Make Sure Your Parked Pages Aren’t Classified as “Adult”

I bought MomSavers.com at GoDaddy Auctions a couple of weeks ago. I think it could be a neat brand name for a mom-focused money saving website. It wasn’t a super expensive acquisition, but it’s the type of inventory I like to add to my portfolio on the cheap.

In doing a bit of maintenance on my Afternic listings and Embrace.com BIN pages, I double checked to make sure I added MomSavers.com to my Uniregistry account and that the parked page was loading. When I visited, I was surprised to see the dark adult-themed landing page. I quickly changed the keyword to an appropriate related parked term, so it now resolves correctly.

The minimal revenue this name will likely earn wouldn’t be impacted in a meaningful way with the adult landing page. My concern was that someone might think twice about buying a domain name they think was used for adult-related advertising. Additionally, even if they understood this was just a parked page and not an adult website, they could have second guessed themselves about whether other people could think Mom Savers was an adult brand.

Someone who wants to use “Mom Savers” as a brand name may not care about how the domain name has been used, but there’s no reason to take that chance.

There is some good technology that helps ensure proper targeting on domain names, but sometimes these automated systems get it wrong. Whether there are trademark concerns on the domain name, or to more accurately choose the topics of PPC advertising, it is a good idea to check on parked landing pages. I don’t do it enough but I should.