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.'"

Comments

That's a problem?

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:That's a problem?

[STrinity]

Slashdot has ads? One of these days I need to disable Privoxy, Adblock, and my Hosts file and browse the web like a normal person.

Re:That's a problem?

[MindStalker]

How bout this, Virtual tasting. You can have adsence ads for the 5 days, BUT you don't receive any real money and the advertisers aren't charged. This way you can know how successful the domain might be, without occurring actual ad revenue.

Re:That's a problem?

[Dun Malg]

Slashdot has ads? One of these days I need to disable Privoxy, Adblock, and my Hosts file and browse the web like a normal person. For the last few weeks I thought there was a bug of some sort in Slashdot's fancy "New Discussion System". I'd expand an abbreviated post and there'd be this funny white space inserted between it and the next post, like there was an additional nested reply that wasn't getting displayed. It wasn't until I checked out something on Slashdot from a friend's computer that I realized that the blank space is supposed to contain a banner ad! Now I'm thinking I don't like their New Discussion System so much.

Re:That's a problem?

[ContractualObligatio]

Yup, same here.

I promptly switched off the "I'm willing to test the new discussion system" flag. If they implement it, I'll stop using Slashdot.

Suggestion - post to this thread if you think likewise, and we can take an opportunity to express displeasure at screwing up a discussion system due to an utterly misguided attempt at threading adverts in amongst our own posts.

Re:That's a problem?

[coolGuyZak]

I'd be careful. the last time I mentioned this, I was modded into oblivion.

In any case, it's severely obnoxious. I'm stunned that the admins/editors/whatever. could consider this idea worthwhile, given how often we rail against similar behavior on other sites.

Re:That's a problem?

[mollymoo]

Because $0.005 per page is too much to pay I guess. Seriously, just fucking subscribe if you don't want to see the ads. It's cheap, the layout works better and you're not freeloading.

Re:That's a problem?

[Rich0]

I probably wouldn't mind the new discussion system so much if it weren't so broken on konqueror.

I'm sorry - I shouldn't need to use a specific web browser to view a particular website. Especially when my browser is one of the first to have been acid2 compliant...

Tasting parasites

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

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.

Re:Tasting parasites

[Firethorn]

Well, imagine that you're a company/person contracted to build a website for XYZ Company. You come up with a dozen or so potential domain names, 'tasting' them in order to make sure they're available(without tying them up for a full year, or spending the money to register them for a year). You then present the domain names to the company, which picks the one they like the best, maybe one other for a redirect. You then release the other four and call it a day.

Make sense that way. Abusers, of course, were not initially considered.

Re:Tasting parasites

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, there should be the option to "conditionally" purchase a name. You get a 5 day grace period, but the name cannot be associated any DNS records.

This would give you the ability to grab the names for the client to consider, but not allow people to set up these link farms unless they actually shell out the money to outright purchase the name.

Re:Tasting parasites

[Anpheus]

Way to ignore his points. On another note, tomorrow I'm off to buy lottery tickets with my credit card.

Domain Tasting?

[El Torico]

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?

Why is Domain Tasting "Evil"

[webword]

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.

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 .com and .net domain names were the result of domain tasting." (Information Week)

Google's doing this to protect users who get to these sites on accident. I guess it's good for everyone.

They should close it down alltogether

[broothal]

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.

Re:What do you want to do about it?

[base3]

I use the Firefox CustomizeGoogle plugin to filter linkfarms (e.g. *.info/*) and cloakers (e.g. experts exchange, O'Reilly Safari). I've no affiliation, just posting because this sounds like what you want.