by Editor
It's not often you listen to a panel that contains a CEO of a large B2B lead generation platform play and a founder of a company whose entire business still comes from incentive marketing. Throw in a travel comparison site and a start-up looking to generate a whole new category in the lead generation world, and you found yourself with us earlier in the week at a small function that tried to introduce customer acquisition to a room equally if not more diverse from those working on hedge funds to a medical director from one of the largest pharmaceutical companies. I'd say you couldn't pay for such an audience, but since they did charge an admission fee, I guess you can. One company in particular had almost all in attendance scratching our heads, out of amazement not confusion. While they don't call themselves a lead generation play, their site functions in much the same way that a company in the lead generation space might - matching consumers with a particular need to appropriate entities that can help them with that need. In this respect, you could almost consider Google a lead generation firm as they have created a marketplace of intent and show users relevant results for their query. Those in the customer acquisition space, though, tend to go one level deeper, from query to inquiry and CPC to CPA. As a result, the economics tend to support a relatively straightforward business where site owners and their affiliates can grow the business on the spread between the cost of an acquisition and the revenue generated from a sign-up. Such a model applies for an enormous percentage of the offers that populate our space, from dating to diabetes supplies, with the quasi-linear scalability making it ripe for paid search use.
The millions spent on paid search, the open to anyone nature of the space, and the constant changes in the landscape - from the players to the rules each puts out - has not just those spending money online focusing on it but those who report on the space, like us, doing so as well. Unlike email and natural search, anyone can get into paid search, and a decent number who had no prior understanding have found a way to carve out not just a living but a more than impressive one at that. Which brings us back to the company that presented the other night. They have little in common with how many in the customer acquisition space get started, but they possess something that many of us think about but lack a clear direction on obtaining - natural search traffic. Since their public launch in January, they have gone from practically zero unique visitors to one million in roughly nine-months. Most of us wouldn't mind those numbers, especially if the traffic goes to a site with some conversion funnel. Let's assume that the traffic goes towards something of moderate but not high value, like an auto lead, where a lead goes for, call it, ten dollars on average. The site works well, and for comparison sake, converts close to that of a good performing paid search campaign with 5% of the traffic filling out a form. That would mean our site of one million visitors per month sees 50,000 leads per month and income of $500,000. Not bad. Even if you had a staff of five and some outsourced people making it effectively a staff of 10, you would have roughly six million dollars annually for perhaps at most three-million dollars in overhead. Most people wouldn't mind having a business with those metrics, or even half those metrics. If you do operate in a more lucrative market and have strength in the conversion process, those numbers could look even better, and they most likely do for the site that presented. The problem, though, while most people want a site that has inbound organic traffic at scale, if you have experience operating in our space, you won't want to spend the at least 12 months it took the presenting company before they even launched.
Assuming that you wanted all the benefits of inbound traffic without the investment of time and money before launch, you would be like most people, and you'd start to look for alternatives to receive the upside without the downside. Such tricks have become tougher and tougher on the paid search side because that's Google's multi-billion dollar revenue stream, but after years of similar smackdowns for those in the organic space, it looks like the attention has perhaps shifted more from insuring the stability of their user base to the stability of their revenue, leaving the door open for some clever but shifty strategies for organic traffic acquisition. Those that cover search regularly have mentioned the issues with sites that purchase links and the potential backlash that can occur to sites who buy and sell links. In SEO, links matter. The more you have, the better it is, especially if they come from a wide range of sites and don't get added in mass blocks. Google has spoken out against some of the more obvious, such as buying links, and if you have had such a slap happen to you in the past, you probably took the threat seriously and curtailed your activities. Another link scam though, seems to persist, one more interesting to the performance marketing space, because it's much more something a super savvy performance marketer would think up - counter spam. It's far from new, but it's persistence and ease to spot (from a human and thus automation perspective) makes it easy to think that perhaps, either Google focuses less on certain areas, or being a little harsh, that they aren't as smart as we necessarily give them credit.
Here's how it works, go to Google and type in "dell coupons." In the results, several sites will come up, for example, BestOnlineCoupons.com, AllOnlineCoupons.com, and OnlineComputerCoupons.com. Interestingly, each of the ones mentioned, besides having a high organic rank, has a surprisingly similar look and feel. They happen to be all registered in San Diego as well, even though the PO Boxes are different. If you look at the site, let's take BestOnlineCoupons, you might notice this on the front page:
For those of us who spend money on traffic, you might wonder why they'd give up real estate for a "counter." Further down the page, they give even more real estate promoting a site called AmazingCounters.com. If they give up space, it must be important, goes the logic, and so it is. The way we tell is by going to Yahoo Site Explorer to look into the in-bound links the site receives. We type in BestOnlineCoupons.com and get the following as the first result - acarol.woz.org.
