I was checking out my Google+ account…..something that I thought was long overdue. Naturally I thought that I’d view my settings area for things such as privacy etc. I received the following screen capture:

Sure it’s a cute error page but it’s nice to know that Google sometimes gets it wrong. I commented in a recent article that Google is throwing the “baby out with the bathwater” because in its efforts to throw out the fraud it’s also ridding itself good domain owners with quality traffic.

Google’s increasingly aggressive stance against fraud is admirable and more importantly creates a great powerpoint slide (or Google docs slide) about traffic improvement for internal consumption. We’re punishing everyone so that we get the bad traffic…..doh! This reminds me of the way the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia measures safety by counting the number of plane accidents. Sounds sensible until you realise that 100% safety would be no one flying.

A friend of mine sent me an article by Stephens from the Wall Street Journal to the “Class of 2012”. It’s a great article that basically teaches in a very upfront manner the facts of life (eg. be humble) to students that have garnered massive egos over the course of their studying. What Google needs to remember is that this group of students and more like it are the exact place that it does a lot of its hiring from…..guess what…..you end up with a company that has a lot of egos and not much humility.

I must admit that clicking on the settings link to access my privacy controls (I presume) and having it fail put a smile on my face. It reminded me of a cartoon I saw of a person at a McDonalds store where the order taker said, “Would you like fries with that?” The options were “Yes” and “Yes”.

I’m sure that this is a genuine mistake by the developers hired from the class of 2011 at Google but in the midst of screams by the public regarding privacy it’s a big mistake! So Google class of 2011, learn a little humility and realise that Google isn’t all knowing and all wise and that it sometimes “does evil” in the eyes of others even if you don’t think it does itself.

Likewise, not everyone in the domaining community is fraudulent and there are a lot of companies trying to constantly improve traffic quality by carefully tipping out the water but looking after the babies. Like Google, these companies have mottos similar to “do no evil” the problem is that Google views everyone but itself as doing evil or just about to do evil. It’s a scary thought but maybe this is the result of Google’s new privacy polices……maybe we are as evil as Google’s data on us tells them?

As an aside, I did check out the Google Privacy Policy. It’s a plain English scary as anything document that sent a chill down my spine. Basically, Google tracks everything and data matches everything about you, me, our dogs, cats and anything else they can think of tracking and matching together.

The first sentence of the “How we use information we collect” says, “We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users.”

I have to ask, “Why is my private information being used to protect Google???” It makes me wonder how else I’m protecting Google. I think that I’ll just have to “Google” that question to find the answer……what a strange world we live in.....

My daughter Elise played netball (like basketball but without bouncing the ball) today and her team won – hooray! It was great watching them just “click” as a team as the ball whizzed up the court to get another point. After the match I found myself reflecting on the match and how it reminded me of what it's like to be a domain owner.

Typically speaking we’re playing to increase our revenue and rather than a ball its setting keywords, increasing traffic, buying and selling that result in a point. The challenge for many of us is that we really aren’t team players. We sit in our study at home pecking away at the keyboard hoping that we’ve made the right decision so that the mortgage payment gets made later that week. Team, what team? It’s you against monoliths like Google and Yahoo that seem to forever be interested in slashing your domain revenue…..sigh….

This was exactly the type of conversation that I had with a domain owner this week that was doing a considerable amount of revenue each month. He’d been domaining since the late 90’s and he’d seen his earnings fall through the floor. He’d moved his domains around everywhere but didn’t seem to get anywhere in stopping the decline. That’s when we had a chat.

Let me say from the outset that I believe in working as a team. It’s not, how much money can I get out of the domain owner in the short-term. ParkLogic was built on the basis of establishing long-term relationships and working with domain owners in a transparent and open fashion.

In our conversation I put together a six week program to work with his domains and during this time we'll be really upfront where we lost and where we won…..but more importantly share possible reasons why. It’s more like a consultation where all the stakeholders can work together towards a common goal. We slotted in a weekly meeting to review progress so that we can share what we’re doing on the non-performing domains against his baseline data. It’s a very different process compared to most companies and one that we feel works for everyone.

So my daughter won her game and now it’s my job to work together with the domain owner to also win his game. After all, we all have bills to pay!

Over the last few months I’ve seen a sharp increase in Google marking domain traffic as SPAM and therefore not paying out. Let me say first up that in many cases I’m really supportive of Google’s efforts to fight against SPAM traffic. It hurts legitimate domain owners and effectively steal money from the entire industry.

