[YachtForums]

DancersCap,

Sorry for the delay, but thank you for the kind words and welcome to YF.

[YachtForums]

Originally Posted by outmywindow

I understand your concerns and the “grey” areas that web sites are using in order to boost hit interpretations in order to attract more sponsor dollars. But is this not just a darker side of marketing as a whole, regardless if it’s web based or otherwise.

Yes, sadly. It’s probably a poor analogy, but a segment in a news show titled the “Fleecing of America”… the potato chip bag comes to mind. 6 ounces of chips inside a 12 ounce inflated bag!

Originally Posted by outmywindow

That being said, I’m sure that there are “independent” agencies that a potential advertiser relies upon that do their diligence and advice clients on these issues and hard facts.

There should be, but in reality... there is not. There are two answers, but I'm not sure which one you were posing, so I'll answer both ways.

1. Up until recent years, the two primary ways to rate a website have been the data supplied by Alexa or Google’s Page Rank. Both are HUGELY flawed and most people are beginning to understand this now.

a. Alexa: is only capable of tracking the traffic of users with Amazon’s toolbar installed on their browsers. What is the number of people using this toolbar? The last figures I saw were just a few percentage points.

b. Google Page Rank: This tool is more accurate because of the large number of people that use Google, but the code behind this focuses on relevancy, not popularity. There are many sites that achieve PR 5-6 with Google, yet their traffic is FAR less than many PR 3-4 sites. More importantly, some of these PR 5-6 sites may have relevant info, but the quality and quantity of the info is lackluster in comparison to lower Page Rank sites.

2. If you're referring to traditional ad agencies for due diligence, there’s a major conflict of interest when it comes to the Internet. For example, an ad in one of the yachting magazines will cost around $4000 to $7000 per month/per page. In contrast, a banner on a website is less than 10% of those figures. If an ad agency makes the typical 15% to 20% commission… you can see why the Internet is not favored by agencies.

I can give you the name of an agency, well… no I can’t. Wait, as a matter of fact… I can and I will. Starmark was fired because a builder wanted banners made for YF, but the agency did not want to make them because there was not enough money in it for them each month. This is a classic example of an agency looking after their own interest and not looking out for the best interest of their clients.

[outmywindow]

I agree with you and don’t dispute banner clicks or site visit numbers to a sponsor’s website, I just question their relevance.
Also I do believe that the type of companies that are placing advertisements on web sites such as this or others know the quality ones and don’t rely on pure statistics.
I’m sure that many of the principals/managers that run shipyard or marine businesses, visit and or are members in YF, and as you mentioned are sophisticated enough to know that the traffic generated to their site from YF is based on quality not quantity.
When it comes to selling a $5M - $50M Yacht a good client filtering system is an asset.

[YachtForums]

For any of our viewers who follow blogs, be aware that a site based on the Blogspot platform can infect your computer. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the same magazine editor who also hosts a yachting forum, has a yacht blog based on Blogspot. No names needed here.

Blogspot.com cited as the No. 1 host for malware

According to a report out Wednesday, antivirus vendor Sophos says it detects one Web page with malicious content every 5 seconds--a trend that is up 300 percent from 2007.

In its Security Threat Report for the first half of 2008, Sophos says it finds just over 16,000 malicious pages each day, mostly the result of malicious SQL-injection attacks on legitimate Web sites such as the attack on Sony's U.S. PlayStation site in July. Tricks used by criminal hackers include using simple HTML code to place via SQL-injection a 1x1 pixel element (about the size of a pin prick) on an infected page. In loading the page, the Internet browser would then contact a server running exploit scripts and malicious code. But because the sites are legitimate, some security vendors struggle with blocking infected Web pages.

As for illegitimate sites, Sophos notes that Geocities and Blogger both make it easy for anyone to set up a Web site without much identification. Blogger, owned by Google, is particularly problematic, says Sophos, with the blog site alone accounting for nearly 2 percent of all malware hosts. I is not only possible for the Blogger sites to host malicious code, but criminal attackers can also inject links to malicious sites in the comments sections of the blogs.

A spokeperson for Google said "Google takes the security of our users very seriously, and we work hard to protect them from malware. Using Blogger, or any Google product, to serve or host malware is a violation of our product policies. We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware from our network."

Link to article...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-999...?tag=cnetfd.mt

[KCook]

The blog game sure has become popular. But I really don't "get" that venue. For if you are going to build up all that content, then why not just put it on your own web site. Instead of clinging to a blog host???? Putting up your own web site is not all that difficult.

out of step Kelly

[Arniev]

Carl,
Thanks for the warning on Blogspot.
No matter how careful companies are to enforce web security, there will always be those who exploit existing vulnerabilities for malicious intent.
We just have to be continuously vigilant.
Thanks,
Arnie