Ok, first and foremost and as Ive been posting recently, Google have recently been playing hardball in the domaining arena. They have been banning domainers, domains, closing the AFD application process, killing sub-sub syndication deals (most notably ASK - which Ive now had confirmed from the horses mouth), reducing revenue shares for partners and not appointing a new head of their domain channel. All of which points to them not believing the domain channel is something thats for them in the future. The reason for their apathy is open to debate, though one doubtless reason is because they have the monopoly in sponsored search.
Source: Julia Mackenzie
This is much bigger than ASK. Time will reveal more.
Sahar
This could be a blessing in disguise.
Google giving up on the domain channel would finally force domainers to come together and find a new solution for monetization of all that traffic.
They may look at domainers as a vehicle, meaning they have used us to help them gain popularity and sales, but the flip side is they see us as competition. They have historically used us to further their own means but now may believe it is time to put us in check, so as to keep us from becoming a formidable force to contend with.
On the other hand, if they did kill the domain channel, they would have to deal with the Yahoo/Microsoft/Domainers combo that could possibly really pack a punch and give them a run for their money.
I don’t really know - it’s just speculation.
Google is not killing the domain channel! But they are making it much more difficult to actually obtain a feed. You can get a feed very easily, if you know who to talk to and if you have a substantial amount of traffic. Google is aware of how valuable the real domain traffic is, but they are tired of policing all of the different parking companies networks. You take all of the real domain traffic and then you mix it will all the click fraud and arbitrage crap out there and you see where the real problem lies. On top of that they have a TON of first party traffic. They do not NEED our traffic as much as Yahoo does. Yahoo does not have enough first party traffic to spend the daily budgets of there advertisers. Google does not have this problem so they can push back on domainers all they want and they know that they will still be able to survive. Add to the fact that internationally they are the only game in town and you see why they do the things they do.
B
I simply don’t understand the problem, especially with the recent Microsoft/Google situation. If Google wants to sacrifice millions per month in search revenue, then I’m sure there are tons of networks and advertisers who would love to pay for the consumer attention going to these domains. And by these domains I mean all of them: generic, typo, trademark, and the like. The smart advertiser doesn’t move to shut down the domain channel, even TMs. They instead make a move to take advantage of these eyes and operate in the competitive environment that we’ve built this entire industry on.
I totally agree with you btothec.
Can we all boycott Google and move to Yahoo? I guess this is a question where domaineer will not consider doing it. I’m one of them.
What other options do we have?
Regards,
Emil
Obviously my article originally so i wont comment on that.
My take on the situation is that, with Google now doing a mass clean out of MFA sites and MFA providers, they are setting their stall out as the “clean” ad network. By the time Yahoosoft / MicroHoo roll out their platform its likely to be full of arbitragers, cruddy domains and bad traffic - all of which will damage any new ad network they try and sell to the advertisers..
J
There is a lot of “bad” traffic in the domain channel. The domain channel also contains some of the best of the best traffic. Google has done an extremely good job of keeping the quality in check; Yahoo has not. Because of this, all of Yahoo’s syndicated traffic is undervalued.
Julia, what the hell is MFA? Is the United Press International’s web site MFA, because it sure looks like it — http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/02/10/space_mission_postponed/9889/
This has absolutely nothing to do with how a web site looks. It has to do with traffic quality. Traffic quality is measured only by numbers. Google’s “MFA” crackdown was nothing of the sort; it was an arbitrage crackdown.
Just read your post, Julia. Whypark is basically a website auto-generator. This is the same thing Blackhat SEO’s use to build gigantic networks of websites. Nothing wrong or illegal about this, but as far as Google is concerned it is just spam. Blackhat SEO’s have been having their Adsense accounts banned for years now.