
Duck Duck Go Firefox Toolbar Blocks 42 Million Parked/Spam Domains - epi0Bauqu
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10536
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jpcx01
Would be really nice if this made it into the next Firefox release. Would put
a nice little wrench in the entire domain parking business.

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.

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jonknee
So you replace their ads with one for your site? And this is a feature? Sounds
almost as handy as ISPs showing search pages for sites that don't exist.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I don't think our block pages are an ad for our site:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/images/p/30122/1236...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/images/p/30122/1236005503)

~~~
jonknee
Your logo is at the top and there is a link to your search engine. So instead
of seeing something I didn't want, I see something I didn't want.

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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
OK, so a lot to cover here...

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.

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gojomo
My professional interest in the world of internet companies, domain/company
names, and internet advertising means I like to see how a particular site is
parked/squatted. (What ads do they think are related? Is there contact info
for a domain purchas?)

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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
The list isn't crowd sourced--the buttons are just for feedback.

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axod
Fatal flaw: The people who go to these pages and click on ads, aren't people
who would install a firefox plugin.

If you're using firefox, you're most likely completely aware that
facebok!=facebook.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
You don’t have to be a person who clicks on ads on parked pages to find it
useful. These domains routinely come on other search engines and via
typoquatting. Yes, even people like us mistype addresses and click on search
results we otherwise think to be valid sites. At least I know I do!

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.

~~~
axod
It seems like opendns etc do this in an easier way though.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Yeah, a DNS server is an option we're considering.

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wizard_2
OpenDNS already allows you to block sqatting sites (or any from a few
different categories) via dns.
<http://www.opendns.com/solutions/homenetwork/parental/>

"parked domains" is on that list.

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sireat
My suggestion would be to reduce the Duck Duck Go logo somewhat.

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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I’m not wedded to having the logo at all, actually. At first it had no logo,
but the feedback from beta-testers was that one would be valuable both to
anchor the page and to give a visual remembrance as to what the page was about
and where it came from. Anyway, I tried different sizes, and this one seemed
to work visually. Perhaps I’ll try again. Thanks for the constructive
feedback.

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jimrandomh
This plugin has a bunch of reviews which were very obviously by its creator.
This is scummy. As is combining a legitimate plugin (blocking parked pages)
with a useless one ("lets you more easily use our search engine").

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Wow, that is a pretty bold accusation with absolutely no evidence to back it
up!

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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Some more clarification...

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?

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bluelu
That serach engine nees a bit of refinement. Doesn't even find itself:
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck+duck+go>

~~~
epi0Bauqu
It tells you "An awesome search engine." What more do you want? You're already
on the site :). In all seriousness, there will be more "zero-click" company
data coming soon...

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Jem
> What more do you want?

An indication when there are no results. I did a vanity search and ended up
with a long blank page.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
What search? There should be a no results message if there are no results.

~~~
Jem
Never mind - ignore me; I'm running the NoScript plugin and although I'd
allowed for duckduckgo I'd not done so for yahoo.

Might want to add a noscript javascript required warning though :)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Ahh, thanks for the clarification. Is there a way to display a warning to just
noscript users?

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Jem
I have no idea, but the <noscript> tag will show to anyone with JS disabled.

<http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_noscript.asp>

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ejs
So if I buy a domain, and don't use it for a few months... it could be blocked
(since many registrars like godaddy put up a parked page if I am too lazy to
change it)?

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....

~~~
epi0Bauqu
We are currently crawling all domains (in the tlds we cover) once a month, and
so it should be resolved automatically at an average of two weeks. The
feedback on the site is to help us detect false positives and get people
unblocked quicker, where appropriate.

~~~
katz
Naive questions:

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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
The crawler is written in Perl, and has been optimized such that the amount of
resources we need to produce our list is actually not that much.

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krav
I think people are smart enough to decide what they want to do when they land
at a parked page. If they want to leave, guess what, type in another URL. If
they want to click and ad, so be it. Another cha-ching in Google's coffers
(guess who powers those ad feeds!)

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.

~~~
smokinn
Personally, I'm all for any options that bring down the incentives for parking
domains.

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jaymstr
I've been using the plugin for a few weeks. It doesn't often come into effect
(I don't misspell that often), but it is nice to have when I do!

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keltecp11
I have always liked the name.

~~~
jessep
Yeah, it is a funny name. I'm not sure, though, about this link. Seems a
little spammy. When I saw this link on HN, with a little "mozilla.org" I
thought, "Wow, someone at Mozilla is blogging about a cool plugin." But no,
the DDG guys just linked to their plugin page in Mozilla's directory and got
all the credibility that goes with Mozilla. Not a big deal, but I don't like
seeing misleading links on HN. Maybe it's not that misleading, but the title
leads me to expect some sort of analysis and a post rather than an
installation page.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I didn't mean to be misleading at all. The point is to announce the plugin,
and that is where the plugin is! It's that simple. Actually, there is no page
on our site to download it and we don't have a blog--our link to the toolbar
goes where this link goes...where you download it...

~~~
jessep
Ah, no blog. Ok, my bad :)

