GoDaddy Tests Parking Pages on 404 Pages

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

GoDaddy tries monetizing error pages with parked pages, but will discontinue practice.

GoDaddy is concluding a test in which it ran parked domain name ads on error pages of its customers free hosting accounts. The tests were limited and only showed the ads on non-existent pages of sites that used GoDaddy’s free, ad-supported service.

Interestingly, the ads were not part of GoDaddy’s feed but instead a full landing page served by DomainSponsor.

In the example below, the error page has GoDaddy’s standard ads at the top, followed by an error message and then a complete DomainSponsor landing page at the bottom:

A GoDaddy spokesperson provided the following explanation to Domain Name Wire:

Go Daddy has some hosted Web sites using ad placement on 404 pages. This applies only to specific, free ad-supported hosting accounts. This was a test we conducted and are phasing it out.

I’m somewhat surprised this was allowed, given that Google (ad network for DomainSponsor) clearly buckets parked page traffic. Although Google does offer error page feeds, these are typically provided to ISPs and computer companies to serve landing pages on non-existent domain names. Perhaps this doesn’t matter because parked pages also serve up ads on non existent URLs, such as domainname.com/something.

DomainSponsor representatives were not available for comment at the time of writing.

Thanks Elliot for the tip.

Further Reading:

  1. GoDaddy throws hat into domain parking ring
  2. Frank Schilling Tests New Domain Parking Templates
  3. Parked Pages Differ in Load Time

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2 Comments » - Posted in Domain Registrars by

Comments

  1. MD
    November 4th, 2008 | 8:49 pm

    Interesting. I know it’s possible to opt-out on error pages as an Adwords advertiser. Wonder if Godaddy discontinued it because of complaints or just lousy results.. I get a feeling this business is getting a little “hollow out”.

  2. Andrew
    November 4th, 2008 | 8:55 pm

    MD – this wouldn’t have qualified as an “error page” as Google sees it, since it has a separate program for error pages.

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