In a nutshell, the link between domains and advertising is google domain parkingwhich, in turn, is a method of making money from domain names. I am sure we have all seen those web pages that shows a sign that says ‘under construction’ – well, there is even an industry that has grown up around this simple concept: retro road works’ signs! That, however, is the simplest example of google domain parking– usually the sign is placed on the owner’s website until the owner gets around to completing the website.
Protecting the Domain Name
Another reason for registering, but not using, a domain name is to protect the domain name: i.e. purchasing a series of the domain name extensions to prevent an opportunist sliding in and ‘poaching’ the goodwill of a successful company. Basically, if a successful website is using the ‘.co.uk’ domain extension and fails to register their company name with the rest of the popular domain extensions in the series – such as ‘.com; .biz; .org; .info’ amongst others – then there is nothing to stop somebody else coming along and using that successful name with one of the other extension: this is not illegal, just immoral!
Contextual Advertising
An astute business owner is not going to leave a source of income untapped for long – and google domain parkingis an effective source of income for the domain owner. Placing contextual advertisements on your unused website can bring in a regular revenue source. A series of advertisements are presented on the parked domain and, whenever somebody comes along and clicks on one of the links, the domain owner gets paid – a certain amount of money per click.
The revenue source of any website is visitors who convert into customers and, whether you have an active website or whether you have parked your domain, the same is true: how do you attract visitors? The longer a website is online, the better chance you have of visitors. Unfortunately, if domain registration is new then the chances are that, without online history, it will be ignored by the search engines. We are not far off a Catch 22 situation here – if your website is not recognized by the search engines it will not show up as being listed so potential visitors will not be able to type your URL directly into their browser. Naturally, there are ways around this or there wouldn’t be such a demand for domain name parking.
Targeted Traffic
In order to get sufficient revenue generated from their domain name parking, ‘domainers’ as they are called, look for certain kinds of domains to buy up. Domains that have been allowed to expire are always popular as they have been around long enough for the search engines to recognize them and have them listed. These dropped domains have sufficient Google history to be useful as well as having a regular supply of ‘typed in’ traffic – previous visitors to the domain. In fact, these expired domains are so sought after that a recent report suggests that many of the better domains are snapped up and re registered within 10 seconds of the original domain expiry.