According to an email we received tonight from TrafficZ, Yahoo started to impose a “daily revenue cap” on certain extensions, .Tv, .Co. .Biz, .Info and .Us
The notice makes it clear that this is a Yahoo decision not a TrafficZ decision.
We have reached out to TrafficZ for further explanation and will let you know how they respond.
We also reached out to the .Co registry and the .Tv registry as well as registry for .biz and .Us
Its pretty strange since the notice only covers 6 extensions one of them new (.Co) and many of them years old.
Here is the notice:
Dear Valued TrafficZ Client,
In an effort to keep you up-to-date on all matters concerning your account, we would like to inform you that Yahoo!, our primary upstream provider, has recently imposed a revenue cap on certain TLDs.
The affected TLDs include:
.biz
.co
.info
.tv
.usThe 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.
TrafficZ strives to provide you with the best domain monetization services possible. We will continue to keep you abreast of any changes as they arise. If you have additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Client Relations team at support@TrafficZ.com.
Sincerely,
The TrafficZ Team
majority of .info and .biz are spam sites, while .co can be considered a typo. Not sure why .us is on the list though.
I’m actually glad yhoo is cleaning up the dirty system that we can parking.
Who is TrafficZ?
Sounds like a smart business decision … they wouldn’t cut off their own source of revenue like that unless they had a good reason. Spam, fraud, and typos on those extensions doesn’t surprise me.
Who is TrafficZ?
—
Who is Yahoo?
Spam, fraud, and typos on those extensions doesn’t surprise me.
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Clickfraud, yes.
Typos, in .co, definitely.
Parking domains in these extensions for direct navigation traffic is and has always been a dogs ass (except for what I can only assume are traffic producing typos in .co).
Anecdote aside, the non legacy TLD’s don’t do very well parked.
They’re fine developed, but it’s not like very many people are typing in keyword.us just to see what’ there…
The dark side is that if you own CheapHealthInsurance.info, you can park it, trigger the high paying ad content and then fraud your way to payday. Show me someone earning meaning ‘parking revenue’ off a portfolio of .info’s, .co’s, .tv’s and .biz, I’ll show you someone wearing a black hat.
This makes kinda-sorta sense. It culls the bottom end of the click-frauders, but the sophisticated guys are still rolling along unchecked.
meaning = meaningful
Is there any reason to do biz with Yahoo/Microsoft anymore?
They’ve ruined what was once a decent system.
you guys are bunch of idiots.
while yahoo pulls a fast one
you don’t see it.
it a way for them to steal the sites extra revenue.
They are going to skim the extra clicks for themselves.
It’s essentially burglary, robbery.
Yahoo is a dying company
Since most .co’s are parked, that means even the best name will be revenue capped for the year. Thereby making it much harder to hang onto them for “investment” purposes.
This cements the .co slide into oblivion, placing it on equal footing with .info and .biz.
Interesting that .me wasn’t on the list (assuming this policy didn’t already apply).
Robert traffic theft is not the motive. Stands to reason many of the effected parked names will be moved away from the yahoo feed likely to a g feed
IMHO this spells disaster for many of the new tlds. No question a comment on traffic quality emanating from the “lesser” tlds
.info is synonymous with pfishing and spam
.co so much for the 68% renewal rate which will undoubtedly go down from here as the extension is primarily held by speculative
.us the super-dud extension (feel bad for Ron Jackson)
.biz another flop
These alternate extensions are just that, alternatives and not good ones
We all have known this for a very long time
Now everyone knows
The new tlds are in for a rough ride if any of them are to receive acceptance it will have to be substantial
Co was hot hot hot right lol
Someone took the lid of the boiling pot
Then turned off the element
Good move by yahoo
Bad move for domainers but anyone calling themselves a domainers who invested heavily in these extensions is not a domainers
Wannabe domainers maybe
Any
Yahoo dying
Magic Johnson has had aids for 20 years
We are all dying
In the meantime yahoo like magic has and can still afford good doctors
Not gonna go anywhere anytime soon
Remains to be seen if this is not going to bode well for the new gGTLD’s
First of all i doubt they will have type in traffic.
The gTLD Registry operators also has a responsibillity when it comes to the names that are being registered.
The proposed URS could cost typosquatters a fair penny if they went overboard. So actually due to better regulation that traffic mightbe valued better compared to the above mentioned ones.
We”ll find out i guess 😀
Theo “First of all i doubt they will have type in traffic.”
Thats only one factor but regardless organic type in traffic is not a prerequisite to domain parking. Ya think all those parked .com names with 8 hyphens in them have type ins? Problem is click fraud is not dependent upon type ins so if en mass an extension has been gamed like say .info or .eu have been you end up having to throw the baby out with the bat water
Theo
You are correct.
I’m going to assume that there was a lot of click fraud and other issues on these extensions and if its the domain holders that screwed it up for everyone else.
Surprised to see .US on the list as its to the best of my knowledge its never been on a list of problem extensions
Also what happens to the parking revenue after the daily limit is reached who gets that?
Sounds like Yahoo.
