How to Remove Parked Domain Ads in GoDaddy?

GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name registrars for buying and selling domain names for websites. When you buy a new domain from GoDaddy, there will be parked domain advertisements displayed without your concern. Unfortunately there are no settings to stop these parked domain ads and GoDaddy will generate revenue from your domain name. In this article we will explore how to remove parked domain ads on new GoDaddy domain.

GoDaddy Parked Domain Ads

If you have purchased a new domain from GoDaddy then just open the domain name URL from any of the browsers. You will see ads like below which is generally referred as “parked domain advertisement”.

Why Advertisements are Shown?

Though it is not fair idea to sell a domain and display advertisements, nothing you can do about that. Unfortunately almost all registrars and hosting companies follow this method to display their own ads on customer’s domain. The advertisements are displayed due to the reason that your domain is pointed to GoDaddy nameservers. As long as you don’t change the nameservers in DNS settings and point to your own server’s IP address there will be either ads from GoDaddy or from the hosting company on your domain.

The process of accessing a webpage works something like below. The advertisements may appear when the nameservers from domain registrar or the server from hosting company is not configured / changed.

• Step 1: You buy a domain
• Step 2: Registrar gives you nameservers
• Step 3: You purchase a hosting server space and assign nameservers in DNS records to point your domain to hosting server
• Step 4: You use content manage systems to publish content online
• Step 5: Readers can view published content using browser apps

How to Remove Parked Domain Ads in GoDaddy?

As it always need sometime for publishing the domain online for public, it is definitely not a good idea to display GoDaddy advertisements on your domain.  This can easily be changed under DNS settings with your own servers and you can display any content like “Under Construction” on your domain. You need a hosting account either from GoDaddy or from any other companies like Bluehost, SiteGround or HostGator in order to have new nameservers.

Changing Nameservers in GoDaddy

In our previous article we explained how to point to GoDaddy domain to Bluehost and here we will explain in detail on changing the nameserver on your GoDaddy account. Login to your GoDaddy account and go to your products page. Click on the “Manage DNS” button for the domain you want to change the nameservers under “Domains” tab.

You will be taken to the DNS zone editor of your domain where you can see the nameservers details as shown in the below picture. The nameservers “NSxx.DOMAINCONTROL.COM” are from GoDaddy which need to be changed with the nameserver details from your hosting company.

Click on the “Manage” link and choose the “Custom” option.

Click on the “Enter custom nameservers” link.

Enter your nameservers detail (you can get this from your hosting company).

Save your changes and the DNS propagation will take up to 72 hours for the new nameservers to be effective from all parts of the world.

Check Site on Browser

Now if you check the site on a browser, possibly you will see a DNS error message like below.

Though you have successfully removed GoDaddy parked domain advertisements, showing DNS error is also not a good idea on your site.

Connecting to Hosting Server

In order to resolve DNS error you need to create DNS records on your hosting account pointing the domain name to your server IP. By default DNS records will be added when you signup for a hosting account with your primary domain. In case if this not your primary domain then you can use addon domain feature on the cPanel hosting account to add your domain to hosting account. Once DNS entries are successfully created for your domain name, open the site on a browser.

The problem of advertisements will continue as your hosting company will show ads on your domain now (this is because your domain is now pointing to the hosting company’s server). Below is an example from Bluehost and almost all hosting companies display their ads once the domain is pointed to their nameservers / server IP.

Installing Content Management System

The simplest way to remove the hosting advertisements is to create content on your site. Even if you don’t have sufficient content it is a good idea to display “Under Construction” message instead of displaying ads from hosting company. Choose your content management package (like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.) and install it on your domain name. Learn more on installing WordPress manually, on Bluehost or on SiteGround.

Now that finally your site will start displaying dummy content from the content management systems (like yet another WordPress site). First thing you need to do is to hide your site from search engines and then display a “Under Construction” message for the visitors.

Modifying Index Page

If you have not decided which content management to choose or need more time to learn packages like WordPress then you can add a custom page on your domain without installing CMS. Create a FTP account with your hosting company and access the root directory of your domain.

Launch your FTP client (like FileZilla) and connect to your hosting server remotely.Check out our articles on creating FTP account on Bluehost and FileZilla beginners guide to get started with FTP. Search for the file with the one of the name like “index.htm” or “index.html” or “index.php” or “default.html”. You can either modify the file content or replace the file content with your own content. For example, you can create a simple webpage with the name as “index.html” displaying message like “Under Construction Website….Come Back Soon” and replace the file on your server. Refer our article on creating a home page for subdomain without CMS installation for more details.