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

Meanwhile, Pay Per Lick porn market suffering...

[elrous0]

At least I'm doing my part to support it.

-Eric

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?

[Eric Giguere]

my guess is that Google will ban sites not having any content /other/ than their ads

That's already the case -- you can't normally display AdSense ads on a site if the site doesn't have any content. If Google notices this or if someone reports it, they'll ask you to take off the ads or lose your AdSense account.

That said, Google and other third parties do offer domain parking facilities that explicitly allow you to show ads. But you have to explicitly sign up for that kind of program.

I don't know how any of this would be considered "illegitimate" use of domain names, though. It's the price you pay with an open market.

Eric

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

[Eric Giguere]

I'm not really sure why this is news. They should for sure exclude registrations that haven't passed their grace period when reporting activations... that's just common sense. A company can't fully book the revenue it receives if there's a return period. Same reasoning applies here.

Eric
Read about click fraud

Re:My opinion

[Dachannien]

Wait, don't get rid of the registration fee before I have a chance to write a brute-force "register everything" script.

Re:My opinion

[Cromac]

Wait, don't get rid of the registration fee before I have a chance to write a brute-force "register everything" script.

This should be modded up (sorry, no points left) because that is exactly what would happen if there weren't any registration fee. 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.

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.

Is this news?

[numb]

Isnt this just plain capitalism. If they can earn money of buying names and put up ads on them, then why not?

Dont sse any news here, move along.

Re:Is this news?

[pmazer]

The only problem I see is that they're snatching up names so that the people who want to use those names for a "valid" business will have to buy them at a premium, or can't access them at all.

Re:Is this news?

[Eric Giguere]

That argument doesn't hold: if these "snatchers" are making money from those domain names, then they are in fact running "valid" businesses themselves. In other words, they're doing what all good businesses try to do: make money.

Eric

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.

Re:I tried this...

[Eric Giguere]

Click fraud is a big problem and legitimate sites are running into it more and more often. Recently someone was targeting pay-per-click related ads on my sites (a lot of my content is related to that topic) and causing my earnings to skyrocket. But it was obviously illegitimate income. What you do is report your suspicions to Google and let them figure it out. I've always done this and kept on good terms with them.

Let's face it, no one forced you to sign up with Google's AdSense program. If you can't abide by the rules that they impose, you always have the option of finding another ad program to suit your needs.

Eric
Read about Alaska cruising

Re:I tried this...

[Eric Giguere]

how much can AdSense really earn you?

I get asked that a lot (well, I guess it's no surprise, since my book is titled "Make Easy Money with Google") but there are no firm statistics anywhere. All I have to go on is gut feel, really, but I suspect that most sites are earning between $50 to $250 a month. Some sites go way beyond that, earning several hundred or even several thousand dollars per month. And some, especially the new ones, will earn less. However, it's easy enough to make enough income to pay back your hosting costs, which is the first step.

There's no real secret to this stuff. In the end, the secret "AdSense formula for making money" comes down to this:

earnings = number of clicks * average price per click

You can derive almost everything from this formula, as I described in the article The AdSense Formula.

Generally speaking, the sites making a lot of money from AdSense get (no surprise) a lot of traffic. That's the hardest part -- getting the traffic, especially the right traffic.

Eric

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 :(

Pay-per-click

[GuitarNeophyte]

It's too bad that search engine results are so full of all-advertising sites that good sites tend to fall though the cracks. I've seen a number of pretty-decent websites that didn't show up until the tenth page of a google search just because they weren't "Optimized for search engine traffic". It's annoying.

I read an article a while back that says that anyone who does anything purely for the purposes of making their websites show up higher on search engine results than they should are scammers. I believe it. No matter how whitehat you are, if you're trying to beat the system, you're a scammer. period.

Dumb ol' no-good-content-advertiser-based-websites.

Luke
----
This may be a shameless plug for my website, but at least it's got content.

Re:Pay-per-click

[aclarke]

Well, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion and judging from your comment's moderation you're not the only person who feels that way. However, if you feel that "anyone who does anything purely for the purposes of making their websites show up higher on search engine results than they should are scammers", who decides the "than they should" part? You? The site owner? The search engine?

Well, right now, the answer to that question is the search engine. Google (for instance) looks at your page and decides its relevance based upon a number of criteria. I personally think this is overall the best solution although of course it's not without its problems.

For the record, my job involves optimizing sites as well as working on algorithms to improve our sites' bidding on Overture and Adwords. This is what I do full-time. The sites I work on are well-regarded, well-established, useful sites with proprietary content (no, not porn).

