Duck Duck Go Firefox Toolbar Blocks 42 Million Parked/Spam Domains
addons.mozilla.org
addons.mozilla.org
Too many domains being wasted by parking and trying to sell for thousands of dollars. This would allow the value of a parked domain needs down to give startups and developers a chance to buy them at a reasonable cost. Hopefully Mozilla helps in this endeavor.
I guess some people may find it useful, but so far the positive reviews seem to be your friends from Philly.
Update: Not only are the reviews astroturfed, but the "Parked Domain Project" is not someone you partnered with, it's you. It apparently exists to generate back links to Duck Duck Go. (Every page has "new search engine" linked to you.) Why be shady? You put out some great stuff, no shame in saying it's yours.
1) The Parked Domains Project is a separate legal entity that plans to monetize its data, e.g. through catching link spam in real time. There is indeed a real partnership with Duck Duck Go. I don't think any of this is shady. I freely acknowledge I work on both projects--it's in my blog, my twitter, etc. I'm not trying to hide anything here.
2) Reviews are from Philly people (some known, some unknown to me) because that is the base from which I drew my beta-testers. I solicited them through our local startup mailing lists and clubs. There aren't more reviews because it just went public! The two negative reviews came from an initial release that was broken and wasn't working for anyone :(.
3) I'm not wedded to having the logo or the search link on the page at all. Both were not on initially and were suggestions by multiple beta-testers.
I'm also not sure I'd trust Duck Duck Go and/or the crowdsourced 'useless'/'useful' rankings to keep up with site changes.
So on a browser with this, I'd always click 'proceed anyway', making this have negative value for me.
If you're using firefox, you're most likely completely aware that facebok!=facebook.
As for people who don’t install extensions, I hope there will be other toolbars (and tools in general) for other platforms that reach these people. If you installed Firefox for your parents/grandparents, you could similarly install this add-on for them.
"parked domains" is on that list.
There is an extremely fine line between appearing spammy/selfserving and actually delivering value to users. Mind you, the application/service might actually remain functionally same, but in former case people will be bringing pitchforks, while in latter they might bring cookies and milk.
First and foremost, none of those reviews were by me, nor did I tell anyone what to say. Secondly, the search engine both a) provides the search suggestions for the block pages and b) has the blocked pages removed from its results. That is, they are naturally complementary.
1) From my other comment (but relevant here)... Those reviews in question (not all, but most) are from Philly people (some known, some unknown to me) because that is the base from which I drew my beta-testers. I solicited them through our local startup mailing lists and clubs. There aren't more reviews because it just went public! The two negative reviews came from an initial release that was broken and wasn't working for anyone :(.
2) Beyond the complementary functions to the user stated above (search suggestions, better search results, search from block page, etc.), there are also many more synergies on the back end. The search engine provides invaluable false positive data to do The Parked Domains Project. Additionally, while the project is good at backend crawling, it has no front end code base at all except for a static Web site, whereas the search engine already has all of that speed/scale infrastructure in place.
3) By your logic, every feature in the Google/Yahoo/whatever toolbar should be its own extension or else it is "scummy?" Or are all search boxes "useless"? Or are you just singling out mine?
An indication when there are no results. I did a vanity search and ended up with a long blank page.
Might want to add a noscript javascript required warning though :)
Then I would have to dig around and unflag it? What about people who don't use this service (like myself) that would never know the site they are trying to promote is being blocked?
From the site that keeps all the blocked domains:
"First, we're very sorry for any inconvenience this false positive may have caused you. Seriously. Second, find the domain in the list, using the alphabetical directory above. Finally, click the X next to the domain to report it as a false positive."
I realize this is unlikely, but it seems like a service that keeps a database of pages it considers spam should automatically check for this situation on a periodic basis....
How does your data center look like? What is your web crawler written in?
I assume that your startup is fairly small - how difficult is/was it to get enough resources (funding) to scale up? (esp. datacenter wise)
I see that you do not just cover English and other (co.?? org.??) domains are covered fairly well.
Good to hear!
My criteria for an add-on is what value does it provide me that either (a) saves me time (b) improves my experience (c) makes me money (d) gets me laid.
Now, if you can create an add-on that hits (c) and (d), you'll be rich.