AdSense For Domains: Hobbled?

There's been a lot of talk at NamePros.com about the new AdSense For Domains (AFD) program that just started. There's on main thread, AdSense for Domains - OFFICIAL THREAD that you should visit if you are interested in this topic as I was.

I was VERY excited about the program because I felt it would give me another option to parking with a service like TrafficZ that I love, but that does not seem to work with some of our domains. We have some with quite a bit of traffic, but no conversions. AFD also gives you less ability to optimize, which can save time for large domain holders, but the lack of optimization and image selection (no images) seems to make them less effective for converting. I'm not sure about that because the 11 domains that I have in the program have generated almost 1,500 impressions, but no revenue.

This situation has been commonly reported, but in my case our domains weren't getting any clicks parked with two other services either, so I don't blame Google for that. But my feeling is that for smaller portfolio holders AFD is not going to be seen as an attractive alternative compared to the other parking providers if they don't improve things, assuming they can.

One possible problem that has been raised at NamePros is the idea that the only traffic that will be considered as valid by Google, is traffic that comes from browser type-ins or from the Google search engine. While I highly doubt this is the case and the TOS is not clear, it may be true. If it is, then it makes no sense why Google would accept some of our domains that are not very good and will not get type-in traffic.

The other puzzler was why Google is making domainers set up and change the DNS for each domain. Some domain registrars provide the ability to create "A" and "CNAME" DNS records at not cost, while other charge a fee. We were able to set up some of our domains at one registrar, but the other charged a fee so we used a free service. Generally you just change the Name Servers for your domain and you are done. Setting up the DNS takes a little more time if your registrar offers it, but using a free service is more involved. First you have to change your name serves to point to the DNS service you are going to use, then you have to create 4 DNS entries for each domain that you want to park with Google. With the service that I used, EasyDNS, it was a little confusing at first, and adding each entry causes the screen to refresh. While it didn't take too long, it did take some time and I think when I was done figuring everything out for 11 domains I spent about 2 hours at least. If you are a newbie domainer or don't know DNS from IRA, then you are in big trouble.

This could be Google's version of Natural Selection where only the strong survive...

When parked domains are in their program, they could then monitor and even filter them out of their main search results. I would understand this from the point of limiting parked domains in search results, since many people don't like them and are bothered by them. But to do so and not disclose the fact is a disservice to domainers.

Google and domainers should start looking at parked domains as I do, and that is for their potential as Vertical Search Engines. A parked domain may seem like trash to some, but for those that are looking for something specific and can't find it, a parked domain with RELEVANT content, even if that content is paid ads, provides a useful service. One solution may be to provide a user option to include or exclude domain parking pages (vertical search engines) from the results. While most domainers won't like that idea at all, they are not the customer. It's the searcher who should decide what is important to them.