I recently decided to compile a very large list of domain names for the German country code top-level domain .de. I did this with the help of the Common Crawl project which provides a free, open…
I recently decided to compile a very large list of domain names for the German country code top-level domain .de. I did this with the help of the Common Crawl project which provides a free, open repository of web crawl data and web graphs for the last years.
A few command line commands and a small bash shell script was all it took to compile a nice list of roughly 9 million .de domain names.
The resulting list is by no means complete and also not up-to-date, but it can be a nice starting point for further analysis and investigations. One of which I am going to write about in this post.
Enter the restaurant world
I was interested in domain names that belonged to restaurants and eating places in general. A simple but quite effective way to achieve this was to filter the domain names by German words that indicate such eating places:
- Restaurant
- Gasthaus
- Gasthof
- Gaststätte
- Wirtshaus
- Gastwirtschaft
- Schänke
- Speisewirtschaft
- Speiselokal
- Speisehaus
- Speiserestaurant
- Speisegaststätte
- Gastlokal
- Kneipe
- Pizzaria
Since I was running this analysis on my windows desktop, grep was not directly available. So I used the findstr PowerScript command instead to do this filtering:
findstr /I "Restaurant Gasthaus Gasthof Gaststaette Wirtshaus ..." huge-domain-list.txt
This yielded a still impressive list of about 31.000 domain names related to German restaurants.
Who's still alive?
Since I knew that the original list is outdated by definition, I had to check which domain names were still active. My first attempt to do this was also with a PowerShell script. This worked in principle and I was somewhat impressed by the capabilities that PowerShell provided, but at the same time the unfamiliar syntax turned me off and most importantly the speed was not great. So I created a small Golang program to get this job done, which worked great due Golang's concurrency features.
- 63% of the domain names were still active (roughly 20.000 domains)
- 49% of the domains had redirects (mostly from http:// to https://)
- 14% of the domains still serve http://
- 37% of the domains did not exist anymore or returned other errors
Let's do some manual spot checks...
I was happy to have a list of 20.000 restaurant domain names to work with and started some manual spot checks. After looking at 20 randomly selected websites from the list, I made two observations:
- Domain Parking was another group of domain names to filter out
- Lieferando.de had captured a significant number of domain names
I was not surprised about the first observation, because I had noticed already quite often that many good domain names are "parked". But that lieferando.de thing caught my attention. The domains that were captured by lieferando.de did not redirect to lieferando.de, but instead showed their logo and a link to their website.
How many of them?
With just a small extension to my Golang program I could find all the domain names form the initial list, that were captured by lieferando.de:
5.7% of the active domains from the restaurant domain list belong to lieferando.de
That is 1101 domain names. Here are some random examples:
- elba-restaurant-knigstein-im-taunus.de
- gasthauskaiser.de
- grill-restaurantnaxos.de
- henne-alt-berlinerwirtshaus.de
- kulturkneipe-brotfabrik-bonn.de
The numbers are of course only estimates, since the initial domain list is not complete, but it provides some impression for the size of the topic.
When did it start?
I have not yet done a systematic analysis, but it seems (based on WHOIS entries for some domain names) that this "capturing" of restaurant domain names has started already before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and continued at least until 2022 and potentially still continues.
(Preliminary) Conclusions
- The number of "lost" domain names provides evidence that German restaurants have been struggling in the 2019-2023 time frame. It would be interesting to revisit this analysis in one or two years to see who many more domain names have become inactive or taken over by lieferando.
- Lieferando is using aggressive tactics to drive traffic to their site. Maybe this can be described as growth hacking or a way of SEO. It is apparently not even new.
- The extend to which lieferando is using this method suggest that it is at least somewhat effective and probably quite cheap to implement.
Read the original article
Comments
So let's say you own a restaurant joint. Bob's Asian takeaway.
You enter your phone number and opening hours; phone number 123-45-789, open 12.00 - 22.00, mon - sun
One day the phone goes suspiciously quiet. A customer stops by your shop, and orders something. He mentions that he tried calling, but the number he got on google must've been wrong because some automated robot message.
You decide to google your own restaurant, and sure enough, the phone number that shows up is 800-00-123. But your keen eye also spots that the link to the restaurant isn't www.bobsasiantakeaway.com, but rather www.bobsasiantakeaway-food.com
Any way you try to search, the top results only point to that website, phone number, google maps location, etc.
Suddenly a sales rep from some company calls you, and offers you a deal - if you pay [x€ month], they will help with increasing your sales. You say OK, I'll try.
Not too long after, calls and orders start coming in a before. You try to call 800-00-123 from your private cellphone, and sure enough - the phone at work starts ringing. You click on the link www.bobsasiantakeaway-food.com, and you're redirected to www.bobsasiantakeaway.com
If you stop the payments, no more phone calls and no web traffic.
You change the name of your restaurant? A new version of the above pops up immediately. You report it to the relevant authorities, but you're told it could take months and months for them to look at your case...you can't survive 6 months with minimum sales.
For some unfortunate small fish, that's sort of how it works.
By Beijinger 2025-05-2614:04 Then you may take a less generic name and trademark it (USD 400 ?). This should put a stop from it, at least using it in a domain name for food.
"Bobs Fusion Cuisine"
I am not in the food industry. But after having read this, this would be definitely something I would consider. But maybe too much for a Mom and Pop shop. In fact, I have found Mom and Pop shops extremely difficult to do business with.
By bufferoverflow 2025-05-2612:492 reply How do they change the phone # and the website of your business?
By mtsr 2025-05-2612:52 They don't. They push you down the search results through SEO and link-farming on their giant web empire.
