Nucite Network

Have you noticed that Google tends to sit back, watch which industries flourish online and then jumps into the market with their own solution?  It makes sense.  Given the fact that they not only control the vast majority of online searches as well as the advertisements displayed via websites (and parked domain pages), they were bound to eventually enter the paid parking space.  And now anyone with an AdSense account (and a domain they want to park) can give this new platform a try.

I do quite a bit of interaction with the AdSense platform, and figured I'd take it for a test drive with the following domains, which each get less than 100 type-ins per month:

DupageCountyLaw.com
CrackiPhone.com

My first impression of the system is that it could get confusing for many domain holders.  Rather than simply setting nameservers (like we're all used to), the AdSense platform forces you to manually alter A and CNAME records for each domain you park with this service.  If you host with someone like GoDaddy, this could be a very tedious process if you want to try it out for a couple hundred domains since they only (currently) allow you to alter one name at a time in this way.  It only take about 2 minutes once you're in the system there, but that time can add up fast in larger numbers.  On the other hand, Moniker allows you to make these changes in bulk, so those customers there will probably have a better experience.  Those are the only two registrars I tried.

Earnings predictions?  Well, I figure two things should happen:

1) Google's quality score for your domain should go up, so your value per click should rise.
2) You'll be getting 100% of your total earnings per click, so you're earnings should rise yet again.

And just a rant on #1 above: I don't understand why quality scores are so low on parked domains in the first place.  I'm involved with sites where raw type-in traffic provides conversions at rates as high as 1,000% better than organic search traffic... with proof that the type-in customer has never been to that site before (for those who quickly thought of this rebuttal).

It's tough to say at this point whether or not Google will be putting existing players in this market out of business, but it's certain to have a negative affect on the bottom line of most of them over the coming months.  Time will tell.  But if Google does what they seem to do best (analyze - improve, analyze - improve), we're sure to hear belly aching from the likes of the parking companies we're all used to working with.

I noticed that EVO Landing was up for 'Developer of the Year' for the 2008 TRAFFIC awards (which I'm looking forward to attending by the way).  So I did a little digging on them to see what sites they've developed.  I went to their web site and clicked on Network in the navigation bar.  Wow, some impressive names.  So I visited a few of the domains featured there and quickly realized they were obviously using some out-of-the-box techniques to develop these domains... as many of them have a similar look.

I personally browse with my Google Toolbar's Page Rank finder activated.  If you're not familiar, it basically just gives you the Page Rank of the page you're currently looking at.  I noticed that none of the domains had a rank.  Seemed odd, so I figured I'd do a little Google searching about a couple of the domains to see what I could find.  I personally own Spoons.net, so naturally Spoons.com sparked my interest.  So I figured I'd check that one first.  You use this query to find all of the pages Google has indexed for a given domain:

site:givendomainname.com

So I did a query for site:spoons.com.  Uh oh.  I got this dreaded response:

Your search - site:spoons.com - did not match any documents.

That's a Google banned domain ladies and gentlemen!  So I couldn't help by try a few more...

site:beef.com
site:findjobs.com
site:congas.com
site:motionpictures.com
site:motorcycling.com

All those and more - banned by Google.  Then I checked out their blog and started running the same searches for some of the domains names they list for sale on the right-hand side of that area.  Guess what - same result on many of them.

Why is this happening to them?
My guess is due to duplicate content.  The sites they're creating with these tools of theirs are full of non-original content.  Google doesn't really care much for that.  Sure, you can have some duplicate content on your site and stay in good standing with Google, but a web site that's 100% non-unique is a red flag to them... and they will ban your domain.

Now what's that domain worth?
As a developer that's been through the nightmare of getting unbanned and watching the after effects, it becomes a whole lot less valuable.  Many of the non-domainers who are spending top-dollar on domains are doing so in an effort to develop them properly and reap the benefits that a premium name can offer.  One major benefit is that domains ability to naturally rank higher in search engines given that its name is (or at leas should be) related to the topic it covers.  And given the fact that Google dominates the search space, the potential traffic on a banned domain has plummeted.  That means extra work to get Google to unban the site... and then extra time to wait for them to trust your content again.  I've seen it.  It's not a pretty process, nor is it a quick one.

Anyhow, think long and hard before you decide that your portfolio is ready to be rapidly developed using solutions like these.

