Analyst predicts decrease in parked domain names.
Credit Suisse Internet technology analyst Philip Winslow predicts domain name parking will become less profitable, leading to a drop in domain registrations, reports financial publication Barron’s.
According to the Barron’s article:
To wit, some enterprising folks will sign up tons of temporary, or “parked†Web sites, to drive keyword search results to their pages and collect an ad fee they split with Google. Google’s cracking down on that practice, notes Winslow, in an effort to weed out what are called “link farms,†pages set up to milk Google’s ads while offering no real content for Web users.
And as that happens, it could reduce the practice of registering those opportunistic Web sites, which would reduce overall domain registration, which would affect VeriSign’s [NASDAQ: VRSN] growth, writes Winslow.
Although I hardly view parked pages at temporary, the general belief here is likely true. I haven’t talked to a domain owner recently who reports an increase in parking earnings. There are a number of factors conbributing to this, including “parking page blindness” (which I’ll write about soon) and changes at ad providers such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). As certain domains no longer cover their renewal cost, they will likely be dropped.
Will this hurt VeriSign? Sure it will. It collects $6.42 from each .com registration. But domain growth will continue, even if it’s at a slower rate. And VeriSign can jack up its .com prices another 7% this year. It also has a built-in monopoly. Although I don’t like the monopoly, I don’t think VeriSign’s registry business will be hurting anytime soon.
According to the Barron’s article, Winslow blames other factors for lowering his estimates on VeriSign.
Damir says
I do not think that the parking of domains will decrease in fact I know that many more domainers which are starting out leave their registered domains parked.
Domain name investing is a global business so the best pay per click parking company’s generating the highest revenue and paying the domain owner the best parked revenue will last the test of time and the others will fold (became history).
Many one word domain names which are parked do generate type in traffic so if the domain name owners of those domain names get up their parked pages with google and yahoo video and other ads (especially mobile content) will never lose anything.
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
ss says
I don’t think the recent killing of parking arbitrage is going to have a dramatic drop on domain registrations. A lot of arbitragers were only using the cheap .info’s anyway. The parking arbitrage game was not played by that many.
Although it will likely have impacted Yahoo and Google’s ad revenue numbers.
Chris says
I don’t know about you guys, but *everyone I know has experienced a severe drop in revenue from parked pages, Adsense, and YPN.
I do admit, however, that parking domains is nothing more than utter laziness. If you visit the forums, you’ll find hundreds of domainers who check their stats every 15 minutes, spend hours every month tweaking their keywords, and then spend hours more on the forums complaining or asking questions about their CTR and CPC.
When you ask this group about why they don’t “develop” – they’ll all cry out: “We don’t have the time! – It’s not feasible! – I have too many domains! – You can’t manage it!”
Holy cow. Who is kidding who?
Andrew says
@ SS – I agree. Did I suggest arbitrage would have an effect? Didn’t mean to.
@ Chris – that’s funny. I find myself checking stats all the time too. I should just be developing my next site…
ss says
Hey, Andrew I was referring to the quote by the analyst in the Barron’s article you posted. He is suggesting it will have an effect.
Andrew says
@ SS – thanks…I reread my article and was confused.
Bob says
Parking companies must change or die a slow and painful death, the engines are getting smarter a page filled with ppc links will not cut it in 2010.
Stephen Douglas says
I like Chris’ logic about constantly checking parking page stats versus just building out your websites to something decent. However, Chris probably only owns a 100 domains. Ask someone like myself with almost 4000 domains why we park our domains and check our stats.
Luckily, I’m building out some of my domains, and selling a lot of my smaller niche generic domains. If anyone is interested in getting some good deals on premium generics, they know where to find me!
Stephen Douglas
Successful Domain Management™
BLOG: http://www.Successclick.com
DomainRelevance.com
“Own Your Competition™”
Chris says
@Stephen –
That’s a fair assumption. Actually, we own almost 2000 domain names (and we are trimming as well) – so you do have significantly more names than we do.
Make no mistake, we do park a lot of our names – but it keeps me awake at night!
spearmind says
I wouldnt buy any bank shares at this time and I have a very clear opinion about analysts who tell you what shares to buy while working for a job. Where have been all these analysts before the crash in 2000? Placing news here and there has no substance. Domain Parking: Strong Buy. It brings advertisers real income and topic interested audience. Transparency and opt out for advertiser? Very good. Companies will learn more and more to appreciate real domainers.