Dan.com provides “hybrid landers” that offer PPC revenue share; the feature was introduced in 2020, prior to its acquisition by GoDaddy. At the time, Dan.com was using Bodis as the PPC provider.
Things changed in the summer of 2022, after Dan.com was acquired by GoDaddy; Bodis was dropped and the PPC revenue share option switched to the GoDaddy Cashparking platform in late August 2022.
It’s not clear how many accounts use this type of hybrid platform on Dan.com that requires the creation of a GoDaddy Cashparking account to be enabled and functioning.
Personally, I’ve never used the service and I was surprised to find one of my fresh domain registrations, HapticSearch.com, displaying PPC ads with a “Buy Now” banner on top.
After researching similar landers I made the assumption that Dan was preparing some type of A/B testing platform combining the two. I was very concerned about the lack of information on how to disable an option that I had not enabled in the first place.
It turns out that it was all due to a bug at Dan.com that kept domains that had opted-in at Cashparking as “active” even if their owners removed them from the platform.
In the case of HapticSearch.com, its prior registrant listed it on Dan.com and enabled Cashparking but eventually let the domain expire and drop. After I added the domain on Dan.com it inherited the previous owner’s Cashparking settings, serving hybrid landers with PPC ads, even though I didn’t opt in the service.
Today, Dan.com support confirmed my findings, after noting that there is no A/B testing taking place; other domains included in my list were sitting in Dan accounts that had explicitly enabled the GoDaddy Cashparking feature.
The following is great news:
“We have resolved that and are also taking steps to ensure that new listings will not inherit the CashParking settings of previous listings going forward.”
I’m definitely impressed by the expedient utilization of my feedback by the Dan.com support team, squashing a bug that was probably sitting there for a few years. 🙂
To recap:
- Hybrid PPC landers at Dan.com are optional
- You need a GoDaddy Cashparking account to use them
- The bug that allowed domains to inherit prior parking settings has been eliminated