Go to acarol.woz.org, and it's not exactly the type of site that discusses coupons or would link to a coupon site...until you scroll down and see the counter.
A check of the code, shows us the following:
<a href="http://www.bestonlinecoupons.com">
<img border="0" src="http://c4.amazingcounters.com/counter.php?i=831610&c=2495143" alt="Overstock.com Coupons"></a><br>
<small><a href="http://www.allonlinecoupons.com/st/overstock/">Overstock.com Coupons</a></small>
Needless to say, it riles those in the legitimate SEO space, i.e., they don't buy traffic or artificially inflate their relevance, but it's a good lesson for those in the performance space. That giving away tools for free has a value, and it's a value that when you understand the web, you can it turn into substantial profits. Or, maybe it just means Google isn't as smart as we think. If anything, it's just another great example of how people have figured out how to make money in an environment where Google Analytics is more powerful and free.
Editor
DM Confidential
www.dmconfidential.com
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Google is famous for allowing rank inflating strategies to go on for months while they thoroughly plot how their system is being games.
Success with the strategy you mention above should not be used as an indicator off Google's stupidity. They could simply be plotting it's takedown (and any system like it).
Allowing this is smart on Google's part because word will spread so big G can sniff out all the digital footprints left behind.
This strategy is a short term play IMO
Posted by: Charles Heflin
Date: September 11, 2008
URL: http://charlesheflin.com
220904
Don't bet on Google being stupid. They simply keep working at it until they can fix it with an algorithm. Or in this case, will probably just kill the site as an example. There are many examples of both "solutions" in other verticals.
Posted by: JoeSEO
Date: September 11, 2008
URL:
220905
Good SEO principles applied over time and few good connection is what you need succeed in the organic space...
Posted by: Evan
Date: September 11, 2008
URL: http://www.experienceadvertising.com
220906
Great point. Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Editor
Date: September 11, 2008
220907
When it comes to the Big G, you can only game the system for so long. Many can painfully attest to that fact, by looking at their profits or lack of it. I would imagine Google allows such things to go on for a time, to gain the information they need to proceed with their next slap.
Posted by: Michael Thompson
Date: September 11, 2008
URL: http://www.adcommunal.com
220908
The sad part is that this technique has been around for years. In fact, the amazingcounters guys got outed and slapped down by Google about 7 months ago. Seems like maybe it was a "6 month penalty" on the spammers rather than any permanent tweak in the Google algo.
The idea that Google is "biding their time" and will drop the hammer on them is appealing, but the facts don't really support that. Here's a report from Sep 07 of the same technique: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-loves-transparent-links-hit-counter-spam/5615/
You can see from the comments that most people in the SEO field know that this spamming technique has been around for a LONG time.
How long is a long time? How about this article from 2004: http://www.netconcepts.com/casing-the-competition/
I do believe Google will solve this problem in time, but in the interim, many businesses are caught very much between fear of running afoul of Google on the one hand, and fearless competitors who are exploiting Google's lack of action on the other hand.
Posted by: roboseo
Date: September 11, 2008
220913
Here's the link to the previous public outing of amazingcounters: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-06-n19.html
Posted by: roboseo
Date: September 11, 2008
220914
I find this absolutely fascinating. I've been listening to Google rail against the "link spammers" for a few years now. Listening from the sidelines and wondering how the poor guys stuck in the middle - too timid (not smart enough?) to use these techniques - are feeling about this. I know a little bit (mostly common sense stuff) about search engine optimization, so I just couldn't resist digging into this one.
In case anybody was wondering just how effective this technique is (and just how much it's costing the "white hat" players in this business -- the ones that are either listening to (or afraid of?) Google), I did a little research. The sites partaking of this technique are absolutely dominating the online coupon market. Let me say that again. They're absolutely crushing Google's "good guys" (the ones that stick to the rules). Here are a few examples. The sites below are all beneficiaris of amazingcounters links like those shown in the article.
Search Term: online coupons; according to the most popular keyword research tool (www.wordtracker.com), this search gets over 800 searches/day, which is fairly high.
