Excluding Parked Domains on Search Network

[chris1]

So I was navigating around the Site and Category Exclusion page for one of my content only campaigns and I noticed the help bubble (?) had this bit of information...

"Your ads may show on parked domain sites in Google's AdSense for domains network. Users are brought to parked domain sites when they enter the URL of an undeveloped webpage in a browser's address bar. There, they'll see ads relevant to the terminology in the URL they entered. Note that the AdSense for domains network is encompassed by both the content network and the search network. If you exclude this page type, you'll exclude all parked domain sites, including the ones on the search network."

So, the way I interpret this is that some parked domains are part of the Google search network and you can exclude their traffic from your normal (non-content) search advertising. I was under the impression that parked domains were content only and that any site/category exclusions only applied to content ads.

Sorry if this is old news, but I was unaware of this.

[abbottsys]

Yes, many parked domains have search boxes. Parked domains work very well for us, and I think the search box is part of the reason. Adsense for Domains, which is the Google service responsible for serving AdWords to this important channel, operates across the Search and Content Networks.

There are millions of parked domains, which is now a huge "industry". Godaddy is a major customer of AdSense for Domains.

Here's an example: http://k13c.com (notice the search box.)

[chris1]

That makes sense. Thanks!

[Discovery]

Chris,

I think most people will tell you that they get mixed results from domain name ads. Prior to being able to identify and exclude these sites you had to take the good with the bad.

Now what you want to do is keep a close eye on your placement performance reports and over time eliminate the parked domain names that are not performing.

If you have the resources its preferable to manually review many of these domain name sites to determine their quality.

We do a couple things with out placement reports.

Import the report into a database so you can generate quick precise queries.

We query and find all sites with improper TLD's like .de, .jp and other foreign sites.

We have a query to find all sites that dont meet our thresholds such as CTR, 100% CTR with 5 impressions and 5 clicks...? Click fraud or junk clicks from a partner clicking on their own ads.

We query the domain names themselves
Find all names with "games", "free", "Avatar"

Point is you can quickly sort through a list and come up with all the bad apples pretty quickly and exclude them.

Better; you can find all the good apples and perhaps target them with higher bids.

Discovery

[chris1]

Thanks for the help Discovery, but I already know about placement reports. In fact we have 3900+ domains blocked in the content network. My point was that you could exclude parked domains from the search network. I was under the impression that site exclusion only applied to the content network, but parked domains can actually be blocked in the search network as well:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=90213&hl=en_US

Of course, parked domains are the best perfomers in the content network for us by far so we would not block them for our best campaigns. However, I am going test blocking them in some of our campaings that are barely profitable.

[Discovery]

I was suggesting never to turn off domains, but use placement reports with site blocking instead. There are always a few good performers to keep.

I guess Asys already nailed the answer then.

[attak]

FYI: For those people that haven't played with domain exclusion, Discovery just gave you an effective educational resource to quickly increase your CTR and conversions.

- Attak

We do a couple things with out placement reports.

Import the report into a database so you can generate quick precise queries.

We query and find all sites with improper TLD's like .de, .jp and other foreign sites.

We have a query to find all sites that dont meet our thresholds such as CTR, 100% CTR with 5 impressions and 5 clicks...? Click fraud or junk clicks from a partner clicking on their own ads.

We query the domain names themselves
Find all names with "games", "free", "Avatar"

Point is you can quickly sort through a list and come up with all the bad apples pretty quickly and exclude them.

Better; you can find all the good apples and perhaps target them with higher bids.