May 31,
2006
In This Issue:
1. Traffic Guarantees Gone Bad
2. In the News - AdWords Alerts, Yahoo Updates
3. More News Headlines
4. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Traffic Guarantees Gone Bad
I was on the phone not long ago with a small business
that was having trouble with one of its local
phone companies. No surprise there, you say --
but this was actually trouble with the phone company's
online arm. You know -- those online yellow pages
and directories like that.
Seems this business paid to have a listing in
the online phone directory, in part because the
salesperson guaranteed that the business would
get XX amount of traffic during the course of
the contract. At the end of the contract, the
business planned to cancel because they'd never
seen any increase in business, in phone calls,
etc., from the online listing. They also questioned
the promise of extra web traffic.
We ran our web stats program on the business's
web site, and sure enough, there was a huge spike
in traffic in the last two months before the contract
was due to expire. But when digging through the
stats, we discovered that none of this traffic
was coming from the phone company's online yellow
pages -- it was coming instead from oddly-named
search engines and other domains that didn't actually
have an active web site. Huh? Making this more
intriguing -- most of these referring domains
had private registrations so you couldn't see
who owns the domain. Plus, what we saw in the
stats is that more than 90% of the traffic hit
the home page and left immediately -- a percentage
far too high to be human traffic.
The question is: If the domains that sent the
traffic didn't actually have web sites, how could
they be referring traffic to the business's web
site? Answer: Quite likely through the use of
automated scripts and web crawlers sent out to
hit the business's site and make it look like
they were getting traffic.
We have no proof that this is what happened, but
the evidence suggests some obvious implications.
The point, though, of bringing this up is not
as a commentary on phone companies, online yellow
page-type sites, and such. It's to offer a warning
about any traffic guarantees you may be offered,
and to let you know there are ways to make it
look like a web site is getting more traffic when
it's actually not. At least not human traffic.
_________________
In The News
AdWords Alerts
If you advertise on Google via AdWords, have you
ever wished you could find out when new advertisers
(i.e., your competition) start bidding on the
same keywords you bid on, and who those advertisers
are? It might be very helpful information, especially
if you're bidding in a competitive industry. FreeAlerts.org
has a new tool that will apparently notify you
by email whenever new ads are detected for the
keyword(s) you indicate. I say "apparently"
only because I haven't tested it yet, but others
in the web marketing world are talking this up
a lot at the moment.
FreeAlerts.org: Google
AdWords Ad Alert
Yahoo Updates
Yahoo announced this week that they've done another
update to the search index. I noticed some interesting
ranking changes last week with a few client sites.
Yahoo also has a new online form for feedback.
Yahoo!
Search Index Update
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time
to read. These are just some of the headlines
we've posted to OWTweb.com in recent days.
Google,
Dell in deal on PC software package
May 26, 2006 - Reuters
Do
you want traffic or business?
May 26, 2006 - ClickZ.com
Yahoo,
eBay to join forces in partnership
May 25, 2006 - Associated Press
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's all for this week. Hope online business
is treating you well!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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