical ads and links to more ads. That's when I noticed I had typed "supply" instead of "supplies."
That's a type of cybersquatter known as a typosquatter. They've been around forever (pre-Y2K).
I just looked through AdSense Terms, and also the Program Policies, but I can't find anything against cybersquatting or typosquatting.
do you use that toolbar?
I wonder what percentage of parked domains have PPC ads?
But, you know, a domainer with 750K to 1,000K pageviews probably has a pretty hefty portfolio of names. Hundreds? Thousands? Well, anyway, it's not the split that matters, especially since many of the other parking programs run AdSense and other PPC programs, but that this is not just condoned by Google but a central part of its ad serving system.
I typed in the domain and was surprised to end up on a MFA page with the typical ads and links to more ads. That's when I noticed I had typed "supply" instead of "supplies."
Heh! I deliberately mistyped one of my domains and no surprises for "Guess What".
Wasn't AdSense in the "Sponsored Listings" though. Each link was quite lengthy with a lot of alpha-numerics [not hex-decimal] embedded.
And another different site with variant spelling purported to take you to relevant topics [to mine] that simply regurgitated itself.
Funny because I actually ran into that very exact same scheme last week when I typed in the web name from a cooking programme I had just watched on TV.
Obviously a huge market in typo's. I wonder if the advertisers are happy. I must ask one.
www.gggle.com probably does better than www.l#*$!xllouhhhlll.com ..
Although I absolutely hate mass domain parkers.
Wonder what the profit margin is on that. But hate it or not there is probably some skill involved in buying the right domains.
I guess parked domains with PPC ads must be more profitable than porn these days.
yes on an older machine circa 1996, NT4.0 w/ mozilla
Although I absolutely hate mass domain parkers.
Assuming the people who are in that business want to maximize profits, I wonder if they are experimenting with PPA ads?
FarmBoy
Even if it's a lame business they need to have some sort of thought in what they buy, they need to get the domain buying fee back.
They snatch up domains as they are expiring and park them with ads. If the domain doesn't produce, they just cancel the domain before the 5-day period and get a refund.
FarmBoy
FarmBoy
I wonder what would be the downside to Google to open up the domain parking/PPC ads program to publishers with much less traffic than is now required?
I'd guess that it's a low-margin business, and that a few parked domains with minimal traffic wouldn't be worth Google's bother. (The little guys are probably just creating made-for-AdSense pages with their spare domains anyway.)
they've even bought up 10 different variation of my domain name and parked them.
A few years ago if I didn't want a domain any more and let it lapse, it would just lapse, no one would buy it.
Now, if I let a domain lapse it's immediately snapped up, even when it couldn't be any possible value to other sites, and it's always snapped up by someone who just fills it with a page of adsense and nothing else.
These domains I let lapse really aren't valuable, they are very very niche things that have no general use, and often have very little traffic and very few links in. It makes the purchases seem like they're automated, they just buy any domain that's been on the internet a while.
Is it plausible that some MFA people are just buying up any domain that lapses?
