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Google Adsense Cracking Down on 'Tasters'
ZerothOfTheLaw writes "It appears that Google is going to eliminate Adsense for Domains for all domains younger than five days old.
From the post 'The Good news is that the Quantity of advertising will be spread among fewer domains now and so those domain owners that actually own real full domains should receive more money if bid prices start to rise as a result of this. However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads.'"
However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads
Good. Advertising revenue is not something that anyone is entitled to receive. Show me a site with useful content supported with unobtrusive advertising and maybe you'll get my eyeballs for a while. What we don't need are more linkfarms.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I never quite understood the "tasting" concept. The vast majority of the people utilizing "tasting" are doing it for unscrupulous reasons. Anyone with a legitimate need for a domain is going to be willing to pay the going rate to actually register one.
Mod me off-topic, but sometimes the English language takes a surreal turn - Domain Tasting? Does .mil have a metallic, cordite taste while .com is a cornucopia of flavors?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Tasters are economic parasites, pure and simple. Just like the biological kind, they exist because they can, and we can't really do much about it. Perhaps ICANN could, but it doesn't seem to be a top priority for them. I don't know why that is, but I assume its a mixture of greed and incompetence. I'm sure ICANN is either threatened legally, or are on the take themselves, or are simply clueless and think they have better things to do.
In short, just because something is obviously wrong with domain tasting doesn't mean that the world will change direction. It spins of its own accord.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If your spam filter hadn't worked so well, you'd have seen the offer to sell you something to help you with that ageusia problem.
You really should upgrade to Hotmail, so we can do a better job of serving you.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It'll never happen, because there is no way Google would do anything to reduce it's revenue, but they really need to do something about Google Ad Spam on web pages. More and more web sites have more Google Ad 'content' than real, useful information. First there was email spam, now we have Google Spam. Blah.
What will this do for sites that spring up around pop culture memes, breaking news and other immediate items?
creation science book
The whole idea of advertisement is to reach as many people as possible, how can you say that not having the ability to post on any billboard is a good thing?
More over from a business standpoint by one company turning down a new site which has the potential of becoming an old site, the new site will have to goto another ad company to bring in revenue, won't doing this make it more difficult to bring in the 'diamond in the rough'? Don't most companies/sites start off new?
The internet is far from static, even old companies/sites can/will loose the ability to become effective 'billboards'. The beautiful thing about it is many new sites will spring up in its place, why does it make so much sense to ignore these sites?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Why is is evil? Well, domain tasters are folks trying to capitalize on traffic they don't really own. That's kind of hard to understand but you have to understand the definition of domain tasting to full grasp that.
.com and .net domain names were the result of domain tasting." (Information Week)
This should also help understand the "evil" behind the practice...
"In January 2007, VeriSign said that among the top 10 domain registrars, 95% of all deleted
Google's doing this to protect users who get to these sites on accident. I guess it's good for everyone.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Any real site is going to need more than five days just to get content developed, scripts written, yadda yadda yadda. Sure, everyone may "start off new" -- but that's not to say that they're ready to earn revenue from day one.
Does Anyone else find the choice of Capitalized words in the summary Interesting?
For me, Google adsense for domains is a scammers paradise anyway. How many hours haven't I wasted walking over "parked" domains trying to find a real domain. Let's face it - 99% of the "parked" domains aren't parked - they are purchased because people will visit them by mistake. It would be much faster if the domains simply didn't exist and as such wouldn't turn up in search results.
Don't taste me, bro!
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Since Google already has all of their squatter domains established, they won't be bothered by the five day rule. And now they won't have to share that pot of ad revenue with a bigger group of people.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
We're all nerds here, and this seems to be a real problem. What can we do about it? Can a Firefox plugin be made to weed out flagged squatted domains? Have you physically complained to Google either through email, written letter, or even in a blog posting/article? Or on the other end, perhaps we could evelop a software suite for parked domains that provides relevant information. Parked domains are annoying, but they'd be less annoying if they were still relevant.
It'd be kind of neat if accidentally typoing britenyspears.com brought up feeds with news on Britney Spears along with ads and other monetization schemes rather than just some boring Ad Directory that most are currently like. Anyway, my point is: If you hate this so much, why aren't you doing something about it? What can we do to stop it, or help to solve it? I don't imagine we can completely rule it out but there's bound to be plenty of ways we can weaken its hold. The world can't change unless you try to change it.
I hope Google really does this. They need to, to restore their "don't be evil" reputation. Arguably, Google went over to the dark side when they started offering domain parking.. "Maximize revenue on your parked pages with Google AdSense for domains", they advertise. (Insert Darth Vader quote here.)