Up until just a couple months ago, I was happy to pay Trellian about seventy dollars a month to use their Keyword tool.  I used it to understand how much search volume individual keywords were getting.  It was also providing me with the longer tail keyword phrases that were related to the keyword I was searching for and the approximate search volume for those long-tail terms respectively.  The obvious downside to Trellian was that their numbers didn't do much for me in respect to how much search volume a term was actually getting in a month.  However, having used that tool for quite some time, I basically knew how to read the numbers to get a feel for how valuable a given keyword was to me.  All the while I was essentially making best guesses at how much search volume Google was seeing for a given term.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool has recently made my life a whole lot easier.  A couple months back they started including monthly search volume for keywords (both averages and numbers for the past month).  All of the guess work is now gone.  Not only can I see how much search volume a term gets, I can also see how stiff the advertising competition is for that term (essentially how valuable it is) and I am provided with a list of "related terms" for that keyword.

I do all of this keyword research when I am either considering a domain name purchase or once a purchase (or joint-venture) has been made and it's time to develop.  The search volumes guide me in the right directions.  And those related terms are a quick and dirty way for me to understand how Google looks at the term(s) I'm considering.  The related terms don't do much for me in determining how valuable a domain is worth, but they do provide me with the synonyms and related topics that I should be including in the sites I'm developing.

So now I can't help but wonder if the Trellian tool will stay useful.  My guess is that it will need to evolve a bit.  It was nice to be able to use that tool to analyze monthly trends by volume, but again, the accuracy of the number just wasn't there.  Maybe they'll find new and innovative ways to work with the newly available Google data and make me a subscriber again down the road.  Good luck Trellian!

Until this happened to me, I had no idea there was such a thing.  From what I've always read, and what I've always been told, Google either bans a domain or they don't.  However, after receiving little to no traffic from Google on a damn well developed (if a do say so myself) domain, a partner of mine started asking questions.  Somehow, he got the ear of the guy who heads up the web spam team at Google.  For now, I'm not going to mention his name in this post, but a quick search or two and you'll figure out who I'm talking about.

It turns out there was a long standing penalty on the domain DVDs.com before we ever got a hold of it.  It wasn't fully banned from the search index, but it wasn't getting traffic for any term that didn't contain the text dvds.com within it.  It seems that Google was "suppressing" the results to our site.

So, again from what I'm told, this penalty has been lifted.  Now, we're about three weeks after the fact and for the past 10 days or so we've stared to get some long-tail keyword traffic from Google.  So now the question becomes How do we know if there is a Google penalty on a site?  It's easy to identify a ban, because there are no search results found for a site:domainname.com search for that domain.  And at least with a ban you can ask to get unbanned.  But a penalty baffles me.  Not only can you not identify it being there, you don't even know who to ask to remove it.

I launched DVDs.com on June 1st, 2008.  By around mid-July I started questioning my ability to create a search engine friendly site (well, not really, but I was getting damn frustrated), because we were seeing traffic increases from MSN (of curse) and Yahoo, but nothing from Google.

I'd love to hear from anyone else that's gone trough the same thing.  Then again, maybe you're going through it now and you don't even realize it.

Shortly after agreeing with the owner of Bar.com to develop his (truly amazing) domain, he came back to me with some unfortunate news - some time ago the had been banned from Google.  Given the fact that we would be expecting a great deal of search volume from them, he told me there would be no hard feelings if I opted out of development on that domain.  However, I had never seen the process of getting unbanned unfold.  So I was happy to go forward and see what would happen.

When I first got my hands on the domain it was being parked.  So rather than go to Google to ask for reconsideration at that point, we decided it would be best to first get some of the initial development complete so that they could see what our true intentions were with the domain.  So after a little development time I got a basic ecommerce solution in place with a popular affiliate that met our needs perfectly.  To the incoming visitor, the site had begun to take shape and we were ready to be reconsidered.

The request went in and the process seemed to go smoothly.  Within only a couple weeks we saw the first pages start to get indexed in Google.  It was a happy time until I soon realized that they were not fully trusting the site yet.  The total number of pages indexed for the site would jump up to hundreds or thousands one day and then plummet back to single digits the next.  The true damage that a Google ban does for a site became a harsh reality.

Oh well, let's make the best of it.  It's time to strategize on how we can get Google to respect us again.  My guess is that time (coupled with quality and evolving content) is the best medicine.