Comments on: Google Domain Parking Arbitrage

By: Pure Visibility - Own Page One » The AdWords Content Network: Worth Your Time?

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:34:43 +0000

[...] engines in order to increase its span, many of which are undoubtedly far less trustworthy. Recent SEO discussion focuses on the inclusion within the Network of many “Arbitrage” domains, those that bid on [...]

By: social media site » Social Marketing News :: - Search Engine Optimization - the Facts

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:06:55 +0000

[...] regarding Andy Beal’s opinion on Arbitrage 1.0 being junk: If you take someone searching on a broad term and funnel them to something more [...]

By: Astralis

Astralis — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:25:13 +0000

Looks like you’re going to get your wish.

On June 1st Google will ban arbitrage and MFA sites.

http://www.jensense.com/archives/2007/05/google_adsense_16.html

By: praesidentin.de

praesidentin.de — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:33:30 +0000

Leckt mich doch

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:43:05 +0000

No real need to run ads on the Search Network?

I would advise NOT to disable the Search Network as Ask, AOL, & other partners (CSE’s, Buy.com, etc) can generate a significant volume of Traffic & Conversions.

By: Jeremy Luebke

Jeremy Luebke — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:15:19 +0000

Let’s just say I have extensive knowledge experience with arbitrage and their websites pop up all the time. They are one of the largest players out there.

And where else are they going to drive that much traffic to have that alexa rank? It’s not through bookmarks or repeat visits and they don’t rank for much.

By: Richard Ball

Richard Ball — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:50:45 +0000

How do you know their traffic is from PPC?

By: Jeremy Luebke

Jeremy Luebke — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:31:17 +0000

I wouldn’t call what they do click fraud.

At least 90% of their traffic (I think more like 99%) is coming from PPC. They are bidding on terms on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others to drive traffic to these pages as cheaply as possible and then sending you the expensive clicks.

Arbitrage and click fraud are 2 different things.

By: Richard Ball

Richard Ball — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:28:59 +0000

Thanks, Jeremy, for publishing this story. It’s important that people understand what’s happening on the AdWords Search network. Interesting insight on the source of the traffic. Why do you think it’s from arbitrage?

Something puzzles me. Look at an Alexa chart for information.com for the past year. There’s a spike in rank from ~600 to ~200 in March 2006. Currently the site has an Alexa rank of 166. But, if you look at the details, 91% of that traffic is on the searchportal.information.com subdomain. Huh?! That tells me there’s a whole heck of a lot of click fraud on Google’s Search network.

But, what’s the ultimate source of this traffic? Every instance I’ve seen of searchportal.information.com in client log files has been embedded in the frameset of a parked domain. Do these parked domains really drive that much traffic? Is the Oversee.net CEO correct in claiming that 10-20% of paid traffic comes through parked domains. Yikes!

Does the traffic come from arbitrage? From the SearchAndBrowse spyware distributed by Oversee? From traffic exchange programs? Google needs to do some due diligence here. Do they really want to be partnered with this company?

If this Oversee.net company that owns searchportal.information.com really does distribute the SearchAndBrowse adware/spyware, then Google really is partnered with spammers. Is Google profiting from and, essentially, funding spyware? Perhaps that’s the real evil with this story.

Sigh. In the meantime, it’s the AdWords advertisers who are stuck paying for this. Something’s not right. Again, thanks for getting the word out.