"Domain tasting" is a drain on the anti-fraud systems of the Internet. All those domain changes help conceal phishing attacks, many of which involve buying domains with stolen credit cards and exploiting them before the credit card transaction is reversed. Blacklist systems like McAfee SiteAdvisor and PhishTank are always running behind the domain changes.
We rate sites at SiteTruth, and all those domain changes are a headache for us. I'm considering taking the position that all domains less than 30 days old are junk, unless they have a good SSL certificate. Is that too severe, or a good idea? Comments?
Millions of 'tasted' domains means extra processing for Google, I suppouse that's why they prefer to filter those domains, quite natural.
Wake me up when Google allows minimun CPC, that would be news.
What's in a sig?
You only need 1 domain to display ads....
;)
Nice try though.
According to the CBC they are mainly targeting so called domain kiting (repeated tasting), which will impact tasting too.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Google shows ads on pages that include Google Adsense banners, so if you can get somebody to look at your web page and click on the ads, Google pays you. Domainer Parasites do this by buying or tasting plausible-sounding names and putting up ad banner pages, usually with no real content, and domain parking services will do the work of implementing them if you don't want to serve them yourself. Domain Tasters kite names by registering them and then returning them during the 5-day grace period, so that they get to collect ad revenue on their parked pages without having even paid for the page, though if the page is going to pay more than the $6/year domain name fee they'll generally buy it and keep it.
If Google stops paying for kited pages, domain taster parasites are going to have to use other advertising services, which are often less convenient or don't pay as much. A big difference is that Google's advertising is usually topical enough that people are more likely to click through, as opposed to more random. Once they've had the domain long enough to actually pay for it, they can switch to Google, but at least it'll cut down on some of the kiting.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is totally pointless.
1. Register a domain A and pay for it
2. Wait 5 days
3. Put ads on it
4. "Taste" some domains
5. Put a redirector page from the tasted domains to domain A, or show the content of domain A in a frame
6. Profit!
Am I missing something here?
Ever notice how Slashdot articles on abuse of the DNS system or attempts to stop it are often on websites that serve the DNS abuser business? I can't tell for sure about domaintools.com, but it looks like they're mainly in business to support people who rent domain names for their advertising value rather than for their ability to indicate the content on a real site. It's possible that I'm mis-characterizing them, but their domain name sale and auction tools and a number of their blog articles look like they're serving the parasite market (just not necessarily the domain-taster part of it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's exactly the functionality I've been looking for! I've always said Google should have a feature that allows you to block certain sites, Experts Exchange and BoardReader being the two that come to mind right off the bat.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
By a "good SSL certificate", I mean one that identifies the business. SiteTruth ignores those "domain control only validated" "Instant SSL" certs. They don't certify much of anything, other than that an e-mail sent to the domain gets to the party that requested the certificate.
It's interesting to see the Web without the bottom-feeders. Most of the spam blogs, phishing sites, link farms, landing pages, directory pages, "affiliates", and related junk go away. What's left is either has a real business behind it, or is noncommercial and ad-free.
The basic criterion is "can we associate a real-world name and address with this business"? We have about five ways of finding the business behind the web site, including scanning the web site text for mailing addresses, and if all of them come up empty, they're toast.
Yes, some legitimate business sites are down-rated because we can't identify the business behind them. It's the responsibility of the web site operator to clearly identify the business behind the web site; in some jurisdictions, it's a criminal offense not to. If they don't, that's their problem. We provide some webmaster tools to help with technical issues in identification; there's no mystery about what's going on.
There's a problem with fake names and addresses, but that's a felony (wire fraud or identity theft), so it's rare. We check phishing databases for those.
The conventional wisdom is that these problems can't be solved. The conventional wisdom is wrong.
I think domain tasting has taken a turn over the years, but lets not forget why it was here in the first place.
These days, I have no idea how I would go about registering a domain without paying for it. I don't see the option readily available at any registrars that I work with (although, I personally stay away from the big guns like godaddy and network solutions). It seems to me that the people who are doing it tend to be those who want to park domains and put ads up temporarily - and frankly I am opposed to this - as it's nothing but spam.
Would getting rid of the tasting option get rid of these guys? No. It takes a minimal investment to create a certified registrar and at that point domain purchases are cheap enough that you can buy them in bulk at a price point that doesn't do much to preclude the web-spam business model.
