Article calls parked domains parasitic, but doesn’t explore the alternative.
In a recent article at Times Online, Jonathan Weber says that parked pages, by their definition, are parasitic:
If you type in “debts.com” for example, you get a site filled with nothing but paid links to other sites. Presumably, this is not what someone going to that page is looking for, but it’s a nice business for the domain owner.
It seems peculiar and unjust that so much money could be made by taking advantage of people’s clumsiness in finding what they are looking for on the web. Sites that exist only to generate pay-per-click revenues from people looking for something else are parasitic by definition; they interfere with the process of finding information, and take money out of the pockets of real information providers. There’s no way to know how big a drain this is on the internet economy, but my guess is that it’s not trivial.
Hmmm. I suppose it may be better if there were a true, content rich site at the domain rather than a parking page. But if there were no parking page, there would be nothing. Just because all of the links are paid ads doesn’t mean they aren’t relevant. I’d rather see a page full of highly targeted ads than a page full of nothing.
In fact, I used to search at the GoTo.com search engine even though all of the search results were ads — Especially when I was looking to buy something. I find paid search results more relevant than organic search results much of the time. Someone is actually paying for those clicks, and you can rest assured they’d yank their ad if the traffic it receive wasn’t relevant.
DR.DOMAIN says
Some OLD MEDIA clown who is clueless.
M. Menius says
Dr. Domain summed it up. “Journalism”, as a craft, has been replaced by tabloid-type writers … uninformed individuals trying to pass off their agenda/opinion as useful insight. There has always existed a kind of ignorant class warfare in which wealthy people were unduly scorned. Today, domain investors deal with the same misplaced sentiment and petty envy. Parking pages get unjustified bad press and legit domainers get mislabeled as cybersquatters.
On a good note, “trademark enforcers” who typically went after cybersquatters are now offering brokerage and partnerships to generic domain name holders. They know the inherent value of nice quality domains and realize they cannot take them away.
Roger Collins says
Agreed, the author failed to show any problem in this quote. A parked page is not worse than nothing. In fact, I’ve said that a parked page is somewhat a killer app. It optimally gets visitors to where they are most valued by publishers. The simple parked page is more popular than portals, blogs, forums, etc. by number of sites published. That’s not just because they are simple.
However, if we consider the average wanna-be-publisher looking for a domain name for his or her new website, we discover a genuine inefficiency of this system. Wanna-be-publishers who value a parked domain more than the current owner reasonably values the domain cannot usually acquire the domain name in a reasonably easy way.
The beauty of this problem is the solution. Domainers mitigate this inefficiency and make their businesses more profitable when they make it easy for someone else to buy their domains.
Andrew says
Well said, Roger
Dave Starr --- ROI Guy says
very well thought out rebuttle. Most of the folks who compmain about folks monetizing parked pages seem to be secretly nursing a grudge that the domain isn’t instatly available to them … they didn’t think of it first.
I am a firm believer that relevant advertising leads many people to the place they wanted to be … and the profits of the online advertising services seem to bear me out … if ads were no good, why would people click?
The debts.com example is excellent. Why would someone be looking for “debts” itself … they want more of them? of course not … they are looking for statitics on debt, how to get out of debt, how people got into debt, what the governement is doing about debts, etc. So a page that leads them to these sorts of content is “bad”? Hardly. And for those who still insist such sites are “parasitic”? easy solution … buy the site and make more from it that the current owner is netting … if a parked site is not living up to it’s “highest and best” purpose, then as my old freind Jean Luc always said, “Make it so!”
Steve M. says
A critical point that the author’s missing, just as so many others do (and which you illustrate well by pointing out the great value that was GoTo.com), is that relevant, targeted advertising is at least as valuable as non-commercial content.
We see this with our own phone books…where at least half the value of such print “information vehicles” is in the commercial “yellow” pages.
Bottom line: Like it or not, advertising IS content.