Set Up AdSense for Hosted Domains with a GoDaddy Domain

Recently, I won an auction for a domain name that was being sold by GoDaddy. The ICANN rules for domain name transfers specify that you cannot transfer a domain within the first 60 days after registering it, so I will have to wait a while before I will be able to transfer the new domain to my usual registrar. In the meantime, I thought that I would park the domain with Google using the AdSense for Hosted Domains program.

I go into a bit more detail about this in a previous article, How to Park a Domain with Google. The gist, however, is that if you have a domain name that you aren’t doing anything with yet, you can have Google host it for you so long as it complies with the AdSense for Hosted Domain policies.

If someone happens to visit the domain, they will see sponsored listings provided by AdSense. If someone clicks a sponsored listing, you earn revenue. Here are the instructions for parking a domain that you hold on GoDaddy with Google and using the AdSense for Hosted Domains program.

1. Proceed to adsense.google.com, and log in with your Google account information.
2. Click the “My Ads” tab.
3. Click “Domains” on the left side of the page.
4. Click the “New Hosted Domain” button.
5. Type the name of the domain, and then select a language from the drop-down list below.
6. Click the “Add Domain(s)” button.
7. Close the pop-up window to return to your list of Google Adsense for Hosted Domains. You should see the message “Policy Approval Pending” or “DNS Verification Pending” next to your domain name. As long as the domain name complies with Google’s parked domain policies for AdSense, you should see the “Policy Approval Pending” message disappear after a few minutes.
8. Proceed to GoDaddy.com in a new browser window or tab, and enter your customer number and password to log in and view your account information.
9. Hover the mouse pointer over “My Account” in the top-right corner of the page. Click “My Products.”
10. Scroll down to the “My Domains” section of the page, and click the name of the domain that you want to park with Google.
11. Select the “Advanced” tab on the right side of the page if it is not active already.
12. Click the “Set Nameservers” link under the “Nameservers” section on the left side of the page.
13. Click the “I have specific nameservers for my domains” radio button, and then click “OK.” Four text fields appear.
14. Type the following nameserver addresses in the four fields: ns1.googleghs.com, ns2.googleghs.com, ns3.googleghs.com and ns4.googleghs.com.
15. Click “OK.”
16. It can take up to a few days for the DNS change to propagate, so do not be alarmed if you do not see AdSense listings right away when visiting your parked domain. Within the next few days, you should see that the status message next to the name of your domain on the AdSense website has changed to “Active.”