Google Expands AdSense For Domains – Enough Already

The Google AdSense Blog announced they have begun rolling out the AdSense for Domain product to US based publishers and will continue to roll this feature out to all publishers in the future. AdSense for Domains allows publishers to place ads on domains that have not yet been developed yet, also known as parked domains. […]

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The Google AdSense Blog announced they have begun rolling out the AdSense for Domain product to US based publishers and will continue to roll this feature out to all publishers in the future. AdSense for Domains allows publishers to place ads on domains that have not yet been developed yet, also known as parked domains. Google said they would show “ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future,” on these pages.

You have to understand that AdSense for Domains, formerly known as Domain Park, is a product that has always been extremely controversial in the ad space market. Since 2005 and likely before then, Danny Sullivan has called for major reform of the product, because it delivered poor quality traffic sparked huge controversy. Not only that, we have reported lawsuit after lawsuit over the product and even with the reformed opt out feature, it still has resulted in more lawsuits.

So why did Google promise to make this available to all publishers? I think because they are getting worried about the economy and want to earn a buck anywhere and everywhere they can. Let’s look at the recent history, all in Q4 of 2008.

Again, these are only the changes we have seen to AdWords in the fourth quarter, or in the past two months and 11 days. I did not include the November quality score change that gave ads an easier time reaching the top spot above the organic results, which would likely drive more clicks on the ad and thus earn Google more money.

Do you see a pattern here?


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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