Google Wins The Free Parking Game
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Written By Reprise Media | May 1, 2006 | Share This
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A new article in The Washington Post highlights what many of us already know: misspelled domain names mean big bucks.
What’s interesting about the piece is its focus on Google and similar search engines as they keeping the domain money machine churning through paid advertisements.
Here’s a quick snip:
“Opinion is split on whether these type of ad pages are good or bad. Some say they are nothing more than junk pages that frustrate people. But others, including those who speculate on potential traffic of a specific domain name, argue that the pages are helping people find information related to what they’re looking for. ‘We want those pages to function as alternatives to search engines,’ said Matthew S. Bentley, chief strategy officer for Sedo, a large parking service that manages more than 1 million unused addresses placed with the Google ad network.”
Whatever you say, pal.
The article also goes on to talk about the trademark issue, and whether or not domain parking constitutes illegal activity by allowing companies to make money off of someone else’s trademark without permission:
“[David Steele, intellectual property lawyer]: ‘Trademark law is designed to protect consumers so they can quickly identify what they want and get it. If everyone has to spend a whole bunch of time wading through all this lookalike crap online, then the value for Internet consumers is going to be seriously reduced.”
Read the rest here and rubberneck as Digg users debate the pros and cons of parked domains.
Related in Searchviews: adtech New York 2005: Trademarks & Search Ads
Topics: Advertising: Distribution |
I wanted to register my own website lacey.co.uk only to find Mohammed Zaffir has it already. How can Zaffir claim my Name? Seems wrong to me. I would not expect to be able to claim someone elses name.
Domains like http://www.ethanolchina.com and http://ethanolfuelproducers.com are being used for advertising, instead of hosting new original content.
These websites offer tageted information links to its viewers, and drives traffic to the websites who pay the advertsing bills. Since the advertiser would not have recieved that traffic if the parked page did not exist, I believe it is a positive system.
Just my 2cents.
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