Whypark / AdSense dilemma

[jerry t]

I recently signed up with Whypark and had 32 domains enrolled. I get this email from google a few days ago....

Hello Jerry W Thomas,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

I'm an old man and don't play childish games or tell lies. I have never posted any of these names anywhere, discussed them with anyone or ever clicked on one myself....Never. You can believe that or choose not to.

I don't know what happened. I remember checking my AdSense account and last week I noticed about 200 to 400 clicks a day starting to happen with no earnings. Then i get that email disabling my account. That is all I know.

Can y'all figure out why these clicks happened??

I can't contact Google because I have no clue which domain or domains caused the problem. I did not insert any stat codes either to help me figure it out.

These Whypark sites are the only places I have used AdSense.

 

[matt_bodis]

I agree with all of the above, except the part where you mention Yahoo is the number one choice for domainers. Yahoo seems to be losing advertisers rather than gaining from what I have read last few weeks. The revenue from Yahoo is slowly starting to drop as Google is picking up all their lost advertisers.

Also, the international support at Yahoo is horrible. These days, domainers maybe have 40% North America traffic and 60% international traffic on average.

I'd honestly part with Google on this one.

 

[jerry t]

Varon, I want to thank you for taking the time to answer alot of questions I had. Have a great day

 

[Varon]

I agree with all of the above, except the part where you mention Yahoo is the number one choice for domainers. Yahoo seems to be losing advertisers rather than gaining from what I have read last few weeks. The revenue from Yahoo is slowly starting to drop as Google is picking up all their lost advertisers.

Also, the international support at Yahoo is horrible. These days, domainers maybe have 40% North America traffic and 60% international traffic on average.

I'd honestly part with Google on this one.

Matt.... I meant #1 choice for PPC driven traffic flexibility. And these days with a growing number of domainers opting for driven traffic, they do prefer Yahoo feeds. I do agree that Google has a strong international feed and more advertisers in more niches than Yahoo.

Jerry you are welcome.

 

[matt_bodis]

Oh yes, definitely Yahoo is best for arbitrage, as a matter of fact - Google is at 0/10 for it since they don't allow it. But, I think it won't last long with Yahoo so it is not really something to have high hopes for in the future.

In any online advertising company, the tough part is finding the publishers, and not the advertisers. Google has found the publishers, but now is on Step 2 to get more advertisers. It can get more advertisers by keeping only the good publishers. With these good publishers more advertisers are happy. Therefore more advertiser spending. At the same time - decreasing the Yahoo's advertiser base.

Now Yahoo on the other hand, I would say is full of mistakes.

1) They are limiting themselves to quantity publishers rather than quality publishers. I know from first-hand experience. They want to maintain relations for example with 3-4 big publishers and they think by doing so, they don't need others since everyone will flock to these big publishers - WRONG.

2) They are expanding on number of publishers by allowing MFA sites, Arbitrage, and YPN displayed on web pages that are classified as spam (duplicate content, etc).

3) They are losing advertisers since they are delivering less quality clicks because they are signing with quantity publishers rather than quality publishers.


That's the overall story. I have no hopes in Yahoo, and so far their numbers have shown that they have a smaller market share for advertising each quarter. They may be good for a deal now, but would never go into my long-term business plan.

They are equivalent to Microsoft (maybe a little better). But either way, no innovation and slow like Microsoft. One guy said somewhere, Yahoo is slow, Microsoft is slow. An acquisition of Yahoo will not make Yahoo faster. It will just make them both even slower.

 

[Varon]

Some very valid points Matt. But Imo, the Yahoo publisher network was in Beta and hadn't even taken off to 100% operating levels. I mean, they were very selective about the few publishers they took on board during Beta. Smaller sites and MFA publishers weren't even approved into their network. In fact their publisher network is 1/10th the size of Google's content network. It was Google who went around with gay abandon approving almost 8 out of 10 publishers into their content network and built huge quantity with ensuing bad quality content network traffic. In fact they had to cough up around $ 80 million to compensate for fraud clicks to users. They openly allowed MFA sites to add their codes with no hassles. It is only now that they are working seriously towards cleaning their entire content network of all these non productive or low converting sites.

