As of Feb. 11, Google will penalize domain tasting and kiting, by blocking Google AdSense for domain names, stopping all domain tasting in its tracks for domain names that are less then five days old.
According to Domain Tools, there are partners that Google had that generated as much as $3 million dollars a month from the practice and that was after Google’s revenue share.
The results will be an increase of the income for the Google AdSense affiliates that do not use this practice.
TechCrunch says that Google’s move will not completely wipe out domain testing, because there are no shortage of alternative advertising programs for domains, but Westerdal would suggest that Google is where most domain tasters are generating revenue:
If this is the true, it is possible that a lot of registrants will end their activity, because many of them have as main activity the domain tasting/kiting.
Domain tasting is the practice of a domain name registrant using the five-day “grace period” at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated domain name to test the marketability of the domain, while domain kiting is the process of deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately re-registering it for another five-day period. This process is repeated any number of times with the end result of having the domain registered without ever actually paying for it.
In April 2006, out of 35 million registrations, only a little more than 2 million were permanent or actually purchased. By February 2007, the CEO of GoDaddy reported that of 55.1 million domain names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept.
“We have long discouraged domain kiting as a practice,” Google said in an e-mailed statement. “In order to more effectively deter it, we are launching a new domain kiting detection system. If we determine that a domain is being kited, we will not allow Google ads to appear on the site. We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web.” (Information Week)
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