Google AdWords Parked Domain Ads
Do you remember the last time you made a typo when you wanted to visit your favorite site? You probably entered a site that was filled with advertisements and auto-installers of the Google Toolbar.
Google actually supports these irritating sites as they probably generate a lot of advertising Dollars for Google. There is no specific content found on the site so what’s your next step? Right, you either click one of the links or leave the site by typing the correct url. The term Google uses for these sites is “Parked domain sites“. The advertisements are called “Domain Ads“ and will also appear in your Google AdWords reports as “Domain Ads“. Two example sites:
ht
tp://wwwyourtube.com/
http://www.madonnashop.nl
Interestingly, when creating a Placement report in Google AdWords, the URL’s of these Domain Ads are hidden. They simply show as “Domain Ads” in your report. I think Google does this as these Domain Ads or are highly lucrative and they know advertisers will add negative sites to their campaign or even stop advertising on the Content Network when they notice their Dollars are being spent on these sites.
In this screenshot you see that Domain Ads have a very high CTR.
As far as I know it’s not possible to create a site exclusion to exclude Domain Ads. Stop fooling us, Google!
October 12th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Interesting article, I do not get why anyone would want to advertise on parked domains. I did some search online and noticed this interesting discussion at SearchEngineWatch: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=15494
October 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Hi,
we call this sites “spam domains”. We’ve found many of those domains similar to our domainname - or also old canceled websites.
We noticed that nearly all visitors from the “Google Content Network” are not interested in our products. And they came all from those Spam Domains. This is a very good way to lost money….
Best regards from Germany,
Florian
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:42 pm
It would be rather useful for advertisers to see on which parked domain sites their ads are appearing, so they can try to have their lawyers close down those websites. But unfortunately, Google supports the existance of these domains by not throwing these webmasters out of their Adsense programme.
So, what is the next step? Will search engines use their browser toolbars to redirect a user to an own page stuffed with ads for non-registerred or even parked domains, so they don’t have to share the CPC revenue?