http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/more-than-just-squatting-on-domain-names/
Some days you just want to throw up your hands and sigh..
Quote: "One of the less reputable sectors of the Internet economy that has been growing rapidly is domain name parking. Entrepreneurs register names that are either misspellings of common domains, like amazo.com or generic titles like www.chicagodoctors.com. They fill these sites with ads from Google or Yahoo, getting paid for every click. This game has morphed into what is know as Google arbitrage, filling the page also with just enough content that it will actually be found by search engines, and in turn attract users who simply see ads and click again to get somewhere useful."
This paragraph is the worst piece of reporting I have ever read in the New York Times. It's factually incorrect, confuses vernacular and just basically misinforms. Louise Story, the author is a lost, lost woman. And she writes for the New York Times.. they pay her.. just amazing.
Domain Parking is not a problem.. The cybersquatting dynamic she aludes to is a problem but then she equates it with owning a generic name like ChicagoDoctors.com which any right minded person can see is patently generic.. i would pay $15,000 for chicagodoctors.com.. your grandmother could register that name and "park it" and she'd be $15,000 richer while doing absolutely nothing wrong.. but this piece intimates that it would somehow be "less reputable"
That opening paragraph goes on to confuse Google arbitrage (an entirely different animal) with parking.. and closes by misleading readers into believing that the goal of operators in this space is to somehow "get found in the Google search engine". Lost lost lost Louise .. you are lost.
The goal is to go AROUND the search engine and get traffic from organic type-in vists to the generic keyword weight domain names. This author just can't get her head around that.. All in spite of the fact that somebody probably gave her an interview for the piece.
The rest of the story goes on to explain how Marchex is changing the world, by doing the exact same thing as the folks parking the names (but with some openlist content).
Don't get me wrong, the Marchex story is fine and accurate.. but the lead-in is profoundly flawed.. and it's in "the times"..
Rid-diculous.
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