Once again I'm not saying that Yahoo would be a strong and stable parking feed to rely on. Especially in light of a takeover bid by MSFT. My mention was that currently many domainers prefer heading towards a Yahoo feed because it is very difficult to own a portfolio of domain names that gets pure natural traffic. Its more like you either sit with your domains making pennies or head the PPC driven way to monetize your domains to the max. And for the 2nd course of action, Yahoo is currently the most attractive option.

As an advertiser, I'd rather stick to MSFT more than even Google. I have noticed conversions with MSFT are amazing and put Adwords traffic quality in the backdrop. However, Google gets you the quantity of traffic which MSFT still can't deliver.

Here's a point... the ideal situation would be a company that has the geographic reach of Google, the quality conversions of Microsoft and the flexibility of Yahoo. Nothing could be more successful than this combination.

 

[NPKJB]

Very informative posts from Varon (as usual) and Matt.

Varon.. Maybe they can combine all three companies and call it Yahooglesoft? :hehe:

 

[Varon]

Very informative posts from Varon (as usual) and Matt.

Varon.. Maybe they can combine all three companies and call it Yahooglesoft? :hehe:

Maybe Billie should offer to buyout Google too? lol.. I mean with the Google stock prices falling, he could throw in another bid for the Mountain View boys. That would make an interesting algorithm. Yahooglesoft?? LMAO

Actually it is very interesting to hear from Matt. He now has a lot of experience as the owner of a domain parking company. Getting his views can be a learning process. He knows a lot of what we don't know.

 

[matt_bodis]

Varon, you seem to know A LOT for a domainer.

Well here is the reason why Microsoft has best conversion ratio. Because they have the least publishers. See, I don't know 1 parking program that has Microsoft ad feed. I may be wrong, but I don't think there is a parking program with 1. In Google when you advertise on their "Search Network", you are not only advertising on Google.com, but you are also advertising on any publisher that has their Search feed, so basically DomainSponsor, Skenzo, Bodis, ParkingPanel, Parked.com, etc have the Search feed.

I'll give you some figures. The average fraud rate on content sites is 15%. The average fraud rate on parking networks before cleaning it up is 75%. Google has its fraud rate down to nearly 0% on Google.com search. But, parking companies usually have 1%-10% fraud on average. There are not many scammers out there that are creating robots to click ads on the Google.com search, because they have no gain. But we do have them creating robots to crawl their own domains and raise they revenue. We do have people that click their own ads, which is a 0 conversion score. Google has a massive publisher base, that's why their for Search advertising can have just a tad smaller conversion quality.

Yahoo is in the middle.

But Microsoft. They have BARELY any publishers. And the publishers that they do have are usually very large businesses with extremely good fraud monitoring software and large tech teams, where the traffic usually is just as convertive.

That's why you see a high conversion ratio for Microsoft search. If they want to expand they will have to make new strategic partnerships. At the end of the day, if Microsoft and Yahoo were as big as Google, their conversion ratio would be same as Google or lower.

Now, back to WhyPark...

 

[has2hands]

Hello,

Maybe it is love in my heart; spring in the air; new script from my doctor ,
I don't know, but I just wanna thank everyone, especially Varon, Nutmeg, Matt/Bodis, etc. for all the great experienced comments and observations that takes place in these threads and on the board. Thanks everyone!

I am relatively new to domain parking (approx. 6 months) but I have learned so much from all the posts. I am trying to make this a full-time gig, planting lots of seeds!

I believe it is especially critical that we hear from Matt on all subjects. His experience on both sides and inside experience is paramount. I am sure he can shed light on most subjects. But, it can be a fine line that he walks, as a business owner.

Okay, my love fest is ending....thanks for listening.

Oh yeah, to keep this post in line with the thread, I still haven't heard or read any comments from Whypark. I am hopeful they are trying to get some answers for themselves and customers. Would be nice to hear from a Whypark rep and get the skinny. Yes?

Paul

 

[Varon]

Varon, you seem to know A LOT for a domainer.

