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

[Dachannien]

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

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?

[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

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.

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.