AdSense For Domains Opt Out Coming To AdWords Advertisers

Aug 3, 2007 at 8:55am ET by Barry Schwartz

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has said they will be allowing AdWords advertisers to opt out of the AdSense for Domains product.

I quoted AdWordsAdvisors2 from a WebmasterWorld thread as saying:

We are working on making it simpler for advertisers who don’t want to show on domain sites or error pages to exclude them.

AdSense for Domains, also known as DomainPark, is a product of much controversy. Google places ads from AdWords campaigns on parked domains and match the relevancy of those ads based on the words found in the domain name of the site. In fact, Google was sued for trademark and typosquatting for ads being displayed on typosquatter’s domains.

On the advertiser side, many feel that AdSense For Domains does not give them the return on investment that they are expect. They have been asking Google for choice over if they want their ads to be shown on parked domain sites or not.

It now appears that Google is working toward providing that choice. I currently do not have an expected date of completion for this feature. Note From Danny: It’s important to understand that some people think they’ve opted out of AdSense For Domains if they opt out of contextual ads altogether. Not so. Do that, and you’re opted out of paid links on parked domains that people browse and find, by clicking. But if someone does an actual search there (search boxes are almost always provided), then you’ll get traffic from parked domains that way, if you’re accepting traffic from the search network. It’s confusing and one reason why I’ve long wanted Google to make AdSense For Domains an entirely separate purchase.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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7 COMMENTS ON AdSense For Domains Opt Out Coming To AdWords Advertisers

AndrewGoodman, August 3rd, 2007 at 10:27 am ET:

They were “working on” this one year ago too. We’ll be looking forward to a formal announcement and feature release. Both Yahoo and Google still include too many non-search sources in the explicitly “search” side of their ad platforms, making it difficult or impossible to opt out or exclude sources as you would do in the content programs.

AP, August 3rd, 2007 at 10:43 am ET:

Good! Now the GOOG needs to allow advertisers to opt out of the ‘expanded match’ feature of broad matched terms.

Spincenter, August 3rd, 2007 at 10:44 am ET:

This change can’t come soon enough. Although Google insists that “parked domain sites typically convert at rates equal to that of search and content pages,” I’m seeing conversion costs 3 times higher than elsewhere in the content network.

AP, August 3rd, 2007 at 10:52 am ET:

Good! Now the GOOG needs to allow advertisers to opt out of the ‘expanded match’ feature of broad matched terms.

Melissa, August 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 am ET:

In addition to an opt-out for domain traffic, I’d like to see a separate bidding option like we currently have for content. We should have at least 3 separate bid options: Google traffic, “other” search traffic (including domains and error pages), and content. Breaking it down even further than this would be great, but at least this would be a start. Sometimes domain traffic performs, but at a different level than Google-driven search, and I hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater if I don’t have to.

Melissa

crimsongirl, August 3rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm ET:

Hmmm, that’s funny because the same AdWordsAdvisors2 poster mentioned back in December that advertisers could opt out of search network sites. This was in response to a comment that a Google rep supposedly made at SES Chicago. When some of us scoffed, the other Google rep at webmasterworld, AdWordsAdvisors, came in and clarified that the exclusion was available only for AdSense for Domains sites.

But even that isn’t true, at least in my experience. I’ve been trying to exclude sites since December and still get clicks. Many big companies operate this way: keep their people in the dark so that when they talk to customers they believe what they are saying. Meanwhile, we lose thousands of dollars (no exaggeration) every month to AdSense for Domains sites.

webwagon, August 5th, 2007 at 4:57 pm ET:

It’s about time they did this, if it was costing them $. They would have sorted it out long ago

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