By John Elder
So you’ve got a great idea for a new web site. You search and search for that great domain name, and you finally find one that hasn’t already been taken.
So you quickly snatch it up. The problem? You haven’t BUILT the site yet!
NO PROBLEM, you think, my web host just puts up a parked domain page until I get around to building my site.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here’s a picture of an example that I’m sure you’ve seen before for a GoDaddy parked domain site.
Search Engine Optimization
Hey, you might think, they might even pay me a little to do that!
Pay Attention to What I’m About To Say…
You should never, never, never set up any sort of paid parked domain page on your web site if you intend to eventually USE the site yourself. Here’s why….
Google constantly spiders the Internet. They’re always out there…crawling from site to site. Sooner than you think, they’ll stumble onto your parked web site and see that nasty parked web page.
And what will the Google gods do?
They’ll decide your site is a crappy parked domain page, and they’ll make a note of that. Since your site is just some crappy parked domain page, they’ll feel no need to come back and crawl it again any time soon.
Eventually you’ll build your web site, and you’ll WANT Google to start crawling your site. But they’ll have already made up their mind…and it’s much harder to change Google’s mind once it’s made up, then it is simply starting from scratch.
Sure, you can do it….but it’s much harder to get Google re-interested in your site once they determine that there’s no reason for them to crawl you.
And really, do you want to start your new web site with a mark against you? It’s already hard enough to get a new site indexed and avoid the dreaded Google Sandbox (the penalty area where Google puts a lot of new sites before they allow them into the main Google index – it’s supposed to keep spammers from being able to jack up brand new sites in the rankings before those sites are worth getting high rankings.).
So resist the urge to put up a parked domain page. I’ve never met anyone that actually made money from them, and with the potential fallout…It’s just not worth it. Leave the web site blank until your site is ready.
Comment below!
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November 5th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It is wise to send a 503 Status of your server, so Google understand that your site shouldn’t be indexed because the “service is not available”.
This helps a lot and avoid problems in launching a website!
November 5th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Yes, excellent point. People can read up on server status codes
here
November 5th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
1) I make great money on many domains as parked pages, the variables depend on the domain and where it is parked
2) Just because a page is parked does not automatically predispose it towards Google helldom
3) The sandbox is a mysterious lot indeed and I have sites that have gone from parked to indexed in a matter of days and some that were never parked that too over a month to get out of the sandbox, go figure
November 5th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hi Jeff,
1. Sure, if you’re in the business and know what you’re doing you can make money…I was referring to an average site owner who’s just building a regular web site and may or may not even realize that their new domain may be parked by their web hosting provider. Heck I’ve got some parked domains myself that I use adsense on…you don’t have to convince me that there’s money to be made there! Would I ever park my domains with Godaddy.com though? No way.
2. Again, for the average site owner who doesn’t know what they’re getting into with parking…I think it does predispose them.
3. The sandbox makes my head ache to think about, will we ever really understand it?
Btw, I dig your website, popped it into my RSS reader under my daily reads.