Although I am generally supportive, I see that there are a few problems in Google’s approach that is negatively impacting many domain owners bottom line. For example, I’ve seen domains that I know have NO SPAM traffic at all and have been owned by the same owner for the past five years suddenly receive clawbacks. Go figure? In some of the cases I know they have no SPAM traffic because I actually have an ownership stake in them and there is not a chance I would be involved in this type of activity.

Much of Google’s activity in blocking domains came as the result of them gaining greater information on the domain traffic itself. This was done through a number of changes including stopping redirections and the implementation of javascript on parked pages themselves. The challenge comes from then implementing effective algorithms that can interpret that information correctly.

This brings me to the next problem. There’s no right of appeal. Once a domain is blocked then it’s essentially blocked forever…..or at least for a LONG time. There’s no ability to make a case to prove that your traffic is good. So what’s going to happen to all the “babies”? It really does make me wonder if a class-action suit can be taken by good domain owners against Google for effectively destroying the domain owners business…..since I’m not a lawyer I’ll leave that question up to the legal eagles.

Like some of Google’s activities in the past I do get the feeling that they are realising that there’s a lot of “babies” (ie. good traffic) are being thrown out with the “bath water” (ie. bad traffic). There’s nothing like forcing the good traffic off to Yahoo to get Google’s attention! I wouldn’t be surprised if the rampant blocking of domains becomes less over the next few months as Google’s algorithms become more refined.

In the meantime…..I think that many people are crossing their fingers each month to see if yet another group of domains are banned and the revenue is clawed-back. Happy domaining!

I have a confession to reveal…..I absolutely love computer games. Since I was ten years old I’ve been playing games. First of all on a Tandy TRS-80 (which had 16K or RAM – WOW!) and later as a developer of the first “Lord of the Rings” game on an Amstrad with the same amount of memory.

My biggest claim to fame was blowing up the first Nintendo in Australia as I reverse engineered it with a couple of other guys for game development house Melbourne House. So thirty years later games are still in my blood.

As a bit of stress relief (and sheer enjoyment) I sat down last night to throw down the gauntlet to the world in the game StarCraft. For those of you that don’t know, StarCraft is a tactical game which is played by millions of people all over the world and for the elite (ie. not me) there’s BIG money to be made.

I was playing three versus three and the whole night I didn’t win a single game. I’d like to say that it was the fault of my team-mates but deep down inside I know the truth. I needed to learn while losing and last night was a night where I just made mistake after mistake. Let me assure you that when you have a Zerg rush knocking on your front door you really can’t make any mistakes.

Believe it or not, domaining is very much like this. If you find yourself making the same mistake over and over again then you’ve got to ask yourself what’s going wrong with your business model. Here are a few simple questions that could help identify mistakes that you’re making:

1.    When was the last time you sold a domain?
2.    If you’ve had enquiries why haven’t you sold any?
3.    Do you have your domains listed for sale everywhere?
4.    Are your traffic domains actually being monetised to the highest level?
5.    Are all your domains at a central registrar or are you accidentally dropping domains because their littered over the landscape?
6.    Do you have a business plan for a couple of your domains?
7.    Are you optimising your domains for revenue or for profit?
8.    When was the last time you asked another domainer what you’re doing wrong (we all do something wrong – don’t we)?

I’m a firm believer that you only really lose if you don’t learn from your mistakes so for me it’s back to looking at my domains and WHAT I DID DO WRONG LAST NIGHT!!! LOL!
Have a great weekend!

A number of years ago I used to be on the professional seminar speaking circuit and speak with executives on many different topics, the favourite of which was “creativity and lateral thinking”. It was a lot of fun but a little too much flying and being away from the family. This ultimately lead me into the domain industry and a much better lifestyle….hooray!

What I find disturbing about the domain industry is the lack of creativity and innovation that brings real change and improved results for domain owners and advertisers. Parked pages from 2003 basically look the same as they do now and domain owners haven’t given up crossing their fingers hoping for a click. This potentially means that in nine years, nothing much appears to have changed…..or has it?

One thing that has definitely changed is that domain owners are a lot smarter. For instance, I was in a conversation with a domain owner the other day and they had already segmented their portfolio into traffic, high quality generic and stock type domains. They were then in the process of deciding which two domains to build out into real businesses.