Anecdata: my neighbour runs a doggy day care. She's been flooded with 1 star reviews (clearly not from her customers), and received similar coercive phones calls to help her improve her online presence. Not much she can do about it, as Google is not particularly responsive
By TechDebtDevin 2025-05-2613:111 reply The US made leaving fake reviews illegal this year. If they ever start enforcing it, its thousands per fake review.
What if those reviews come outside US? Can they force Google to take them down?
It is trivial to hire someone in Asia to do these kind of fake reviews
By jancsika 2025-05-2614:30 Was there ever anything like a class action lawsuit over this?
GrubHub did exactly the same in the US.
Up to 23,000 domains [1], and listed some restaurants on Google Maps without their permission [2]
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/grubhub-registered-23000-dom...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/ghost-kitchens-mystery-grubhub-l...
GrubHub was purchased from Thuisbezorgd.nl (Dutch) by Wonder Group (Marc Lore) a few months ago.
By cyxxon 2025-05-2611:12 Just to add this to make it more clear: GrubHub used to belong to the same company as Lieferando, and was only sold at the end of 2024. So in a way this comment is more a "yes, they did it in the US as well".
By Freak_NL 2025-05-2613:06 Note that Lieferando is Thuisbezorgd is Just Eat. Different brand names, same thing.
By nalekberov 2025-05-2611:33 Lieferando must be impressed by their "success story".
Apparently they not only create the website, but also claim the Google Maps listing using the website.
And then go on to extort the restaurants for $$$ to add their correct contact details on the listing.
Agreed. Search engine results is what gives a domain name credibility.
EU has been going hard on "gatekeepers" recently. Good regulation could fix this. E.g. make Google verify each address by sending the business a form in a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Back in the days Google verified businesses by sending a postcard to the address you have created your business at. The postcard had a verification code which you’d need to enter. Sometimes you'd also had to revalidate the adress ownership every now and then. Unfortunately they do not seem to be doing this anymore.
By sampullman 2025-05-2611:09 I had to do this a few years ago, I'm surprised it's not done that way anymore.
By barbazoo 2025-05-2614:48 Probably got in the way of them making all the money.
By lolinder 2025-05-2613:17 Google should be forced to do this, but also I'm pretty sure that this behavior by Lieferando breaks existing laws that just need to be enforced.
By esperent 2025-05-2612:14 When I registered my business on Google maps they said they were going to send a postcard with a code on it to verify us. This was about 3 years ago.
But they never actually did as far as I know, unless one of my colleagues handled it without telling me.
By jozvolskyef 2025-05-2614:142 reply Physical mail, too, is a source of gatekeeping and bureaucracy. It is labour-intensive, expensive, and you are trading your false positive rate of digital impostors for a false negative rate of legitimate businesses struggling with unreliable mail delivery.
I have started several small businesses and never had problems with mail delivery except when the business moved. The only thing labor intensive about it is the amount of junk mail, and if you have a P. O. Box then checking that can be labor intensive. What else am I missing?
By jozvolskyef 2025-05-2617:01 Personal experiences with physical mail:
- Post office clerk offered to fill in cheque details for me. Recipient didn't receive the payment and sued the broke 18 year-old me. The clerk likely pocketed the money. This was over a decade ago, but coincidentally a Czech post office clerk was sentenced this week for pocketing ~$140k over a 2-year period.
- The recipient's lawsuit letter didn't reach me in time and was automatically considered delivered, causing further complications.
- DVLA refused to send mail to non-royal mail PO boxes even if the address is the official business address (UK), preventing international travel with the vehicle.
- On a separate occasion, striking Royal Mail workers prevented me from travelling internationally by delaying the delivery of my driving license.
- I used to live in an apartment with an awkwardly positioned letter box. My mail would end up in random places, usually the neighbours' more easily accessible letter box.
- Every now and then my mailbox contains mail addressed to adjacent buildings.
I also help manage a small B2C family business that is on its third address at the moment. We're renting a small section of a larger shop that is within a commercial estate. We don't have access to mail delivered to the official address. It could probably done, but it may be complicated.
> What else am I missing?
Royal Mail is one of the largest employers in the UK.
By account42 2025-05-278:02 If you don't have reliable mail delivery, you don't have a business. This is especially true for your online presence in Germany where an address at which you can receive mail is a legal requirement.
By jeroenhd 2025-05-2612:08 I doubt they go out of their way to pretend to be the restaurants they target. That would make for a very quick and easy fraud case.
It'd be much safer if Google were to just take the first plausible website for truth unless proven otherwise, and the first plausible website happens to be the one Lieferando registers.
If Google were a responsible company, this wouldn't even be possible. You'd need to enter something they send you over the physical mail to verify that you do indeed do business from a specific address. From there on you'd be able to verify the phone number as well. Google's tendency to display scraped data as facts is what empowers companies like Just Eat Takeaway/Lieferando/Thuisbezorgd in their abuse.
> but also claim the Google Maps listing using the website.
And they may even comply with "Delivery-only food brands" policy [0] of Google Business Profile. Although I think their strategy it is stepping on thin ice and risking ban, including search index ban of the main domain.
[0] https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?sjid=1244...
By jeroenhd 2025-05-2611:34 > Diese Restaurants müssen ihre Einzugsgebiete hinzufügen und die Adresse in ihrem Unternehmensprofil ausblenden, um Kunden nicht zu irritieren.
Not removing the address from their delivery listings seems like a straight-up violation of Google's policy.
By like_any_other 2025-05-2611:27 This sounds like criminal fraud.
By fsflover 2025-05-2612:09 Related recent discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44094784
