Pay-Per-Click Speculation Market Soaring

Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that the number of web sites being opened purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google and Yahoo is rocketing, according to VeriSign, which runs the .com and .net domain names." From the article: "Sclavos said that the company will change the way it reports the size of its domain name business, in terms of active registrations, because of the amount of speculation going on. It will reduce the size of the reported registrations by about 2%, he said. 'Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers...The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones are returned within the five day grace period.'"

Comments

Taking market share from legitimate sites?

[vidarlo]

This can only go on as long as few enough do. When enough people start doing this, google can tell sites wanting to much money for their adspace to go stic it up. Then, legitimate sites will get hurt, advertising in general will be hurt since those fake sites is mainly a hoax.

Further, it is quite irritating, as most of those sites don't have a single piece of information. I remember a while ago a blog set up to earn money. The blog was about asbestos damage. Quite OK if they can provide content in addition to the ads. However, my guess is that google will ban sites not having any content /other/ than their ads.

Re:Taking market share from legitimate sites?

[khakipuce]

When enough people start doing this, google can tell sites wanting to much money for their adspace to go stic it up

Google does not negotiate a price for ad space. The way it works (on Google at least) is basically the more an advertiser pays the higher up the list/more likely to get seen the ad is. When a link is clicked Google charges the advertiser and pays a proportion to the site that has syndicated the ads.

This means that Google gets paid whatever. The only thing Google has to worry about is sites generating clicks falsely - as in, I set up a site and sit there all day clicking the Google ads to generate revenue from Google. But Google checks the spread of time, IP addresses etc. and refuses to pay if it thinks the clicks are not genuine.

The thing that I can't figure out is who goes to a contentless site and starts click the ads? I very rarely click ads anyway, but to do it from a crap site just seems really dumb.

My opinion

[erykjj]

Perhaps it would make sense to increase the registration fee and/or eliminate the grace period. That way, only those who are serious about maintaining a web site would be investing in one.

Re:My opinion

[fatcatman]

Hell we're not far from that now with the companies who register tens of thousands of domains and park them for no reason other than to sell it to someone.

Can someone make this illegal? Please?

I'm trying to setup a new web site. I made a list of several dozen possible domain names. Almost ALL of them are owned by these "buyadomain" companies and they want $200 - $500 for them.

Now, I don't have a problem with people selling their domains. But these people aren't doing jack shit with the domains. They've bought up tens of thousands of good names and are simply sitting on them. Meanwhile people like me who want to use the name legitimately - actually setup a real web site with real content around it - can't, unless we pay their extortion fee. I think that's bullshit, and it shouldn't be allowed.

I tried this...

[guildsolutions]

Actually got one check from google, Sadly even tho all of my sites were ligitamte and had real content not just faked up content, they booted me and said that I was generating false clicks, and then refused to tell me from where... This area needs to have some laws made regulating companies and there policies so the end users, the little guys, have some rights.

stiffled innovation

[arudloff]

Think about how many small internet projects have failed due to really dumb, non-descriptive domain names.

Granted, some companies have been able to pull off misspellings (flickr), but how much more time is left before anything even remotely pronouncable is already registered?

If google really wants to "not be evil," they should find a way to pull the blanket from under these shams.. I almost wish domains were $100 a pop again just to make people think twice before doing this :(

Commercial SEO tools

[MemeRot]

There are tons of commercial SEO software products. They probably spend a half hour putting in some keyword lists that match their website name and then run a check on how that site would rank on google, yahoo, etc. Figuring a certain (very low) percentage of people will click an ad, and ballparking how many visitors they will get based on search ranking, they can tell how much the site is likely to make.

Yahoo Search Marketing for Publishers?

[hex1848]

Is Yahoo/Overture even supporting an AdSense equivalent at this point? Last time I looked into it, it was still being "developed".

I have several cigar related sites and Google as pretty much shunned the entire tobacco industry. I would openly welcome a competitor to AdSense by Yahoo/Overture.