/Frank

It is actually in Google and Yahoo’s best interest not to expose the size of this channel and the channel itself to their advertisers, because if the advertisers were aware of the existence, I could imagine that some of them would go directly to domainers and the domain channel.

Richard, what I would really like to hear more about is why you have experienced bad conversion rates from the domain channel. Are you able to share any details and comparison from individual compaigns, or have you done so and I just missed it?

I can only imagine how powerful the SEO crowd and the domainers could be, if only they worked a little closer together.
/Frank

I don’t believe Google used to display AdWords ads on domain searches. It is a peculiar change. It does create a need for domain name reputation management, don’t you think?

BTW, I would like to point out that I’m not “against” parked domains. When I manage PPC accounts, whether on Google or Yahoo, I like to keep the search advertising separate from the contextual advertising. Having parked domain traffic show up in both categories makes it difficult to adequately track results. My frustration, then, is with the search engines themselves and how they distribute ads. Seems to me that creating a separate network, a “domain network” for Google AdWords and a “domain match” for Yahoo! Search Marketing would be the way to go. A little more transparency is in order. I actually have a decent amount of respect for domainers. You’d be amazed how many in the SEO/M field read domainers’ blogs.

Anyway, thanks for the link and the well researched post. I’m a DomainEditorial.com subscriber.

Before then they used to return a page with:

If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link http://www.cameras.com

Their reason for making the change was for improving user experience especially for typos, however it also had the effect of showing users Adword adverts rather than the adverts on each domain.

Recently they have adjusted the returned search pages for url queries so that (provided the pages are in their index) the actual url will rank 1st. i.e. above pages which would normally be ranked higher for relevancy by their algorithm.

I haven’t measured it but I would guess having a search box as in IE7 will have more effect on direct navigation long term, as users come to realise they can type in bits of urls (even with some mistakes) into the search box and most of the time still get to where they “think” they want to be in a way that’s quicker than using the address bar.