Domain Parking by Google

Google has announced they will be offering Google Adsense for Domains. This has many domaineers speculating on which way the market will be going in 2009.

The service will be competing with established domain parking which use Google’s ad network to monetize the domains. The Google Adsense for Domains program might have found the best time to make an entrance as domain investors have seen revenue shrink this year. The majority opinion is that by using Google directly to park domains the middleman (parking company) is cut out and the slices of the advertising pie will become larger. Google doesn’t say what percentage of the advertising will be paid the domains owner, but neither does the currents parking companies.

The idea that an advertising network like Google’s would start a parking company shouldn’t surprise many people. There have been rumors that Yahoo was going to do the same thing circulating shortly before Microsoft started making a play to buy them. One of the reasons I suspect the advertising network’s parking venture is they can have more control over the quality of domains their ads will be displayed on and that they could control click fraud better than the parking companies.

One thing that Google should consider as they start with the Adsense for Domains is limit enrollment from publishers from some parts of the globe. Non US publishers are the largest demographic that commits click fraud, browser hijacking, installing malicious scripts and other black hat trickery. If the service starts out with this type abuse it wouldn’t take long for advertisers to walk away from Adsense for Domains.

Where does this leave domain parking companies as we close out 2008? Most will be standing a shaky ground and here are five reasons:

• Their main source of advertising and income has now become their competitor.
• The industry has very little government oversight in the industry and there is very little transparency when dealing with a parking company. Both open the door for fraud and abuse by the parking company.
• Now that Google started into domain parking it’s just a matter of time before Yahoo, MSN, Ask and others will be offering domain parking direct from the network
• New tools that are easy and fast to deploy are coming to market that will more domain investors will over parking companies.
• A company the size of Google has enough cash to put parking companies out of business in a 18 month cycle.

The year 2009 shows a lot of promise for a domain investor. To see a giant little Google entertaining the parking market will lead to more competition and a larger portion of advertising revenue going to the domains owner to keep them as partners.

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