In an announcement today on the official Google Adsense blog it was announced that they will be opening up and extending the Adsense feed for domains to all website publishers. This will allow anyone regardless of domain portfolio size to monetize thier domain inventory even for undeveloped domains. From the official posting:
“With AdSense for domains, users can find relevant information rather than see empty pages or “page not found” errors. Today we present ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future. To ensure positive user experience and the quality of our network, these sites are monitored for policy compliance and prohibited from using text and images designed to confuse users.”
In an interesting statement they actually say “ads on these pages convert well”. Is this Googles way of recognizing that some parked pages actually do convert users? It sounds that way to me. But for them to generalize it so much..well lets just say I dont totally agree with that. They may convert to a click ffor the publisher, but will it ultimatley convert to a sale for the advertiser? Thats the real question in my mind. SO in a war with the parking companies Google itself just became the biggest parking company of all. This is interesting to me for so many reasons. It seems they are trying to monopolize the very industry that they held in such low esteem for so long. Do No Evil? I continue to see this mantra turned on it’s nose with the passing years as Google speaks out of one side of it’s mouth saying Parking companies are bad they rip off advertisers and junk up the internet…while speaking out the otherside to say something like why dont we just shut all the competition down and become a parking company ourselves.
Whats next Google domain tasting? How about some domain kiting or warehousing? Just go ahead and snatch up t he expiring domains and push them out with your domainer ads on them. Are you also going to tweak your search algorythm to push certain domainers portfolios to the top? This would certainly increase your revenue would it not?
One domainer had this to say “I think there is a lot of upside here for everyone. Many of the parking companies are garbage anyway so those guys will probably have a lot of challenges ahead.
As for the quality parking companies I think this little shakeup is exactly what the industry needs to kick start development teams to provide better landing pages, customized features and anything to help domain owners build out parked sites.”
Is this the positive competition domain parking companies needed to get busy improving the products they offer? Or is this simply a first step towards the end of domain parking companies for the exception of Google.
Google will probably end up banning users, and tweaking rev shares and this alone may be enough to keep domainers with the high performing parking companies. Or maybe the domainers will actually show some loyalty and support for the very companies who helped them make all the money they have over the years, although i seriously doubt it.
On a positive note for parking companies it seems that so far domainers will not be able to customize, add graphics etc to the templates and pages offered by Google for Domains, and likely domainers will not be able to simply pick up the phone and get the same level of dedication and service that many parking companies offer to thier users. The only options so far seem to be picking the colors much like that of a basic adsense setup, but these options may expand as time goes on.
Only time will tell the impact this will have on the domaining industry and parking companies and Google themselves. We can only hope that 1. hundreds of people wont lose thier jobs over this 2.The internet wont become even more junked up than it is
Happy Holidays
An Update!
It appears that the feed is limited to content feed only not search. The only way thatyou get the search feed resultsis if you actually do a search. Let me know what your experiences are!
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Domain Names & SEO
Domain names are a valuable part of your business and web presence. Most of the time people tend to view domains as a branding tool and overlook the SEO potential that the right domain can deliver. Domain name selection should be considered an important part of your web strategy. Here are some things to consider when thinking about domain names and which one you choose.
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Can the user spell it? – A domain name that cannot be spelled is likely to never be found. Unless you really educate the marketplace on your new “IN†term.
Tools
You can determine a lot of the above information with some basic research tools and some common sense. To find out more about a domain and its history you can try DomainTools.com. You can find the links pointing to a domain by using a simple query in Google and Yahoo. Type in the search as follows substituting domain for your URL. link:domain.com
SEO Advantages
Ranking
When other webmasters link to your site the probability of them linking back to you with the business name or web address is pretty high. Domain names that contain the businesses keywords automatically create inbound links to your site with the keywords in the anchor text. The domain name also gives the search engines something to think about. If you choose a domain name that is relevant to your site and if it contains a keyword, then you will be that much more likely to rank for the term in the search engines. Take the following examples into consideration for a moment. This is a search breakdown for the terms on Google and Yahoo. The terms are broad search and not exact match. Notice the trend among the top ranking domain for these keywords.
Google Examples:
1. Query: Makeup
#1 Result: makeup.com
2. Query: birthday cards
#1 Result: birthdaycards.com
3. Query: action figures
#1 Result: action-figure.com
Yahoo Examples:
1. Query: Makeup
#1 Result: Sephora.com
(however look at the next few results. They are all domains that contain the keywords.)
2. Query: birthday cards
#1 Result: birthdaycards.com
3. Query: action figures
#1 Result: action-figure.com
Notice how all the top ranked sites except for makeup on Yahoo have domain names that contain the keyword we were looking for. Now this does not mean this is the case every time, but you can see a strong trend among search results that indicate the advantages of having keywords in your domains.
In the above example, a quick check of the back link anchor text shows that there are a large number of links pointing to the domain makeup.com with makeup.com as anchor text.
Even though people linked to them using the business name or domain name if you will, the domain happens to contain the very keywords they are seeking to rank for. You can check the back link anchor text for your website with this handy tool www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php. Simply type in the URL in question and let it start its search. When it is done you will have a pretty good view of how people link to your site.
Site links
In addition to the above benefits, keyword and exact match domains tend to get Google site links. Google site links as defined by Google “The links shown below some sites in our search results, called site links, are meant to help users navigate your site.†Although the exact algorithm is unknown there is some consensus on what seems to work for obtaining site links. All of the following situations can be created with the right domain name and good website structure.
In case the value of site links is not immediately obvious to you here are a couple reasons why you should want to get them.
Site links help increase your traffic and further suppress your competition by pushing them down below the fold on the search results pages. An example of this can be seen when using Google to query the term credit card. Notice how the result for the number one spot creditcardguide.com has additional links below it? Also pay attention to how it pushes down the rest of the results on this page. This is just one more way to get ahead of your competition. Not only do you want a top result, but you want the site links too.
In addition to suppressing the competition, this can lead to lowered PPC spend on some keywords. Let us assume you are bidding on the term credit card, you rank for the term credit card and you have site links. The amount you have to spend to get the same volume is much less since you have spread yourself out among the top of the search engine results page. Suppose you appear in sponsored search, organic rankings, supplemental rankings and also site links. This alone could allow you to dominate the top section of the results pages, thereby stomping the competition and vastly lowering your ad spend for said keyword, while reinforcing your brand and positioning you as a leader in the mind of the consumer.
Put Some Thought Into It
I hope you have gained a little better idea of how the right domain choice can benefit your whole business and the impact the domain can have on your traffic volume and visibility. With a little work, research, and patience you will see the fruits of your labor in web traffic & revenue, while increasing the value of your domain name and your web property.