@Theo: Almost all traffic to .co is going to be typo. So there’s traffic going to it, just not at a quality level above .info, .ws or .biz. Otherwise why would Yahoo have grouped it with the others.
Btw, looking at it from the opposite perspective, if the quality of .co was on par with .net and .org then why didn’t they cap those two TLDs also.
Can you hear Yahoo’s balloon deflating?
Doesn’t this sound like Microsoft rather than Yahoo?
I don’t think some people are really comprehending what this is and what it isn’t.
A business decides they want to advertise online, so they go to any number of services affiliated with Yahoo to provide them with traffic (henceforth: “the provider”).
That traffic is generated from many sources.
It may come from search, it may come from parked domains, it may come from paid on-page ad content, etc, etc…
Some keywords are more lucrative than others- meaning that an ad for “grass seed” won’t pay nearly a much as one for “DUI Lawyers in Miami”.
A domainer can buy “DUILawyersinMiami.info”, park it, trigger the higher paying ad content, then engage in all manner of fraudulent practices to ‘juice’ their referral commissions.
Unfortunately, the interests of the people actually buying that traffic couldn’t be more different than the interests of domainers, who only care about a bizarre clicky game. The buyer don’t give a rats ass about ‘clicks’. They want sales, they want leads, they want conversions… So, after a while of enduring shit traffic, they go back to the provider and bitch… “Hey… A lot of this traffic is garbage. I’m getting bounce rates in under 1/2 second, no deep browsing, 3rd World traffic (because yes, a lot of people in Hyderabad, India are looking for Mesothelioma lawyers in Texas…) WTF is up what this?”
The ‘provider’ investigates further and notices that a lot of the traffic coming from certain sources is garbage at best, fraudulent at worst, so they start to examine the foundational elements of that traffic. In this case, it’s parked domains serving up the garbage. Thinking the matter through, they quickly realize that the alternate TLDs receive very little type-in traffic. So they check and see that it it’s undeveloped, isn’t ranked anywhere in a search engine. They soon realize that in many cases, these domains are nothing more than a conduit for fraud and the biggest offenders are the come-lately TLDs.
Anyone realize the type of CPC havoc you can wreak with an exact matching domain for a high CPC term and a few guys swapping TOR nodes? (no, most of you don’t)
I love .us for development and even marketing but if I were the parking companies, I wouldn’t allow anything to be parked that wasn’t .com, .net or .org. You’re just inviting trouble and if they keep serving this dogshit traffic to their downstream buyers, all domainers are going to feel it more and more and more and more…
@LS: Spot on, that’s a nicely worded reality check.
Oops. Meant “PPC havoc”
This could be a problem for .co ccTLD. There will be some typo and type-intraffic but it is not, from reading accounts in the various forums, significant. If Yahoo is applying some kind of TLD traffic credibility metric (people more likely to type in a .com address than a .othertld address) it would make some sense.
@Robert Cline The statement says that it will CEASE feeding ads. It does not say that ads will be continue to be shown but no payments will be made. But then with so many developed .co domains, this will not affect you. You did develop all those wonderful .co domains, didn’t you?
Just on the issue of PPC parking in the gTLDs, from looking at Afilias’ 2010 .info report, I think that the PPC percentage is significantly understated and the methodology used to ascertain whether a domain is PPC parked is flawed.
With the way that registrars and hosters operate today, an undeveloped new domain name is more likely to go straight to PPC parking. This is because a lot of registrars and hosters use PPC programs like Sedo’s registrar parking program to monetise their undeveloped domain. The other factor is that Javascript and IFRAME inclusions on the PPC parked webpage will allow the domain to stay on the registrar’s nameservers but serve PPC advertising. And one of the biggest players in the field is Godaddy with its “This page is parked free, courtesy of Godaddy”. The smaller PPC operators have been slowly edged out of the market but at the top of every gTLD is Godaddy and near the top of each gTLD is Sedoparking.
Development is hard. It takes time, money and expertise. It is easier to park an unused domain on PPC. The main targets of development seem to be the .com and the .ccTLD. The .info is a curious TLD in that years of low fee and no-fee registration have made it quite attractive for mini-sites. However the main battleground for PPC is .com and it is likely to stay that way for the immediate future.
An even more clear distinction between SEO results (which are algorithm based and gamed) and Direct Navigation results (which are .com typins) – i.e. no one ever types in a generic, intuitive or GEO non.com – come on.
This ultimately will have a positive effect (increased revenue) on pure, intutive, generic and GEO .com’s in the Yahoo network – and is solely meant as a reaction to industry maverick and friend Frank Schilling’s extraordinary efforts in cleaning up Google Direct Nav.
I am not even renewing CapitolHill.co – not even worth the $25 as SEO or PPC or stray traffic in my model.
@LS
“(because yes, a lot of people in Hyderabad, India are looking for Mesothelioma lawyers in Texas…)”
Way to “weild” yourself in front of God and everybody else – admirable !!!
45 min. ago, Trafficz sent out a follow up email saying the secondary feeders will kick in.
Sure !!!
Looks like Yahoo is just looking for opportunities to make a profit which they desperately need.