Google dealt a blow to Payday lenders and domain investors who have invested in payday loan type domains. A few years back I knew some people getting big parking clicks with Payday loan domain names. From a parking or developed site monetized by AdWords, it is a negative, but since the industry is still in business it could mean owning the very best names in the niche have gone up in value.
The Washington Post published an article on the industry crackdown and how lenders were getting around the backlash.
According to Paydayloaninfo.org:
Payday lending is not specifically authorized and is defacto prohibited by several state small loan rate caps. These states includeArizona, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
In a post on the Google Public Policy blog, they informed the world they will ban payday loans. Loans is certainly a very popular keyword category for Google so this decision will hit their bottom line.
SearchEngineJournal.com took a look in 2012 at Google profits from Payday/Cash Advance Loans,
using Google’s own conservative Traffic Estimator data, Google could be earning $34 million a year from these keywords. Veteran PPC marketers know that Traffic Estimator isn’t totally accurate. SEMRush shows an average CPC of $15.97 for “payday loans,” $12.04 for “cash advance,” and $9.11 for “fast cash,” meaning Google’s earnings are likely significantly higher. Can Google live without this revenue? Certainly, but it’s not going to give it up unless it is forced to do so.
From their blogpost:
In that vein, today we’re sharing an update that will go into effect on July 13, 2016: we’re banning ads for payday loans and some related products from our ads systems. We will no longer allow ads for loans where repayment is due within 60 days of the date of issue. In the U.S., we are also banning ads for loans with an APR of 36% or higher. When reviewing our policies, research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that. This change is designed to protect our users from deceptive or harmful financial products and will not affect companies offering loans such as Mortgages, Car Loans, Student Loans, Commercial loans, Revolving Lines of Credit (e.g. Credit Cards). According to Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “This new policy addresses many of the longstanding concerns shared by the entire civil rights community about predatory payday lending. These companies have long used slick advertising and aggressive marketing to trap consumers into outrageously high interest loans – often those least able to afford it.”
WordStream placed Loans as number 2 in most expensive keywords on Google.
Top 10 Most Expensive Google Keywords
The Top 10 Most Expensive Keywords are:
- Insurance
- Loans
- Mortgage
- Attorney
- Credit
- Lawyer
- Donate
- Degree
- Hosting
- Claim
There have been some five figure sales related to payday loans and I have included the top domain sales. Data courtesy of Namebio. You can see by the dates that activity was stronger years ago, PPC rates were higher years ago as well.
payday.co.uk 24,160 USD 2006-08-08 NameDrive
paydayloans.info 24,000 USD 2010-03-17 Sedo
onlinepaydayloan.com 16,900 USD 2013-06-30 NameJet
paydayloans.org.uk 16,748 USD 2011-09-21 Private
easypaydayloans.com 13,500 USD 2006-08-15 SnapNames
onlinepaydayloans.co.uk 11,665 USD 2012-01-11 Nokta
paydayloans.info 10,000 USD 2012-02-01 Sedo
epaydayloans.com 9,500 USD 2011-08-24 Afternic
paydayloans.co 9,375 USD 2010-10-06 Private
paydayloan.co 6,425 USD 2010-10-06 Private
paydayguarantee.com 4,900 USD 2010-03-31 Sedo
paydaycashloans.com 4,150 USD 2013-08-02 GoDaddy
nowaitpaydayloans.co.uk 4,004 USD 2012-03-21 Sedo
onlinepayday.com 3,777 USD 2011-07-13 Afternic
paydayrate.com 3,188 USD 2009-12-09 Afternic
paydayloancash.com 3,000 USD 2010-09-28 Sedo
paydayadvance.org 2,888 USD 2009-07-27 Afternic
paydaysos.com 2,800 USD 2011-01-13 Sedo
holidaypaydayloans.net 2,702 USD 2014-12-19 GoDaddy
paydaymobi.com 2,499 USD 2015-02-05 Sedo
paydayhub.com 2,488 USD 2010-01-13 Afternic
loanstillpayday.com 2,400 USD 2011-06-21 NameJet
payday-loans.co.uk 2,115 USD 2009-06-16 Sedo
paydaymoney.com 2,000 USD 2014-08-13 NameJet
payday.pro 1,995 USD 2008-05-08 Afternic
paydaylenders.net 1,850 USD 2011-12-07 Sedo
paydayloanlenders.com 1,825 USD 2014-11-01 GoDaddy
paydaylenders.co.uk 1,691 USD 2010-07-15 Sedo
payday-loans.co.uk 1,500 USD 2011-01-10 Sedo
Payday.loans and Payday.loan are both reserved by their respective registries.