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.'"

Comments

The Internet Users Licence

[Teun]

Rather, 5 percent to 10 percent of people will simply type in a name that sounds as if it might suit their needs.
What to do with such Lusers, they might become the reason for a call for an Internet Users Licence.

This could mean more than 5 - 10% of visitors to a(ny) site are lost souls as these idiots would need many attempts to get to their goal...

How we filter this stuff

[Animats]

One of the things we do with SiteTruth is filter out sites like this.

SiteTruth is looking for the name and address of the business behind any web site that's selling something. If we can't find a name and address in a place most users would look, it's an illegal business (see California B&P code section 17538, European Directive on Electronic Commerce, etc.) So they get a rating - a big red circle with a bar through it. And they go to the bottom of the search rankings.

If they do give a name and address, we look it up in business databases, and try to tie it to a corporation or a business license. "Millions of Addresses, Thousands of Sites, One Business" is something we can see - if huge numbers of domains map to one real-world business, that just screams "domain spammer".

We're still in alpha test, so you have to go to our web site to see this, but in time there will be toolbars to squelch this junk at the browser level.

Think of it as "spam filtering 2.0".