My name is important

If you get a moment go check out www.mclean.com or for that matter www.mclean.co.uk. I own neither unfortunately.

Both are high-level domains, both are classed as desirable (read, expensive) and both are currently being used… for nothing. Well I’m sure they bring in money for the person who owns them and has them sitting their forlornly with nothing but adverts on them.

It’s rather sad.

And very bloody annoying.

I pay for the domain names I have and I don’t mind doing so but having contacted the owners of these particularly domain names, domain names which obviously I might, maybe, be interested in using (dear first time reader, let me introduce myself, I’m Gordon McLean). Alas I’ve either heard nothing or the topic turnst to money and some rather large amounts are mentioned.

So, I’m setting up a blog appeal to raise sufficient fu…. no, I’m not really.

I just wanted to say that, you know, it’s annoying. My Mum and Dad have put HUGE amounts of effort into tracing our genealogy and where better to start putting the information than in the domain name for our family.

To be frank it just seems mean that these people are allowed to sit on these domain names and do nothing with them or than earn money for hosting adverts. Isn’t the internet supposed to be better than that?? They are the worst kind of leech and whilst I know that this blog post isn’t going to change their opinion (I’m sure they will point to the $xyz dollars they earn each year by sitting on those domains) it’s just a bit… crap.

Written By

Long time blogger, Father of Jack, geek of many things, random photographer and writer of nonsense.

Doing my best to find a balance.

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9 comments

It’s a piry there isn’t a rule which means by the time a domain comes up for renewal it has to be “in use” and not just a sat on advertising site. Obviously, owners can use it as a working site but they wouldn’t necessarily make the same money so they might not do it.

And now somone will tell me why that’s totally impractical. 🙂

It is annoying though.

mum says:

We put a lot of time and effort into giving you your name in the first place – then we decided on a name (we hadn’t even discussed)
as I was going into labour. (sorry too much information) You have your dad to thank for an inspired thought!

Since your name is Important, I thought I’d check important.com and important.co.uk. I see that they are parked too. Grr.

So what’s wrong with putting adverts on websites? You do it…

I don’t. I won’t bore you with chapter and verse of why, but I suspect it’s all part of the same money-making desire.

Having thought about it, I don’t mind them putting adverts on it per se, it’s the fact that that is ALL that the domain name is being used for, it’s essentially a dormant website.

Kennamatic gets it bang on, surely a domain should be used for “in use” websites?

I think if you bought a plot of land in a big city, or a building, and just plastered adverts on it …. I wonder what the council would do.

I agree it’s a shame. But then it’s life. Life’s filled with people who’s net contribution to society is to take out of it. I think it’s a waste that domains are bought and sat on, and essentially wasted.

But how do you stop this? You can raises the price of domains, but that will hurt people as much as it free’s up domains. I’m not sure you can enforce a domain’s usage, as what defines usage, how do you enforce it, and wont people just fake this with splogs or other crap.

I agree with you (and disagree with BW) that it’s not quite the same, having advertising as a component of an existing working site that is being used for something, and having a site that is just a net for google adtraffic, that I’m not sure adds any value to anyone.

I guess this is just one of those things where people are scummy, and thats part of life.

I, personally, am glad that there isn’t a DNS police running around the place, casting judgement on websites and deciding who gets to keep their domain, and who must surrender it because they aren’t using it satisfactorily.

While Google charge companies for advertising to boost their search engine positioning, you will always have advert-only websites.

Mr BW has got his company website from a Google 4 to a Google 6 by placing £10K worth of ads with them in the last year. Google have to put those somewhere to make them work.

Sadly it’s how the world works now.

Personally I refuse to participate.

I’d be interested to learn how much your Google ads net you per year (and whether you’re declaring it to HMRC…)

Pete, surely there could be some form of arbitration at play? Or is it ALL just down to money? What happens if a big corporation decides they want mclean.com – I bet they get it! Meh.

BW – It took me one week shy of a year to break the $100 mark (which triggers a payment). A few weeks later some £55 was deposited in my bank account.

My grasp of tax laws isn’t great, but I *think* I’m safe to leave that undeclared! 😉

For the record, that doesn’t even cover the hosting and domain names for the two blogs which have ads on them.

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