Well here is the reason why Microsoft has best conversion ratio. Because they have the least publishers. See, I don't know 1 parking program that has Microsoft ad feed. I may be wrong, but I don't think there is a parking program with 1. In Google when you advertise on their "Search Network", you are not only advertising on Google.com, but you are also advertising on any publisher that has their Search feed, so basically DomainSponsor, Skenzo, Bodis, ParkingPanel, Parked.com, etc have the Search feed.

I'll give you some figures. The average fraud rate on content sites is 15%. The average fraud rate on parking networks before cleaning it up is 75%. Google has its fraud rate down to nearly 0% on Google.com search. But, parking companies usually have 1%-10% fraud on average. There are not many scammers out there that are creating robots to click ads on the Google.com search, because they have no gain. But we do have them creating robots to crawl their own domains and raise they revenue. We do have people that click their own ads, which is a 0 conversion score. Google has a massive publisher base, that's why their for Search advertising can have just a tad smaller conversion quality.

Yahoo is in the middle.

But Microsoft. They have BARELY any publishers. And the publishers that they do have are usually very large businesses with extremely good fraud monitoring software and large tech teams, where the traffic usually is just as convertive.

That's why you see a high conversion ratio for Microsoft search. If they want to expand they will have to make new strategic partnerships. At the end of the day, if Microsoft and Yahoo were as big as Google, their conversion ratio would be same as Google or lower.

Now, back to WhyPark...

Very very interesting facts and great points Matt, especially the fraud numbers. And yes...MSFT has no content network except their own (MSN Portal) and hence the virtual absence of any fraud -- and vice versa better conversions.

Paul.. ... yeah... thats the most we can get out of Matt for now. But he does post in sometimes with some great points. Wish he did it more often.

Okay... now back to whypark.... or the question is "whynotpark" with whypark anymore? Can Craig or someone from whypark let us know whats going on?

 

[cantstop]

ironic timing

they finally get around to fixing the place up.change servers ,put some new templates,put in forum,try to build up the operation.make a better product.guess what ?google boot on head.Probably some of the sites started to do some more business with upgrade and now lets figure way not to pay.I would love to run poll of what percent of whypark customers are smart priced.my guess 80%.thats not a slam on why park.google has excellent motivation to cut pay for everyone..there is no competition for small accts. so why pay ?.of course feb 1 was right around the time of yahoo news too .Spring cleaning came early.

 

[GILSAN]

Okay... now back to whypark.... or the question is "whynotpark" with whypark anymore? Can Craig or someone from whypark let us know whats going on?

Since no one from WhyPark has come around here to update us on any new development, I vote that we carry on listening to this great duet Varon & Matt for a while longer before we get the results of "Super Tuesday"

GIL

 

[Badger]

Its fairly easy to quote from the outside when you're not part of the inside.

I can only speak from our POV and this is not speculative; as some of the stats/figures and opinions are, which have previously been stated in this thread. Aside from us phasing away from being called a MFA site, we at iMODO have conscientiously (in fact for over 2 years) been working hand in hand with Google and with Yahoo with regard to what they expect from a parking provider (probably the reason we haven't gone gung ho into the space) and the main reason why we are still taking tentative steps into a launching our global feed. From Yahoo and from Googles POV, the content on the page should be served as an aid to the visitor, rather than the reason the visitor is there in the first place.

The truth is that automatically driven content on undeveloped domains (call them MFA sites if you will) is definitely something that the root feed providers now shy away from. This is in contrast to the space as was when we set out on the 1plus.net road. The same is to be said for parked domains that include some cribbed text, an image and a bunch of links. If your domain does not get natural type in traffic then that domains days are numbered, unless you develop..

There are huge changes occurring in the space currently and changes that will probably result in mass consolidation. Good domains will eventually earn more, bad domains will become extinct. Driving natural traffic to your domain because of the content you add is becoming about as dead as a dead duck.. (if you excuse the mixed metaphor)

 

[nscdn]

From what I have learned from my own obesrvations, it looks like google slapped any whypark site that used the common templates with no customization. And by slapped, I mean taking your ads away.

However if you did have some customization, I embed affiliate links for example, it seems as though google let it go and the ads are still showing. This meaning that google is only comparing apples to apples right now.