But looking back at the reasons for this in the first place - one might want to register a domain, but not have the money to do it immediately. One might change their mind about a registration. Yeah, in the days of $5 and $10 domains, these points seem to lose a great deal of value, but there was a time when it would cost you more than $100 to register a domain. There was also a time when dictionary words and 3 letter domains were widely available because there was no market for commerce on the internet.
If a registrar were to make widely available the "pay in a week" model I certainly would not be opposed to it. If you want to attack the web-spam business model, I think you should do so directly - much like Google is doing.
"However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads."
Yup. Those niches are going to go completely unserved. The internet just doesn't have enough websites to support the kind of content diversity necessary to serve all marketing niches.
There's FUD, and then there's just plain thinking people are dumber than a bag of hammers.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Two of my former domains are being "tasted" repeatedly and both are now offering link farms. Neither had any reasonable traffic so I'm not entirely sure what makes them so delicious. It's very annoying truthfully. I'd originally registered them with anonymous registration and when I wanted to renew them, godaddy refused to allow me to not renew the anon without going to their anon service site and specifically requesting it's removal -- except I no longer had the customer id # after 3 years and a computer change. They wanted a fax with 3 pieces of ID (which would have cost me a cab trip for 20 bucks and the faxing charge) Decided it wasn't worth the hassle and let them expire.
-Kinsey
Tasers for Tasters. Vile scum, the lot.
Salut,
Jacques
Have we as a community lost sight of what evil really is? I would agree with you that it is somewhat annoying to accidently stumble upon a link farm. But does that make it evil? Is the practice itself evil? I would say no on both counts. I think we don't give Google enough credit for accomplishing all that they have without succumbing to the predatory practices of large corporations a la Microsoft. I submit that we have really lowered the bar on what it takes to commit evil, and we should consider that a testament to the virtue of Google management.
Let's keep that in perspective. Slashdot discussions show that we don't even begin to hold our other sacred cow corporations (eg. Apple) to these extremely high standards.
Anyone who uses that many metaphors in a single post deserves karma.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I would find a place to say 'They can have Taster's Choice, or they can taste *THIS*', hehe
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
the thing i find depressing about the whole googlization of the web is the unquestioning acceptance of advertising it has brought. i dislike advertising. the messages bother me. they distort reality. they are motivated by things i don't care about. they are created to do things i am not interested in. advertising serves the businesses that exchange money to deliver it. that exchange is one also of influence and power. focusing on whether or not the targets of the advertising are influenced by the messages misses this crucial point. the messages have an effect on the targets, but the business of delivering the messages is more important. the fact that financial free-for-alls flow from some of google's ad ideas means this is a lousy deal for the net community. nobody, nobody, nobody needs the money google has. being a giant advertising company (that's what they are) that has good web page indexing still makes them evil.
Google is preventing money to be made from AdSense while domain-tasting. The problem is domain-tasting tests whether a domain receives traffic. If a domain receives one visit during a five-day period, the domain is likely to receive enough traffic to offset the registration cost. Whether income is earned on that first visit does not change the domain-tasting business. This policy only affects companies that taste and never buy. No company spending money on equipment to handle tasting (automating registration, DNS, virtual host, cancellation) will balk at buying domains expected to be profitable.
The problem is that every expiring domain is domain-tasted. A once-registered, but unused domain bounces from domain-taster to domain-taster forever. If someone has an interest in the domain, the current taster notices, then buys and parks the domain. This guarantees that every domain that was ever registered will never become available to the general public. (Yes, a very small chance exists that a person could register the domain just as a domain-taster released the domain, but domain-tasters have faster equipment, more bandwidth, and better relationships with registrars.)
The best method to slow domain-tasting is to declare one week* each year that domains may not be registered. All domains must be bought or released. The defect is the Internet might crash as the domain-tasters attempt to recover as many domains as possible. Limiting the number of registrations from each account would help, but domain-tasters are usually registrars able to avoid such limits.
* One week = 7 days = 5-day "Add Grace Period" + 24 hours to avoid time zone issues + 24 hours padding.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Danny Sullivan has apparently been contacted by Google, Inc. According to Mr. Sullivan, Google has stated that domain name tasting is OK. Here's the quote: "Domain kiting is when someone registers a domain but never pays for it, then keeps registering it. Google said the policy will only apply to kiting. Those doing domain tasting -- registering a site, trying it out with ads and then actually paying for it -- will not be impacted." see http://searchengineland.com/080125-081815.php
Given that I am not obligated to read ads the consequences you cite are not relevant. If people are too stupid to install ad blockers let them waste their internet connection and time.
I figured it was a bug in the script or something. Never occurred to me it might be an advert.
No sig today...