ALERT: VeriSlime Sitefinder Could Be Costing YOU Overture Clicks.

[SlashRoot.Com]

I just noticed quite a few Sitefinder referrer entries in my logs. Those clicks are costing me Overture clicks.

I have looked at content accesed by those who were directed to my site by Verislime SiteFinder, and I notice everyone of them left as soon as they landed on my site. I guess they must have left in a hurry, trying to get back to the site they were trying to go to in the first place.

So if you are an Overture advertiser, Verislime could be costing you a bundle becuase of higly irrelevent traffic being sent to you from people who don't know how to correctly type an url.

Obviously, Verislime is making money by sending me useless traffic, at MY cost.

If you are an Overture advertiser, check your logs! I am looking into blocking my ads from running on verislime sitefinder.

[jberryhill]

This is a double-edged sword. Because Sitefinder provides a match to closest registered domain names (as determined by their algorithm), then it may be the case that one gets more traffic from surrounding typos.

Now, you are saying the quality of Sitefinder traffic is not that good, but have you looked at the proportion of clickthroughs that you eventually get as a result of Sitefinder referrals? I would imagine that a single clickthrough is worth quite a few "look and leave" visitors in terms of paying for itself.

Oh, hang on... if you mean you are an advertiser paying for traffic from the Sitefinder search results, and not a traffic farmer benefitting from the traffic resulting from Sitefinder URL suggestions... yeah, then, that's another story.

[SlashRoot.Com]

Originally posted by jberryhill

Now, you are saying the quality of Sitefinder traffic is not that good, but have you looked at the proportion of clickthroughs that you eventually get as a result of Sitefinder referrals?

I do not believe SiteFinder is commonly known as a search engine. They are trying to become one by diverting lost travellers on the Net to their "best guess" search pages.

My advertising targets highly internet-savvy crowd. They are highly unlikely (if at all) to use sitefinder for their searches.

Therefore, I would think most of the people who land there and/or search there are lost travellers, hijacked by Verislime's best-guess dns wildcard services for the .com/.net name space they are trusted with. So I would think any searches done there are by those that have lost their way on the Net are are trying to figure their way out.

I am going to continue to watch my logs closely to spot any trends.

Oh, hang on... if you mean you are an advertiser paying for traffic from the Sitefinder search results, and not a traffic farmer benefitting from the traffic resulting from Sitefinder URL suggestions... yeah, then, that's another story. [/B]

Yes, I am an advertiser, paying for those clicks.

So far, there are not many clicks that would make a statistically valid sample pool, but I am watching.

Browsing pattern of Sitefinder generated traffic seems to be markedly different, and that's what makes me think this is not the usual "qualified" traffic I have generally seen (and paid for) thus far.

Usually, when someone lands on my site through overture (overture ads published on their partner sites), they spend quite a bit of time looking around. That does not seem to be the case with traffic sent to me by Sitefinder.

I noticed this new user-behaviour involving a handful (about 10 to 15) of clicks sent to me by SiteFinder so far, so I am going to watch it closely to see if a trend emerges.

[FineE]

I would think that traffic coming from a serach engine is of much higher quality that traffic coming from mistyped domains, and your preliminary results would seem to indidcate this.

To make matters worse the Verisign sitefinder has generated worldwide condemation and with that comes lots of "bad karma". Have you considered that some of the visitors coming to your site from sitefinder may just be interested in identifying your site in order to boycott it because they are angry at Verisign?

As an advertiser; however, it would seem to me that your primary concern here should be with Overture as they are selling you the "poor quality traffic" as opposed to with Verisign.

[HOWARD]

It seems to me that Verisign has legitimized "typosquatting" and opened the door to everyone who wishes to acquire misspelled domains. So if a TM holder complains that you have a typo of his domain, simply point the finger (middle one, of course) at Verisign and say " go sue THEM"

[FineE]

Just a sample. Give me a famous mark, and it is very simple to find a domain that includes the actual mark used with its commercial or secondary meaning that points to this VeriSign pay per click search engine.

www.nestlemilk.net

www.disneyfilms.net

Nestle® and Disney® are registered trademarks of thier corresponding owners.