Regarding lack of optimization with namedrive

[floyd777]

Hi,

I've been parking my names with ND for a while now but as my portfolio grows and I pay more attention to the ads, I'm seeing that ND gives a lot of importance to the domain name rather than the keywords.

As a result, I'm seeing domain names with ads that are totally irrelevant to the keywords.

Has someone faced a similar experience?

I'm seriously considering switching back to Sedo because of low CTR and low revenue.

Thanks,

Floyd

[NameDriver]

Hello Floyd,

Our advertising partner uses our keywords as a suggestion and sometimes return advertising based on the domain name instead of the keyword. Please PM me any specific names and I'll have a look into it.

Ed

[wolfis.com]

ED - your control panel does not load !!!

if a new page takes more than 10 minutes to load there is something wrong !

[NameDriver]

Hi Wolfis,

Your account is afflicted by a bug we are aware of which affects some accounts on logging in. We are currently looking for a solution and are in the process of increasing our databases' RAM, which should make a big difference to this irritation.

Ed

[stacman]

ed im getting a network error could you pls check if the server is running ok?

user: forex@domainphil.com

[NameDriver]

Hi Stacman,

Where are you getting the network error? When you are logging in? I've never heard of this before on our system.

Ed

[ProudPapa]

It is my understanding that Google changed its algorithm (last month / 6 weeks ago), which now places a heavier emphasis on any keywords embedded in the domain name. Thus a political blog with the domain name (fictional) such as mygrassisgreenerthanyourgrass, would return turf and lawn products, even though the keyword set would be "world politics" or "election." etc.

This issue alone has singlehandedly plummeted revenue (not to mention Google's newly aggressive stance on not servicing various domains / poorly paying secondary feed providers).

Other than moving domains to a Yahoo feed provider, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Thanks

[NameDriver]

Hi ProudPapa,

While Google do sometime place more emphasis on the domain name than the keyword, in 95% of cases, they actually make a right decision and the earnings are not affected. Your example is a case where this is not the case and a conflict occurs. If you have any of these conflicts, please let us know and we will look into them individually. It is obviously not in Google's interest that the page is showing advertising which is totally unrelated to the domain name, so they aim to do the best job possible here.
While it may affect the earnings on individual domains, across our entire platform, we have not seen any significant drop in CTR, which shows that in general, there is no noticeable effect globally on this.

I hope this explains the situation in our eyes.

Ed

[ProudPapa]

Hi Ed:

Thanks for your response. For the record, I am not commenting on Namedrive specifically . . . names parked at Sedo are experiencing the same issues. In defense of ND and Sedo (and other PPC w/Google as primary), I still believe that the issue stems from Google. I say this because when moving names from one Google feed provider to another, the same irrelevant ads appear. Thus in my prior example, Sedo shows lawn and turf ads....as does Namedrive. Ditto for every name moved from one Google feed provider to the other. The irrelevant ad issue started in mid Feb.

On a personal level, I literally have thousands of domain names that are affected by this issue. Names earning $120 for month of January are now earning $3 in March and April. In every instance, when I investigated the discrepancy in revenue, ads which were relevant in Jan and prior, are now irrelevant. This issue is distinct from the decrease in revenue resulting from Google's mass ban / inferior secondary feed.

I appreciate that ND informs customers when the primary feed provider no longer services a particular domain (as oppose to defaulting to the secondary feed provider). Your policy actually supports my belief that the problem is with the primary feed because I know that Google is still servicing names parked at ND. Consequently, "this particular" problem is not with the secondary feed provider.

All that being said, I agree with your statement that its in everybody's best interest (particularly Google's) that ads appear relevant. I am not suggesting some nefarious conduct or conspiracy on behalf of Google. . . but other than the algorithm change (which I heard independently from other sources), I am at a loss as to why this has occurred abruptly and on such a large scale. Perhaps, if I am correct about the algorithm change, the type of domain names in my portfolio are more adversely affected than other domainers. I dunno. I'd appreciate any advice.