Adsense for domains rolls out

Extending AdSense for domains to all publishers

Many publishers have approached us looking for a way to monetize their domains, and today, we’re excited to announce the expansion of AdSense for domains. This product allows publishers to earn revenue through ads placed on undeveloped domains.

The product will be initially rolled out in phases to English-language AdSense publishers located in North America, and we’ll expand to additional regions and languages in the future. To check whether AdSense for domains has been enabled for your account, log in and visit your AdSense Setup tab. 

Google have finally (In North America) opened up Adsense for domains, so domains with type in traffic that you don’t have a site for that were previously idle or at best parked can now be monetised through Adsense for domains. Being in the UK it’s not an option for me at present but when it’s rolled out I’ll be keen to give it a whirl.

http://www.google.com/domainpark/

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the heads-up Scott. Hasn’t appeared on my Adsense account yet. Be interesting to see how this works. Basically, this is Google parking, right?

  2. So what’s this going to do for the likes of Namedrive who cream off a significant proportion of the ctr proceeds? It’s a no brainer if effectively google are allowing you to cut out the middleman and get a bigger cut.

    I for one will be keeping a close eye out and moving to this.

    Also would this be a stronger case for using the domain against possible DRS cases? Or used against if the search results are countering an existing TM?

    S

  3. Lively discussion going on at DNForum http://tinyurl.com/6q2l6z

  4. I can imagine that a few directors at sedo, namedrive etc are going to have a few sleepless nights about this as it effecively kills their business model.Why pay a middleman commission when you can deal direct with google.

    Its interesting that in the face of declining ad revenues and profits that google are now starting to emrace a few things they had previously considered “evil”!

  5. Indeed, and if/once they monopolise parking they will use it to squeeze profits even more.

  6. Looking at their policy for this they don’t seem to specifically stop link building unless it’s under the catch all clause

    “Publishers may not use online advertising to drive traffic to pages participating in AdSense for domains. ”

    I wonder if they may even index domains going forward, although this may be a step too far as prime generics could start to ranke really well then. Although conversley this then helps google push adwords on the “brands”.

    Definetely something I will be watching develop with interest.

  7. Am I right in saying they traditionally punished sites developed purely for Adsense. Imho the advice was always to add value to a domain and you would rank in return, whether through mini sites, or WhyPark auto generated type sites.

    It’s got me thinking that if you park a site with Google, you are fully admitting the site is parked. Therefore, in turn, it won’t rank well. Therefore you would still be better developing a domain name.

    Also, I’m presuming all Google parked pages will be Google branded, meaning the site visitor will instantly recognise its not a ‘real’ website and move on.

    It’s such an interesting development from Google. Can’t decide where it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Only time will tell I guess.

    Has anyone found a link to an example site?

  8. While I suppose this is indeed good news, I really don’t see a heck of a lot of profitability being generated by it. If you haven’t even developed the domain, or it’s parked, how are you going to get enough traffic to it to make any money?

    Justin Cook’s last blog post..What is Google’s new SearchWiki?

  9. one less thing for me to keep track of, combining income from parked and live sites into one panel.

    it will also allow people who have a minimal amount of money coming in from parked to get their money because it’s rolled in with other adsense rather than wait forever to hit the minimum payout from parking co’s.

    type in traffic won’t last anyway- once all of today’s seniors pass away, who’s going to just type in whatyouwant.com instead of googling?

    Jeff’s last blog post..Penguin Shaped Five Stage Air Purifier by Crane

  10. Domain type in traffic is certainly a huge market. But I remember reading a report a while back (can’t find it now) that this is more a US phenomenon. While uk domains can and do get significant type in traffic it is the coms that get the huge volumes. I have often wondered why that might be.

    • Probably scaled up population,what’s the UK about 60m and the USA >300m if one of my .co.uk domains gets 30 visitors per day typing it in the a (USA perceived extension) .com could be in the low hundreds.

      • I had seen a similar report and while I take the point about population differences, the type in volumes are different by factors of 30-40 rather than the 5x difference in population. I guess part of the reason for this is that a lot of other countries would also search out the com.

  11. It’s great that they have released a solution like this but I must say that I’m not really sure whether the solution will stick. I guess we’re going to see a lot of reports and tests on this in the near future.

    Mikael’s last blog post..De danske IM blogs er gået i stå

  12. The only hitch I see in this is that in order for it to be worth doing, you’d need to have a lot of domains parked this way. Not something for the small-timer.

  13. This is similar like sedo or other domain parking service ads? Depending on profits I would prefer placing it on developed domain.

    Bali Blog’s last blog post..Just for Sharing - London City

  14. I used Adsense for domains for about a month and gave up on it. The first week was good but after that my urls starting dropping out of googles listings and though people still found the parked pages the bland look of them dropped the ctr down so low that I have to quit and run back to Sedo.

    FriendTek’s last blog post..How To Start A Vending Machine Business - Vending Business Location Secrets!

    • Looks to me like it’d be better to set up a blog on it instead of just parking it. write something on it once or twice a week (or get some plr, hire somebody/ whatever) and use a theme tweaked for adsense.

      ‘course, folks with lots of domains could have a hard time with that I guess

      Selif’s last blog post..Following Successful Examples

  15. Just as an afterthought on my last comment I develop about a fifth of the domains I own and I park the rest and even though everyone says it’s best to develop them, the ones I park perform better then the developed sites, since the ctr is super high since people are not distracted by the contect and just go straight for the links.

  16. It’s great news for people who have parked domains.

    Most of the people register domain with great enthusiasm to start a website but nothing will happen. Some people will keep renewing the site.

    I believe that’s how some hosting companies make some good $$$$.

    I ‘m just wondering how publishers will market parked domain. even google.

    Dan

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