Tell me, what use other than search engine enhancement does something like a title tag in a hyperlink REALLY have (yes, I know about the mouseover)? How about meta tags? How about rearranging the words in your page title so the most relevant ones show up first? These aren't dirty tricks, but they're designed to showcase the content that a site REALLY HAS, so that when a consumer goes to a search engine they find what they're looking for. We don't want to "trick" customers into visiting our sites. That's a very short-sighted tactic. We end up paying for bandwidth of a "non-qualified" "customer", and eventually our advertisers are going to catch on to this as well. It's the same as trying to lure homeless people into Nordstroms. They're unlikely to turn into customers.

Anyway, that's just a counterpoint to consider.

Re:Pay-per-click

[Panaphonix]

Agreed. Especially since Google ranks your page by how many pages link to it, what is wrong with having an incentive to getting the word out about your site to all the other relevant sites?

Flippin' burgers

[jfengel]

So between the domain name and faked keywords on the site trying to pump up the page rank, they're trying to get people to go to their site and then click on one of the pay-per-click links.

1. Put up a web page
2. Pray that just based on the domain name people will come
3. Profit

Yeah, I guess we know what step 2 is, but pay-per-click is pennies, and you have to do all that setup work coming up with names, hosting the site, etc. I suppose its profitable, but jeez, at what point is it just easier to get a job flipping burgers? Or maybe even a reputable IT job?

Google pay-per-click money is free only if your time is worth nothing.

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.

Evict the Squatters

[Doc Ruby]

At least these speculators are recycling the names quickly when they're not using them. I get pissed off when I hit a website, and get one of those fake "search portal" fronts from a squatter. There's got to be a way to make people use the minimum appropriate domain names for their sites, without charging more than necessary for the name. Maybe a $50 deposit, refunded after a month, held in escrow by the registrar? Maybe a traffic requirement for retaining the name, if there are other bids for it? That can survive a cheap "click simulation service" that keeps up fake traffic?

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.

Re:Yahoo Search Marketing for Publishers?

[Dun Malg]

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.

I typed in "cigar' in the google search box, and sure enough, there was not a single ad, just search results. Did they ever exprese any reasoning behind this, or is it just explained away as "policy"? I tried a few other similar searches and found that "guns" is verboten, while "rifle" and "shotgun" are fine. Also "cigarettes" are out, but strangely not "cigarette". "Beer" and "whiskey" are apparently right out, but not "wine"-- because we all know wine drinkers are sophisticated bluebloods and whiskey and beer drinkers like in a trailer park and shoot each other with "guns" while smoking a "cigar", right? "Murder", "pedophelia", and "strangler" are apparently okey dokey as ad words though, with "strangler" even encouraging us to look for one on eBay.

They'll never get paid

[jpbutler]

Google only pays out once you've passed $100 in income. If these guys are only making $10/year, they won't be seeing anything anytime soon.

Crap sites yeild crap traffic

[salesgeek]

Crappy websites yeild horrible traffic. I will pay $8 per click for good traffic. I won't pay at all for bad traffic. Google has steadily declined in the quality of traffic they provide over the past couple of years. Overture, too has slid.

Eventually, Google and Yahoo will have to cull the herd (actually they do right now). They must deliver a good value compared to other kinds of advertisements. Advertisers have pulled the rug out from under the online ad market before, and they will again if they see costs for conversions going sky-high. Right now that is the trend.

Another problem is that crap websites create noise in search engine results diluting Google's core product and Yahoo's second product (their first is the myYahoo! portal).

The scammers use HTTP proxies. I know this because

[blcss]

I've seen it on my honeypot. They look for proxies that don't reveal themselves as such in the headers. They use lots of proxy judge sites such as http://www.softvb.com/cgi-bin/judge2-35.cgi, http://207.234.198.165/cgi-bin/prxjdg.cgi?en, http://motorscreensavers.com/cgi-bin/pxjdg12.cgi?e n,
http://wilsonjack.ejunx.org/prxjdg.cgi

They fake the User-Agent and Referers fields in the headers to look like real traffic. I've seen the User-agent field change half a dozen times in a day from one host. That might be chained proxies, but here's something that isn't. One guy tried to fake a Referer as netbroadcaster.com but he did a typo the first time and it was netboradcaster.com, which doesn't exist.

Here are some sites they hit:

| 1 | http://www.findbestsite.com/
| 2 | http://www.mpww.net/white_yellow_page1.htm
| 3 | http://www.mpww.net/white_yellow_page.htm
| 4 | http://www.bigbusinessonline.com/chevrolet/chevrol etlumina2.html
| 5 | http://www.mpww.net/web_hosting1.htm
| 6 | http://www.ffgame.net/candy/scr2.htm
| 7 | http://www.mpww.net/travel.htm
| 8 | http://www.xwss.com/breakdown-insurance/breakdown- insurance-termsandcons.html
| 9 | http://www.mpww.net/womens_health.htm
| 10 | http://www.gamesir.us/games/boom_boom.html
| 11 | http://www.aoshao.com/watchout.shtml
| 12 | http://www.art-ton.us/fat/3d-ganes.php
| 13 | http://www.linksfortraveller.com/cruises.html