First echos felt of rough transition from Yahoo to Microsoft for pay-per-click listings.
Local.com has warned that its fourth quarter revenue will come in below expectations thanks to the transition of Yahoo pay-per-click to Microsoft.
People who park domain names with Yahoo partners are reporting some fluctuations in revenue since the transition a couple months ago, which is part of a partnership. In an email to clients yesterday, WhyPark noted that its parent company Yahoo had to completely revamp its keyword system in order to optimize for Microsoft.
Bing handles keywords differently than Yahoo used to. At Yahoo, for example, “world map,” “world maps,” “a world map,” and other variations were all essentially the same term with the same set of advertisers. In Bing land, those are different terms with different advertisers, and some versions of that term may pay better than others.
Our parent company, Parked.com worked tirelessly to figure out how things work at Bing to yield the highest revenue.
I’ve also heard from domainers that lower quality traffic is performing much worse on Bing than it was with Yahoo. Clients with higher quality traffic haven’t been penalized as much.
Mario Felipe Goncalves De La Montana says
I disagree.
All levels of quality have been affected, even prime one word category killers, the cream of the crop have been affected.
Bing has destroyed Yahoo . Anyone telling you otherwise is fudging because they don’t want to admit they have taken a fall.
I’ve looked at some large portfolios, including mine, and talked to others that have substantial portfolios, and all have taken a brass knuckle punch to the teeth.
I’d like to see some big players chip in here and say otherwise, but I doubt you’ll see anyone not anonymous posting counter what I say.
Bing has caused mass destruction and the parking realm will never be the same.
Rob Sequin says
Did anyone really think that Microsoft would do it better than Yahoo?
If so, then you are stupid and not a student of history.
When has Microsoft done anything better, even with it’s own products?
Microsoft couldn’t care less about the domain parking business… ad revenue from advertisers sure but little old domainers? Please.
You think Microsoft needs your domains or any of the Yahoo ad feed PPC providers???
Prediction: ALL yahoo feed providers will migrate away, evolve or close up business. I can only imagine the lousy customer service from Microsoft behind the lousy ad feed service MS provides.
Yikes! Run away.
kandyjet says
imo, bodies pay the highest rates for parking currently imo. Name drive too. same domains that perform well with bodies and namedrive has shown very poor earnings with parked.
WQ says
All domains being affected. Earnings down around 20% with parked.com even on premium generics.
Time to make a move again and try something new.
MA says
Andrew:
Does Marchex use Yahoo’s feed as well?
Andrew Allemann says
@ MA – I’m pretty sure. They were in 2008:
https://domainnamewire.com/2008/02/15/marchex-reduces-dependency-on-yahoo/
MA says
Thanks Andrew. Dug up the 10K for 2009 and their revenue from Yahoo was only 11% which was surprising because 58% of their total revenues came from outside partners including Yahoo.
Andrew Allemann says
@ MA – perhaps a bigger hit to the company over the past year is the loss of Yahoo paid inclusion, which generated a lot of revenue for them.
J says
I noticed fluctuation in Why Park ad clicks. Thx Bing and Yahoo change actually improved ad clicks. Domainn apps also helped me to score good clicks.
On the opposing side, I have poor performing days with penny clicks.
Solution: Use Web Directories to offset low ad revenue.
Stephen Douglas says
Throw Parked.com and Whypark.com into this argument too, and I’ll agree with the assumption. My earnings dropped 70% in the first two months. I am confident that will change very soon, so i’m not sweating it.
Tony Cochran says
@Rob Sequin – I understand your feelings in the context of the current discussion, but Microsoft certainly does a lot of things “better”.
I’m not a professional domainer, but interested in knowing if any of you that are have tried using AdSense for Domains?
Bo says
Parked.com & AdSense are both way down. The only advantage for AdSense is the totals combine with the content AdSense for quicker payment.