This is a huge step forward as this particular domainer realised that he could no longer value their time at zero dollars and that to focus their efforts on where they could have the most impact was critical to the success of their business.

What I observe is that many suppliers to the industry have not realised that their clients are becoming more and more sophisticated and savvy about how to manage their valuable traffic and domain assets. This is changing as well as clients push forward, the industry will follow them as well.

What keeps me awake at night is how to continuously innovate and hopefully provide value to customers at every step of the way. Sometimes we completely fail and sometimes we hit the nail on the head. I’d much rather try and fail then to never try at all.

So what do I see as the next leap in innovation that needs to be solved for our industry? Building a completely scalable platform for managing thousands of businesses (notice I didn’t say build websites) that may involve domains, technology, customers, services and products. More importantly it does involve consolidation of management reports and triggers for management to have significant impact on each business.

I’ve heard time and time again from domainers the world over that what kills scaled development across many sites is the lack of management time available to focus on developing each of them into successful businesses. This is what is critical for many of the portfolios of domains to realise their true value…..in the meantime, I have a lot of thinking to do! Have a great weekend.

I’m sitting at my desk reflecting on the past week and what has been transpiring in the world of domains.  What I have noticed is that Google in particular is getting a lot more aggressive with clawbacks.

A clawback is when Google applies its terms to “recoup” up to 90 days of revenue for sub-standard domain traffic. This term has been around for a long time and typically hasn’t bothered myself or clients as we’ve always focused on driving to quality outcomes.

This week was a little different….and this time I think that Google got it wrong. I saw about 40 generic domains fail listed by Google which completely surprised me as none of them had “bad” traffic driving through them. My guess is that Google may have thrown the baby out with the bath water when they’ve applied a new algorithm for blocking traffic…..but here is my biggest concern.

Let’s imagine I didn’t like a fellow domainer and wanted to get a bit of revenge. All I’d have to do is look up their domains via whois, buy a bunch of garbage discount traffic and send it all through to their domains. Google in its infinite wisdom would then automatically fail list the domains and my revenge would be complete.

In the past a domain owner could technically protect themselves from this type of behaviour by filtering traffic for this type of behaviour and then sending the traffic through to their parking provider…..this is no more with Google insisting on using DNS.

The problem with fail listing domains is not stopping bad traffic….it’s reversing the Google procedure. I’ve been told over and over again that Google just doesn’t EVER reverse a decision about fail listing a domain…..so my domaining friends…..the drawbridge is down and there are potentially some very malevolent souls out their wanting to steal your castle.

In the meantime, maybe Yahoo and Bing will survive off domains that have been failed??? Who knows?
Something to think about…..in the meantime, ParkLogic is about block this type of "bad" traffic to protect clients.

Many years ago when I was at university studying electronics I came across the concept of an impulse. An extreme example of an impulse is a lightning bolt where instantly there is a massive amount of destructive energy surging and destroying everything in its path. Believe it or not this is very much the way many people manage their domains.

The first thing that many domainers do each day is look at their stats to see how much money they are making and a few hours later they click the refresh button to see what the stats look like. Depending upon the result they may suddenly whip a stack of domains away and try them elsewhere.

Let’s unpack this behaviour a little bit. For a start Google/Yahoo only report to the parking companies every 24 hours (sometimes later if there are delays) so looking at stats changing during a 24 hour period has more to do with getting a drug fix (ie. just one more refresh) then looking at actual numbers.

Each parking company manages this delay in stats in their own way. Some delay reporting while others have “estimates” versus “actuals” and others tweak the following day’s numbers to pull them in line with their guess from the previous day.

I’ve said it to the parking companies a million times. I don’t mind delayed stats just make sure that you stand by them and that they are correct. As domainers we often drive the parking companies to build incredibly complex systems to instantly display results that are incorrect. What we really need to focus on is the trends not the impulse.

Next time that you look at your stats pull the data into Excel, graph it and then plot a trend line. This will tell you the direction that your assets are headed in. Then spend your time optimising your domains to alter that trend curve in your favour. Don’t do knee-jerk reactions to what is often incorrect data. Treat your assets seriously and spend the analytic time working the numbers over an extended period.

If any are willing, I’m more than happy to setup an online meeting to take you through what I do with my own portfolio and some of the analysis that I pay attention to. Just let me know.