Google position 5 = bestonlinecoupons.com
Google position 7 = allonline coupons.com
Term: dell coupons; 670 searches/day
pos 4 = bestonlinecoupons.com
pos 5 = bestonlinecoupons.com
pos 8 = onlinecomputercoupons.com
Term: office max coupons; 410 searches/day
pos 6 = bestonlinecoupons.com
pos 7 = 4officecoupons.com
There are many, many more examples. These sites typically appear in 2 or 3 of the top 10 spots on other such high volume searches as:
macys coupons
amazon coupons
best buy coupons
target coupons
staples coupons
circuit city coupons
office depot coupon
In aggregate, these searches represent 10's of 1000's of highly motivated consumers looking to find the best price they can on an ecommerce purchase they are ready to complete. Make no mistake -- this certainly looks like the sweet spot of this market.
The 6 or 8 sites that rank so highly for so many valuable terms get an overwhelming percentage of their links from placements of amazingcounters visitor counter gadgets, with "SEO" perfect link text (like "dell coupons", or "online coupons") embedded in them. Notably, there seem to be very few other 3rd party sites getting quantities of links from amazingcounters placements.
From a distance, it certainly appears they're all part of some sort of immensely profitable "black hat" network that's flying under Google's radar. Where it starts to rankle is that not only are these guys blatantly flaunting Google's guidelines, essentially costing the "white hat" guys millions - but hey, that's business, right? -- they're also providing a far inferior product. If you compare their sites to legit sites in this space, the quantity, quality, and timeliness of their information leaves much to be desired. Don't believe me? Just check 'em out. Compare a couple of the sites above to a couple of the "old guard" coupon sites. It doesn't take more than a minute to spot the difference.
Users following Google to these sites are getting shortchanged, plain and simple. They aren't getting the best deals they would be getting by going to the sites that have "earned" (according to the "meritocracy" rules Google sets out) the top spots in Google. Consumers are spending more money than they should, and the excess profits are going to the middle men! And the middle men are cheating (according to Google's guidelines)!
The real upshot of this is that Google is failing miserably, and in a surprising way. They're failing to provide motivated shoppers, who are prepared to spend tons of cash, with the best information. They're failing the customer. And yes, this is surprising. Google seems extremely focused on protecting their franchise (which, make no mistake, is built on "best search results"), and their battle against the spammers is motivated entirely by their desire to avoid exactly this kind of scenario -- leading users to have a poor experience by virtue of providing inferior results. After all, if enough people believe Google's results can be easily manipulated like this, doesn't that pose a real threat to the brand?
So maybe they're not that smart after all? Or is it just arrogance?
By the way, what does Yahoo think of these sites that are dominating Google? Not much apparently. Most of them are nowhere near the first page. Ouch, Google. That's got to hurt!
Posted by: Andrew Sherman
Date: September 12, 2008
220987
Holy Google Bomb, batman! These guys have been outed multiple times!
Check out this article: www.affiliatetip.com/research1.pdf (Note: this link seems dead; see below for a cached version; you can also get to this by searching for "4computercoupons.com top rankings" and choosing the result titled "Counter-Attack: How DailyeDeals.com obtained top rankings for...", or see the cached version below*)
Note the publication date. Is 3 years enough time for Google to figure this stuff out? The "why hasn't Google stopped this yet" question has become *the most interesting* subtext of this story!
Here's the conclusion of the article:
For the past year, AmazingCounters.com has distributed thousands of links for
DailyeDeals.com's network of sites. Upon information and belief, they are in fact, the
same company. It appears that sometime in April 2005, Google, MSN and/or Yahoo
refreshed their algorithm(s) and DailyeDeals.com's network of sites suddenly became the
top results for queries involving “MERCHANT + coupons” where MERCHANT is a
Merchant with an Affiliate program. So far, DailyeDeals.com's link farm and Google
bombing techniques have yet to catch the eye and ire of Google, MSN and Yahoo. This
is perhaps one of the largest and most well organized Google bombing attack on Affiliate
Marketing Merchants.
Questions/Comments email: research1@cybersecurity.com
Published: 8/23/2005
* Here's the Google Cache of the HTML version of the page:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=html&cd=20&url=http%3A%2F%2F209.85.173.104%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3A1SKPVA_JeFgJ%3Awww.affiliatetip.com%2Fresearch1.pdf%2B%25224computercoupons%2522%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26cd%3D20%26gl%3Dus&ei=Hw_LSKGzCoKUsQPkys2ECQ&usg=AFQjCNHRARNvCVQtR7heVF8WT1vffefbeQ&sig2=x8JgGhwELfxYrE65xsEBSQ
Posted by: batman
Date: September 12, 2008
221189
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