I just edited my normal template sites with some affiliate links and will wait to see if the ads comeback.

Another note, in Google Webmaster Tools you will see that all whypark sites have "Sitemap not allowed" instead of "Add" under the Sitemap column.

Disclaimer: This is just what I have observed with my own sites...

 

[mhdoc]

Driving natural traffic to your domain because of the content you add is becoming about as dead as a dead duck.. (if you excuse the mixed metaphor)

Care to explain that a little more?

 

[GILSAN]

From what I have learned from my own obesrvations, it looks like google slapped any whypark site that used the common templates with no customization. And by slapped, I mean taking your ads away.

However if you did have some customization, I embed affiliate links for example, it seems as though google let it go and the ads are still showing. This meaning that google is only comparing apples to apples right now.

I just edited my normal template sites with some affiliate links and will wait to see if the ads comeback.

Another note, in Google Webmaster Tools you will see that all whypark sites have "Sitemap not allowed" instead of "Add" under the Sitemap column.

Disclaimer: This is just what I have observed with my own sites...

Your'e probably right about customizing or lack of it. I don't see "Sitemap not allowed" on Google Webmaster Tools. It appears normal, except for the "Verified?" column where once again (4th time in 5 months) I have a lot of domains that need to be re-verified again. In fact just 3 weeks ago I did that, now it's asking again. Getting tired of constantly verifying my domains. Has this happened to you?

GIL

 

[nscdn]

Getting tired of constantly verifying my domains. Has this happened to you?

Unfortunately yes...

 

[brian789]

From what I have learned from my own obesrvations, it looks like google slapped any whypark site that used the common templates with no customization. And by slapped, I mean taking your ads away.

However if you did have some customization, I embed affiliate links for example, it seems as though google let it go and the ads are still showing. This meaning that google is only comparing apples to apples right now.

I just edited my normal template sites with some affiliate links and will wait to see if the ads comeback.

Another note, in Google Webmaster Tools you will see that all whypark sites have "Sitemap not allowed" instead of "Add" under the Sitemap column.

Disclaimer: This is just what I have observed with my own sites...

I am missing the ads from all of my Whypark sites, even the ones that have no articles and only Amazon affiliate stores. Also, the sites with custom content have the adsense removed.

 

[GILSAN]

I am missing the ads from all of my Whypark sites, even the ones that have no articles and only Amazon affiliate stores. Also, the sites with custom content have the adsense removed.

It´s beggining to sound like WhyPark is in trouble and subsequently all of us. Would be nice if WhyPark would have the decency to keep us updated on whats happening, even if nothing is happening!

GIL

 

[nscdn]

I am missing the ads from all of my Whypark sites, even the ones that have no articles and only Amazon affiliate stores. Also, the sites with custom content have the adsense removed.

Did they ever have articles on them?

 

[d9000]

Just to add my $0.02:

• Ads have been removed from all of my 100 WP sites, most of which used customized templates
• I see no errors in webmaster tools with sitemaps
• My sites have constantly needed to be re-verified, too, starting back in Nov '07

 

[avi2l]

I imagine that Whypark has heard back from Google, and probably was told something along the lines of what was told to imodo. I imagine they are figuring out alternatives before telling us that whypark is basically useless now.

WP served its purpose and I can't imagine that anyone believed the service would last for long considering the business plan.

adios wp, it could have been so easy.....

 

[matt_bodis]

Maybe if they block robots from Google and try to de-index their member sites from Google. This way Google doesn't ever crawl them and hence never blocks for duplicate content?

Although, it could be too late for that.

 

[Datalife]

WP served its purpose and I can't imagine that anyone believed the service would last for long considering the business plan.

Can't they switch to a network like Adbrite...or something else instead of Adsense?

 

[avi2l]

yes, you can switch to other ad providers and make decent money on affiliates. But at this point you will need original content and avoid any duplicates they provide.

For me, WP was a stepping stone, till I could put the content together and move them to a CMS. While I'm sure WP will still serve a function, the SEO advantages of Wordpress and other CMS really make you wonder, why you don't spend a little more time and set one up.