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Google to kill domain tasting (domaintools.com)
38 points by garbowza on Jan 25, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments


I really doubt this will have much of an impact on domain tasting at all. At worst, they will make slightly less money because they'll have to use an ad service that won't target ads as well as Google.

Domain tasting will be alive and well until ICANN puts a stop to it.


Exactly even if no ad network works on non permanent domains they'll still try to gauge domain value by number of visitors in the five day period.

The solution isn't even to abolish it, just make sure even a test domain costs something, even a few cents, much like the economy of SPAM you don't need to fight it by identifying SPAM just make every email you send cost a tenth of a cent.


Unlike spam this one is actually easy to stop. The registrars could just say "no more tasting" and that would be the end. There is a final authority who can stop it or make it cost something.

This has been nothing but bad for the web in general. Its time to say "no more tasting". I hope google starts a trend.


"However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads."

Who cares if nobody's able to serve the "Poop in a Can(tm)" niche anymore?

I wouldn't mind if the "Get a free iPod!" "Press the Fart Button!" "Your computer might have viruses!" etc. "niches" weren't addressed anymore


Unfortunately, the HTTP protocol supports redirects. Nice try, though.


I would vote that up, but the "unfortunately" is misplaced. Redirects are pretty darn important.


I believe there is a subtle undertone of sarcasm in the use of unfortunately. But then perhaps you are being sarcastic too. Maybe I am too. Hmm


You are correct about the sarcasm. I'm surprised the author of the article didn't realize that a domainer could easily redirect traffic from the tasted domains.


I don't know exactly what the article means when it says Google is going to "stop monetizing" domains, but I hope it means they do something serious like automatically pushing the domain to the very end of any search result unless a special "advanced" search option is given. Who wants a page which isn't likely to exist a week from now to appear in their search results anyways.


No, these pages aren't indexed anyway because they contain no useful content and Google already has a "sandbox" to penalize brand new sites.

The article is about Google ads that are placed on these tasty pages. If Google refuses to serve these ads, the tasters make less money.


Great news.




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