Marchex Kills its SiteBox Domain Parking

I think I was vaguely aware that Marchex had a domain parking service.  Apparently it was started in 2006 but has been languishing lately.  As of May 1 the doors will close.  If you have domains parked there you should move them ASAP.

Marchex made news back in 2004 when it went public as one of the first domain-based Internet companies.  The company made some historic domain name purchases, and Yahoo Finance describes them as a "digital call advertising and small business marketing company" and claims that their business earns money from

200,000 of its owned and operated Web sites, and other sources. The company also delivers pay-per-click advertisements to online users in response to their keyword search queries or on pages they visit on its distribution network of search engines, shopping engines, third party vertical and local Web sites, mobile distribution, and its proprietary Web site traffic sources.

Google Officially Drops Parked Domains from their Index

Now we know why Google demands that domain parking companies use nameservers to direct traffic to their services.  It makes it very easy for Google to detect and de-list parked domains. 

It always seemed like Google's intent to not index parked domains.  You've probably had it happen to you (although not recently).  You do a search and find a result that appears promising, only to land on a page full of ads.   It's not a good user experience.  On December first Google announced that they now officially remove parked domains from the index.  They are now being very explicit about at least some of the changes they are making.  Notice the third bullet point:

• Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”
• More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.
• New “parked domain” classifier: This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.
• More autocomplete predictions: With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.
• Fresher and more complete blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
• Original content: We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.
• Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League: This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores.
• Image result freshness: We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.
• Layout on tablets: We made some minor color and layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices.
• Top result selection code rewrite: This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.

As new parking companies spring up, some of them will temporarily miss the "classifier" - but not for long.  If you want to be in Google, then you should consider building a site with some content.  

There are some unanswered questions.  Where do content-like "parking" services such as WhyPark fit in?  You can actually host unique content-driven sites on such services  

Above features new Parking Companies

Above.com is a good way to try your domain names at different parking companies.  Andrew at DNW.com noticed recently that they have integrated three new parking companies into their platform: Voodoo, ParkingCrew, and TheParkingPlace.  

I probably won't be immediately trying these services out - but it's interesting that new domain parking services are trying to make a go of it in a tough market.  If you have some of your domains set-up at Above.com you may want to give these new services a try.  

Yahoo caps .biz, .co, .info, .tv, and .us.

Yahoo recently imposed a revenue cap on doman parking income on certain TLDs. TrafficZ reported that the affected TLDs "include .biz, .co, .info, .tv, and .us." leaving open the possibility that other TLDs might also be capped.  According to TrafficZ on 8/16:

The new, conservative revenue cap was rolled out early this morning and will be imposed on a per domain, per day basis. Specifically, if a particular domain in one of the above-referenced TLDs exceeds the revenue cap on any given day, Yahoo! listings will cease to be displayed on that domain for the following three days, at which point they will resume displaying as normal.This change was made across the board and will affect all Yahoo! partners. 

In a follow-up email they clarified that:

Yahoo! is just one of many advertising partners that TrafficZ works with to monetize your domains and traffic. And although Yahoo! may have imposed a cap on certain TLDs, TrafficZ will continue to monetize all high quality domains and traffic through our multiple advertising partners, regardless of TLD, revenue and/or volume.

Furthermore, TrafficZ clients with exceptional .INFO, .US, .TV, .BIZ and/or .CO domains should submit them to our account team for further review. Where appropriate, TrafficZ will work with Yahoo! to have revenue cap limits raised or removed from qualified domains, regardless of TLD.

Note that this new policy likely affects Parked, WhyPark, and SmartName as well.

Jeff Kupietzky Leaves Oversee.net

Oversee.net - parent company of DomainSponsor - has announced that CEO Jeff Kupietzky is leaving the company at the end of August for personal reasons. A statement released by Mason Cole this afternoon reported that Kupietzky will be moving to Israel with his family.

According to the statement "The day-to-day operations and strategic vision for Oversee will be led by the company’s Co-Presidents, Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow. They are supported by an operating committee which includes CFO Liz Murray, and General Counsel Todd Greene. "

Kupietzky deserves credit for launching the domainFEST Conferences, widely regarded as some of the best domain conferences ever produced and stealing some of the thunder from the prior industry-leading TRAFFIC conferences. The statement continues by quoting Board Chairman and co-founder Lawrence Ng: "On behalf of the Board and all Oversee employees, I thank Jeff for his service to the company. He successfully navigated the company through some difficult challenges and positioned it as an industry leader. We all wish him the best of luck in his new home and as he continues his successful career.” Mr. Ng also expressed his confidence in the company’s leadership: “We feel extremely fortunate to have such a talented team of executives who are well respected throughout the industry. We are extremely confident in their knowledge and capabilities, as well as their passion to lead us to our next chapter of growth.”