Is Google unethical in how they handle typo domains?
When you type in a wrong domain address, you are often immediately redirected to a page full of ads. Google and Yahoo (as well as sneaky domain owners) make good money off of those ads.
Google’s ad program formerly known as DomainPark currently goes by the name AdSense for Domains. If you have a good domain with no content, you can use the program to feature lucrative ads on the page.
This practiceis known as domaining, and is perfectly legal and aboveboard when used properly. You might have a great idea, have bought the domain, and not had time to populate it – so you slap some ads up and make enough click money to pay for hosting, right? The problem comes in with typo domains.
This is because the traffic to a typo domain is often misled. There are many spam-like typo traffic tactics that walk a blurry line! Typo domains which simply cash in on another domain’s fame are not totally aboveboard.
Some say a typo domain is basically the user’s mistake, similar to dialing a wrong phone number. However, when you misdial, you’re not making money for a third party, are you? Others say domain owners are not at fault – pointing to the companies who are supplying these ads. They say these companies are violating certain guidelines and policies.
The main issue is that the user who typed in a wrong domain address never really gets directed to the real page he is looking for; instead having to deal with annoying and unneeded ads which promise them the world and don’t deliver on anything except making domain owners and the search engines wealthy.
Google has endured several lawsuits, most notably the one involving Levitte International with claimants stating (among other things) that:
“Google includes millions of parked domains and error pages that have little or no content, and that result in practically zero conversions, in both its Content Network and its Search Network,” the complaint alleges. “Given the low quality of these parked domain and error pages, advertisers would not want to spend their advertising budgets on these distribution networks. However, Google designed its network in such a way that it was virtually impossible to opt out of the AdSense for Domains and/or AdSense for Errors programs.”
The complaint states that while Google allows advertisers to decide whether to place ads on Google Search, Search Network, or Content Network, there’s no setting screen that allows advertisers to opt out of the domains or errors networks.
Due to the many complaints, Google now allows most advertisers to opt out of advertising on parked domains.