Domain tasting - just what will they think of next …
I came across this interesting article yesterday on Yahoo News saying that Google will change its AdSense policy to not allow domain tasters to make money via the AdSense system. I was not really familiar with the concept of ‘domain tasting’, and since I got the impression that this was a pretty important change on Google’s part I decided to look further into the matter and see what this was all about.
So, what exactly is domain tasting?
It turns out that when you purchase a new domain name there is a grace period of 5 days during which you can go back to the registrar from which you purchased the domain, and get back a full refund for the price you paid for the domain, should you choose not to keep it.
Sounds innocent enough … however, there are plenty of people and companies out there who figured out that this policy is actually a big loophole that allows them to make some money. What do they do? They register all kinds of domains that they really have no intention of using for a business or for a real purpose (such as adding meaningful content), fill up the pages with ads (mainly Google AdSense), and then wait for people to stumble across those domains and hopefully click on some ads. To give you an idea of the extent of this practice, here’s a statistic from the CEO of GoDaddy, one of the biggest registrars out there: by February 2007, out of 55.1 million domain names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept.
If the domain tasters see a good stream of ad revenue coming in during this 5 day grace period, they keep the domain. Otherwise, they go back to the registrar, get their refund, and go ‘taste’ another domain … thus the name ‘domain tasting’. Domains that are usually successful in this scheme are expired domains that still have links in the search indexes, domains for misspelled products and so on - you get the idea.
What I didn’t really understand is why would Google allow AdSense to be used on such domains to begin with. I know that when you initially get an AdSense account Google is pretty good about checking the domain, making sure it’s valid and so on. However, once you do have a Google AdSense account, it’s much easier to use AdSense ads for that account on new websites. According to this answer in the Google AdSense FAQ it’s quite simple to add new sites to an existing Google AdSense account, much simpler apparently than it is to actually open an AdSense account to begin with.
So, as part of this change in its policies, Google will simply not serve AdSense ads on such sites that were registered for less than 5 days.
I applaud this change on Google’s part. Since domain tasters rely heavily on AdSense ads to make their money during this grace period I think that this change could bring the practice to a halt. This would mean that the rest of us might actually be able to find a decent domain name when looking for one, not to mention that hopefully a great number of ad-filled junk domains will simply go away. By stopping this practice Google is willingly saying ‘no’ to part of its ad income (keep in mind that Google gets paid from its advertisers for all those ads displayed on such domains) so I’m glad they’re doing something positive with the great power they have over how we use the Internet.
Filed under: Computers
