Google kills “hosted” Adsense for Domains program
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Program introduced in 2008 will be phased out.
Google is ending its Adsense for Domains program that allowed users of its online Adsense program to park their domain names.
The company recommends that customers migrate their parked domain names to a domain name parking company. A message sent to effected publishers this morning includes a link to a migration guide, although that link does not appear functional at this time. [Update: the link now works.]
Here’s how the program will wind down:
March 21: You’ll no longer be able to create new Hosted domains
April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it’ll no longer be possible to earn from them
June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts
Google launched the self-serve program in 2008, much to the chagrin of Google’s domain parking feed partners.
Initial fears by these partners were unfounded, as the self-service solution never had the muscle to compete with the third party solutions. Its optimization was basic and parking domains with it at first required changing A records and CNAME records rather than simply changing nameservers. It also had limited templates, although it later added more.
[The original headline for this article referred to "Direct Adsense for Domains" program. The "Direct" terminology is actually part of the program that remains, so I have changed the title to reflect Google's term "hosted".]
It was a joke of a parking program anyway.
I think they just set up the program to bait domainers in. Google received all of the traffic info from those domains to use to better tweak their algorithm.
Giving away all of that traffic information for pennies is a joke. Google is way too big for anyone’s good. Other than gargoogles.
buyer beware.
I recently moved my domains from Sedo to Google Adsense for Domains and easily average 2-3X what I made at Sedo.
Any recommendations for where to move my domains?
You could move your names to DomainPower.com. We will officially announce the launch of our new monetization engine in about a week, with website copy to reflect the changes to our platform from a DIY to a “we do it for you” approach. The short answer is, try it out and see how it performs vs. Google. If you have more questions, I’d be more than happy to get you in touch with one of our analysts. Email me jhett-at-domainholdings.com.
Domain Holdings Group, Inc., specializes in the acquisitions and sales of premium generic domain names, and the monetization of large domain portfolios.
I’m interested in learning more about your monetization history and goals for domain sales or acquisitions.
Domain Holdings Group, Inc. has the ability to optimize monetization with our MDE (monetization decision engine) where monetization partners compete for your traffic. The program ensures maximum yield for your domain assets and the results are constantly tracked to make adjustments and route the traffic to the highest converting offers.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. Have a great day!
Chris Waters 561-703-6620
Hi RJ,
You can move your domains to Bodis. We already have a monetization engine.
I will also guarantee to match your AFD revenue.
Matt
Spamfest
Well, I can’t say I’m sad. I parked with them for a few months, but realized I wasn’t earning much at all.
I suggest domainparking.com, in the meanwhile it works for me.