DougS's blog

I was just doing a search on google adwords and noticed that one of the top B2B hotel players ActiveHotels, who were recently bought by Priceline are now buying adwords.

Anyone care to comment on this change of approach.

Doug

Interesting site for your amusement, probably google should have bought the url:

http://www.dontbeevil.com/

DougS

NB: Title Changed by Nick W

Lastminute.com, one of the largest uk travel portals last week changed their affiliate offering with minimal notice to any affiliates. The merchant in question is now offering 7 day cookies, down from 28 and now is only allowing one sale per cookie, not unlimited as it was.

So come on people tell me who, on a first search to a travel site, books their holiday?

I think they may loose a great deal of traffic very quickly.

DougS
Ps. FYI Expedia are still offering 28 cookies and unlimited sales per cookie.

Just curious, as the thing about this site is the quality of people who use it and contribute to the threads. Would Nick keep the major contributors but remove the lurkers, who contribute nothing?

DougS

So gents what do you look for in a white label partner. My list in no particular order is:

1. Full xml integration
2. Partner takes all support issues and responds in our name
3. Partner does not have a b2c division and don't envisage having one
4. Full telephone orders/support in our name
5. We legally own all the customer data and can use it how we wish
6. Partner takes payment and hence takes on all legal contracts with the client
7. They pay at the end of the month of order/booking made
8. They reconcile returns etc after customer money has been returned
9. We have access to their back end systems so to track everything
10. We own the url's
11. All documents come out in our name

Just for starters

DougS

In 7 years in this industry I now am firmly of the conviction that everyone becomes a search engine spammer, if they stay in the industry.

I have seen so many people turn to the dark side in the years.

Almost everyone stumbled into this industry and started just making sites so the spiders could find them and adding a few directory links, and the sites ranked. Then they added some more directories and more....but slowly they started to loose their rankings as it became more competitive. They looked to the dark side to help....

Other made lots of cash from being white, but got bored. They looked to the dark side to help relieve the boredom...

Others got annoyed with search engines and decided it was a war and looked to the dark side.

So how to did you turn?

DougS

What are peoples thoughts on content scraping, link spamming, 302 redirects, click fraud?

Has the web just developed the same as any maturing business and anything now goes, aslong as it is not illegal, or even if it is illegal who cares as long as you don't get caught.

OR maybe we could try to make the web a Eutopia, where nothing nasty goes on.

When did it change and was it purely down to money and did we creat the hell ourselves, was it natural evolution, or was it greed.

DougS

So you have prooved to your merchant or affiliate company that you can deliver the goods and sales, what do you do now:

Forget it and move onto the next project
Give the affiliate manager grief and tell him if he doesn't pay you more then he get go and jump
Plead for more money
Ask the aff manager what he would be prepared to do if you could do more volume.

I knwo most affiliates just move on to the next project, but is that the right way?

DougS

Morning all

I am starting to see more and more of this. A company signs up lots of affiliates, then the top two to ten affiliates become the program generating 90% of the companies online revenue. The company get sloppy and the only business they get comes from the affiliates. These affiliates all know each ather and in many cases are mates. They share information about the supplier, late payments etc. Then the supplier tries to play "bully boy" and tell the affiliates what they can and can't do.

I have seen this via friends when a company with close to £20 million annual turnover, started getting arsey, the 3 top affiliates moved suppliers and within 90 days the company went bankrupt.

Anyone care to expand on that?

DougS

Hugely competitive terms: Take your pick

OR

the 10000 other terms that are in this arena.

Ranking for viagra? forget it with my skills

Rank for 10000 crap terms count me in.

DougS

DougS is bored:)

So gents we all know it is now happening, the large forums are growing to the point that people have stopped posting the secrets. The seo's who have been around for a while are now all mates, they get together in different places in the world, drink lots, go to seedy bars and bounce ideas of each other. Some people get invites to lots, some to a few, the mass get no invites. If you work for an se, a media company, or people even think you may talk to se's you don't get invited.

So are these people "terrorists" or freedom fighters?

DougS

SE's have to Return to Directories and Hand Checking

So it is now obvious everyone will soon be autogenerating content and auto link building. What do the search engines do to keep their indexs clean and with good quality? Hand checking!

If I go to google and search on "viagra" let us be honest what I should be seeing are:

1. the manufacturer
2. the largest sellers (not affiliates)
3. some quality research papers from established sources

How do google make this happen? Hand checks.

I propose that soon, if it is not already been done, the se's will have teams of people who's jobs it is is to investigate an industry and make sure that the major players all show up for the main searches in an arena. For 5 term searches let the rest fight it out.

DougS