No AdSense on 5-Day Old Domains

If you just got a new domain, launched a blog and wanted to monetize it with AdSense, you can’t do it on the first 5 days. That’s according to an insider information that says Google will stop monetizing all domains if they are less than five days old.

This move, which is supposed to cut down domain tasting (was a victim of it recently) in conjunction with running AdSense for Domains. The Domain Tools blog has the insider scoop:

A confidential informant says Google will stop monetizing all domains if they are less then five days old. This potential new policy change by Google could stop all Domain Tasting in its tracks. The Add Grace Period (AGP) is a time period when registrars can delete a domain at no cost, but in this time frame a registrant could register millions of these temporary domains and place Google Adsense for Domains on them. The result is the ability to produce millions of temporary websites that literally generate millions of dollars in income per week for Google.

It was disclosed in court that one partner that Google had was generating as much as $3PHP 176INR 254EUR 3CNY 22 million dollars a month from the practice and that was after Google’s revenue share. Oversee.net and other companies have been using this practice for years and it will have a direct impact on them. The gravy train of free money might be coming to a halt very fast. This policy change at Google should be announced to the channel partners soon and it will have a huge echoing impact on the Industry.

Nice effort and a laudable one. However, Google might not have expected this could also do some collateral damage on regular publishers. Say, you just started a new blog and bought your own domain. Does it mean you can’t put AdSense in there on the first 5 days.

The five days may be short wait time for a really new site but what if you bought a huge website or forum, replaced the domain with a newer one for branding? Or what if you have a really nice Blogger or WordPress.com account you wanted to transfer into its own domain/hosting, redirected all permalinks to drive traffic, you couldn’t put AdSense on the first 5 days as well.

Others think that this move by Google might do more harm than good. I certainly don’t agree with them. I think it’s okay as there are other alternatives out there — Kontera, Bidvertiser, Chitika and ShoppingAds. Besides, it’s just for the first 5 days. IMO, the legit domainers will be the ones who’ll profit the most because of fewer competition.