July 7th, 2006
Web.com Sues GoDaddy for Patent Infringement
From http://news.com.com/2110-1030_3-6085599.html
Domain name registrar Web.com filed a patent infringement lawsuit on Monday against rival GoDaddy.com. The lawsuit alleges that GoDaddy’s Deluxe Hosting Plan infringes on Web.com’s patent called “Synchronized Server Parameter Database,” which allows customers to have remote access to a control panel that is part of the Web hosting service.
Did I read that correctly? Did the idiots at the patent office issue a patent for control panels??? How can you get a patent on allowing customers to access their sever from a control panel?
The US patent office has been having some serious quality control issues the last 7 years.
Spammers Rule in GoogleJuly 5th, 2006
We pointed out a few spammy sites a while back SEO Spam and that created quite a storm with discussions happening at several high impact blogs. The spam appeared to be manually removed by Google (good job there), but the techniques to building the spam sites seem to still be enabled.
I like this post at Monitize - Step by step spam where the author walks you through building your own spam network. As long as Google supports these sites with Adsense or by allowing the techniques to continue to work we will have these issues.
The latest site I see moving up the Search Results is > s168897611.onlinehome.us/dir/ this site is using the methods that have been proven to work and is working its way up the results. I’m sure the two blocks of Adsense Ads at the top of the page help keep them in the black.
High value domainsJune 22nd, 2006
I have this domain name that gets at most 1 person per day. Usually less. It also averages $15 per week in domain parking revenue. Now, if I could only find 1000 of these domains…
Decent traffic - bad conversionsMay 25th, 2006
I have a domain that is frustrating my efforts to make money. This domain has around 150 unique type-in visitors each day.
I make around $3. Yippie!
Maybe I’m spoiled with some other days that have a CPM of 500+. Currently this name is with DomainSponsor, but I am going to experiement with moving this domain to it’s own site and see what I can do with Google Adsense.
I’ll keep you informed.
Textbook spam part 2May 4th, 2006
It is really looking strange for iPowerWeb - another site that appears to be clueless about what is going on has been found with the same spam pages.
www.pixiesmusic.com has the following second level domain get.pixiesmusic.com that has more than 20,000 pages of search spam in Google.
I have nothing against search spam, but when someone is using unrelated sites to spam search engines - and they don’t share the profit - I DO have a problem with it.
Textbook SEO - Textbook spamMay 3rd, 2006
Here is how to drive traffic and make money the easy way - until you get caught.
Alternatively, I could have titled this “How to take traffic from Google and get Yahoo to pay you for it”
Here is an innocent looking site www.porthalcyon.com and another here www.co-motion.com - Just what do these two sites have in common? About 50,000 pages.
Let me walk you through it:
Do an search on Google using the following [site:co-motion.com] type it in exactly as shown without the brackets, then click SEARCH.
You will see results “Results 1 - 10 of about 13,800″. This amount may vary. Thirteen thousand pages seems like a lot for a bike shop and if you surf through the page numbers at the bottom of the search results and go to results 180 and above you will see something interesting.
Notice all the org.co-motion.com pages? Take a look at a few of them. I am just grabbing the first few such as org.co-motion.com/org/laptops.html, org.co-motion.com/org/seafood.html or org.co-motion.com/org/herbalife.html. Take your pick, you have 13,000 to choose from. These are pages designed to trick the search engines. Typically, they are called Search Engine Spam pages.
If you click one of those spam pages you will be taken to a cheezy directory that that pretty much has nothing but ADs on it. http://dp.qsrch.com/ is the directory - I visited the org.co-motion.com/org/401k.html page and was treated to a nice page full of Yahoo Search Marketing Ads for 401 K plans. I bet those ads pay pretty well.
HERE IS WISDOM
Pick your favorite spam page from co-motion.com - I will use org.co-motion.com/org/antidepressants.html - and get ready to click the Google Cache link. When you click the link you will be redirected to the directory page, but if you are quick, before you are redirected - you will be presented with the Google page which has a link at the top right side called CACHE TEXT only. If you click this link you will be able to see the page that Google was shown. That is a different page than what a visitor sees.
You can do all the above tests with another domain - porthalcyon.com
The spammy pages are under the second level domain dir.porthalcyon.com.
Now, take dir.porthalcyon.com and run it through the DNS Lookup on www.DNSstuff.com . We are looking for the IP address of dir.porthalcyon.com and it gives us 207.58.149.128. This IS resolves to non other than www.co-motion.com.
Surprise, surprise. These sites are starting to work their way to the top of many search results.
Read more about it at ThreadWatch - iPowerWeb and Spam Sub-Domains
DomainSponsor.comMarch 9th, 2006
I am very happy with my Domainsponsor account. Income is on the rise, they pay on time every month and the site provides me with all kinds of data (except which Ads are being clicked).
That said, I am curious how or why some of my domains pay so much more than others. For example, I have a domain that averages 5 visitors per day and makes around $8. I have another that averages 80 visitors per day, but it only makes around $2.50. When I look at the ads the $8 domain is displaying and compare those ads to the same Overture or Adwords ads - something doesn’t make sense. The $8 domain gets around 4 clicks per day or $2 per click. Overture and Adwords cost per click appreas to be right around $2 for the terms. Am I getting 100% of the payout? Not a chance. So, something else is at work here… I will have to investigate.
I am also wondering why 50% of the visitor to my $8 domain will click ads and only 10% of my $2.50 domain will click. More testing is needed.
More Godaddy NonsenseFebruary 24th, 2006
Yet another reason to avoid Godaddy… I feel it’s a shame, really, the bad PR that Godaddy has been generating lately within the SEO and Domain industry. At one point in time I had all my domains registered with them. In fact, I still find their purchasing process and domain management system one of the better programs in the industry. It’s all these recent issues and the fact that they can and will shut down ALL your domains if you are strongly accused of spam that has me frightened and has my domains moving to other registrars.
Small Traffic DomainsFebruary 8th, 2006
Just a short note - Don’t outright ignore domains that only have a few visitors each day. Take the time to track down the kind of traffic the domain has and what kind of products they are looking for. Then, check out the Google bids for those terms and if the bid is several dollars you may have a winner. If you only get 3 visitors per day and average a 10% CTR you will have 3 clicks in 10 days. If you only earned $0.50 per click that domain will still bring in $54 per year. Not bad on a $6.95 investment.
Godaddy FrustrationFebruary 6th, 2006
Here is another sickening Godaddy story. This person has registered over 1500 domains with Godaddy and was locked out of his account for 5 invalid login attempts. He says it wasn’t him. Godaddy could care less. I am getting a nervous feeling that we may see Godaddy used as black hat marketing - i.e., knock your competitor out by spamming in his name and complaining to Godaddy or setting up a script to automate bad logins and keep him out of his account.
GD - “Ok Let me see… Yes it looks like you have been locked out due to 5 invalid attempts”
ShoeMoney - “Well the password is stored in my browser and I have never had a problem before. Can you tell me what time it was locked out?”
GD - “I am sorry I can not but I can tell you it has been locked several times throughout the morning this is a security feature to protect you.”
ShoeMoney - “Ok well it doesn’t take a rocket science to see someone is trying to guess my password or using some sort of brute force method to get into my godaddy account?”
GD - ” Sir, I really doubt someone is trying to hack into your account”