Pay-Per-Click Speculation Market Soaring 149
Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that the number of web sites being opened purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google
and Yahoo
is rocketing, according to VeriSign, which runs the .com and .net domain names." From the article: "Sclavos said that the company will change the way it reports the size of its domain name business, in terms of active registrations, because of the amount of speculation going on. It will reduce the size of the reported registrations by about 2%, he said. 'Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers...The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones are returned within the five day grace period.'"
Is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont sse any news here, move along.
Re:Is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pay-per-click (Score:5, Insightful)
I read an article a while back that says that anyone who does anything purely for the purposes of making their websites show up higher on search engine results than they should are scammers. I believe it. No matter how whitehat you are, if you're trying to beat the system, you're a scammer. period.
Dumb ol' no-good-content-advertiser-based-websites.
Luke
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This may be a shameless plug for my website [christiannerds.com], but at least it's got content.
Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
That argument doesn't hold: if these "snatchers" are making money from those domain names, then they are in fact running "valid" businesses themselves. In other words, they're doing what all good businesses try to do: make money.
EricRe:My opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Flippin' burgers (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Put up a web page
2. Pray that just based on the domain name people will come
3. Profit
Yeah, I guess we know what step 2 is, but pay-per-click is pennies, and you have to do all that setup work coming up with names, hosting the site, etc. I suppose its profitable, but jeez, at what point is it just easier to get a job flipping burgers? Or maybe even a reputable IT job?
Google pay-per-click money is free only if your time is worth nothing.
Evict the Squatters (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll never get paid (Score:2, Insightful)
Crap sites yeild crap traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, Google and Yahoo will have to cull the herd (actually they do right now). They must deliver a good value compared to other kinds of advertisements. Advertisers have pulled the rug out from under the online ad market before, and they will again if they see costs for conversions going sky-high. Right now that is the trend.
Another problem is that crap websites create noise in search engine results diluting Google's core product and Yahoo's second product (their first is the myYahoo! portal).
Does Google, Yahoo, and Their Advertisers Care? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
This should be modded up (sorry, no points left) because that is exactly what would happen if there weren't any registration fee. Hell we're not far from that now with the companies who register tens of thousands of domains and park them for no reason other than to sell it to someone.