The dark side of parking
A group of specialists from Indiana University (USA) published a study on the “dark side” of domain parking. They studied the specifics of business in this area and found out how parking companies are involved in illegal activities.
According to their conclusions, the activities of parking companies for most of the time is legal, but from time to time they use illegal methods to increase their income.
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To verify the companies, the researchers registered domains, put them in the parking lot, registered accounts to advertise with different companies, and ran a “spider” who visited the parked pages and collected the necessary information, but did not click on the links.
Thus, the researchers received information on the results of 24 million visits to more than 100 thousand parked domains.
The study revealed three main problems:
1. Screwing the number of clicks on the link (Click Fraud). The main problem was not that domain name owners click on their own ads. On the contrary, those advertising campaigns to which the researchers turned to place ads on their pages required them to pay for traffic on clicks that were not there. This traffic was generated by their own “spider”, which is configured so that it does not follow the links. Interestingly, in the largest advertising networks (Google and Bing) there are very few cases of cheating. Probably, parking companies avoid making clicks on the domains hosted in them, because Google and Bing successfully disclose such fraud.
2. Spam. When using the “zero click” service, it was noticed that the websites to which traffic from the parked pages was redirected have nothing to do with the keywords set by the owner of the domains.
3. Theft of traffic. Domain investors often blame parking companies for not paying them for clicks. Such a problem exists, especially when using the zero click method. Researchers paid advertising company 7search for zero-click traffic, but did not receive any reward from the parking company. The fact is that if anyone in the chain “a traffic buyer is an advertising company - a parking company - a parked domain” considers that the number of visits is winding up, it will not pay the domain owner, but the money buyer will not be returned.
It is worth noting here what we wrote earlier - the redirection of zero-click traffic to questionable sites . According to the data obtained, 3.7% of zero-click users spread malicious traffic without even knowing it. This also harms the owners of parked domains, as it leads to a decrease in their income.
Most of the illegal activity is recorded in anonymous parking companies, which appear in the report as PS1, PS2, PS5 and PS6. For legal reasons, their names are not disclosed, but researchers note that they can be “guessed” based on information about the advertising networks with which they cooperate.
Note also that in the report, the researchers disclose that PS6 is a service of the company TeamInternet, which also owns the DNTX network, which receives complaints about the very weak correspondence of zero-click traffic to the target audience.
We also provide statistics on the number of parked domains.
The names Above, Rook Media, Fabulous and Internet Traffic are not classified as they are not anonymous.
According to their conclusions, the activities of parking companies for most of the time is legal, but from time to time they use illegal methods to increase their income.
')
To verify the companies, the researchers registered domains, put them in the parking lot, registered accounts to advertise with different companies, and ran a “spider” who visited the parked pages and collected the necessary information, but did not click on the links.
Thus, the researchers received information on the results of 24 million visits to more than 100 thousand parked domains.
The study revealed three main problems:
1. Screwing the number of clicks on the link (Click Fraud). The main problem was not that domain name owners click on their own ads. On the contrary, those advertising campaigns to which the researchers turned to place ads on their pages required them to pay for traffic on clicks that were not there. This traffic was generated by their own “spider”, which is configured so that it does not follow the links. Interestingly, in the largest advertising networks (Google and Bing) there are very few cases of cheating. Probably, parking companies avoid making clicks on the domains hosted in them, because Google and Bing successfully disclose such fraud.
2. Spam. When using the “zero click” service, it was noticed that the websites to which traffic from the parked pages was redirected have nothing to do with the keywords set by the owner of the domains.
3. Theft of traffic. Domain investors often blame parking companies for not paying them for clicks. Such a problem exists, especially when using the zero click method. Researchers paid advertising company 7search for zero-click traffic, but did not receive any reward from the parking company. The fact is that if anyone in the chain “a traffic buyer is an advertising company - a parking company - a parked domain” considers that the number of visits is winding up, it will not pay the domain owner, but the money buyer will not be returned.
It is worth noting here what we wrote earlier - the redirection of zero-click traffic to questionable sites . According to the data obtained, 3.7% of zero-click users spread malicious traffic without even knowing it. This also harms the owners of parked domains, as it leads to a decrease in their income.
Most of the illegal activity is recorded in anonymous parking companies, which appear in the report as PS1, PS2, PS5 and PS6. For legal reasons, their names are not disclosed, but researchers note that they can be “guessed” based on information about the advertising networks with which they cooperate.
Note also that in the report, the researchers disclose that PS6 is a service of the company TeamInternet, which also owns the DNTX network, which receives complaints about the very weak correspondence of zero-click traffic to the target audience.
We also provide statistics on the number of parked domains.
The names Above, Rook Media, Fabulous and Internet Traffic are not classified as they are not anonymous.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/245613/
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