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Millions of Addresses, Thousands of Sites, One Business
An anonymous reader writes "A New York Times piece looks at a rising power in the 'new internet bubble' that you may not have heard of before. The business, an outfit called NameMedia, has made a concerted effort to quietly purchase vast tracts of 'real estate' on the internet. The ultimate goal is to provide additional advertising and page views for content sites. 'Behind this suddenly active business category -- which includes companies like iREIT in Houston, Marchex in Seattle, and Demand Media in Santa Monica, Calif. -- is the recognition that not all Internet users turn to a search engine when they are confused about where to find something online. Rather, 5 percent to 10 percent of people will simply type in a name that sounds as if it might suit their needs. The so-called direct search or direct navigation approach is seldom fruitful for users, nor has it been particularly profitable for owners of the sites that they visit. An obscure Web address may have four or so visitors a month, and perhaps half will click on an ad.'"
At the end of the day all of us pay for the clutter created by domain names which exist only to capture page views. Presently to put a domain on line you just need to pay for registration and hosting on two DNS servers. The distributed nature of DNS takes care of the rest.
Should a way be found to make domain squatters pay the true cost of their collections?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They really show Google ads on these pointless pages?
If I did that my adsense account would be terminated.
Thing is, if you have one domain and host ads like that, it may be terminated. But if you have thousands of domains, Google will offer you Domain Parking services with AdWords on them. Yes, Google will spam the domains themselve.
I suppose the reason don't allow you to use this service if you got 5-10 domains is that it keeps the word of mouth down. It's not something Google wants everyone to talk about.
You are wrong in your first assumption - the domains are bought from an already popular niche. This isn't gambling or cybersquatting
And regarding clicking - you probably assume that others do as you do - But this isn't true - these sites enjoy around a 15% CTR, and actually it creates a win-win situation. The users, instead of getting a name error (useless), click an advertisement which is often relevant to their initial request, the target site gets a visitor (which is targeted due to the initial related type-in), and the owner of the site gets some money from google. Nobody is scammed, everyone are happy and get exactly what they want. The user- a relevant site, google and publisher get paid, and the target site gets a well targeted visitor.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
They will sell if you offer enough money. These corporations who lead the campaign of useless advertising sites and domain squatting are without a doubt *the* most disgusting crock of slime the internet has to suffer through. In the future, all the meaningful domains will be owned by a small few companies who have no interests in the betterment of the internet, and all legitimate sites will end up lucky if they can get their hands on domains like "dfklgjhh43.cx"
Each corporate entity should only be allowed one top-level domain, and be forced to contain their entire network underneath it. For example, there is a show on CNN hosted by Lou Dobbs. The show advertises that the website can be found at http://loudobbs.com/, when really, loudobbs.cnn.com would make infinitely much more sense, since the site is not personal, but about the show. If these guidelines could magically be enforced, and people realized that having a top level domain means nothing, the internet would be a much more sane thing
The problem is that having a top level domain *does* mean something. To who? Why, the idiots of course. There really should be forced classes on using the internet, just as there are for driving. In these classes, old people can learn about how networks work and how idiotic typing "Photography.com" truly is.