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Pay per click boosts domain name registrations

Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas.
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Michael Kanellos

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Pay-per-click advertising has caused Google's ad revenue to explode, but it's also meant a mad rush for URLs, Stratton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign, said at PC Forum, a conference taking place here.

A little while ago, there were only about 450,000 new requests a week. Now it's 7 million. A substantial portion of these URLs are essentially abandoned after five days or so, Sclavos said. The idea is that these URLs will crop up on searches and allow the owner to nab a portion of ad revenue.