Big massive argy bargy on the e-business mailing list of late with the moderators shutting down discussion in the end. All around the new offering from Omniserve which offers a very cheap way (and I consider it good value for money) for a business to get a website designed and up online quite quickly and designed well for search engine indexing. So far so good.
Well. Apart from the claim that they have a rapid submission tool that will get you indexed by Google within minutes. Now that’s subtle. Well. It’s marketing. Old style. Read the smallprint. It’s not in the live Google index. Nor the results, it means Google will check out your website quickly.
Today Eoin Costello explained how this rapid submission tool works… he links to you from the company blog. Yes, it’s a blog link. Again for those down the back. This Rapid Submission Tool is a link from a blog. Google visits his blog every few minutes, it follows links he creates. Bam, your site is indexed but not in the index.
Isn’t Fluffy links from this blog doing the same thing? Google visits this site every few minutes too. Want to be indexed by Google within minutes? Sign up for the Fluffylinkulator now!
People were well entitled to query what this “tool” was about and whether this “technology” was credible but people on the eBusiness list got the bullshit answer (not from Eoin mind) that you see the Government make “talking Ireland down” when people give out about jobs, the housing market, broadband and everything else. It now appears that questioning means you are talking things down.
Check out the Mulley Fluffy Google Rapid Submission Tool, mornings from 5-6am, only on your station, Mulley dot net
i want a fluffylinkulator!
Or just use the form Google actually provides for that very purpose:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
‘Today Eoin Costello explained how this rapid submission tool works… he links to you from the company blog.’
hahaha, I called it!
As marketing, it’s good in a borderline-misleading way. Sure, it’ll get the site _into_ Google’s results quite quickly — but probably on page 4 of the search results, where nobody will see it.
Indeed, if you search for “Blackwater Band” as their own blog post suggests, the blackwaterband.ie site no longer appears at number 1 as they claim — but at a rather lacklustre position 30. Cue sad trombone.
In fact, at position 12, you can even see the “seed post” on their blog…
Using http://www.google.com/addurl/ can takes weeks for your site to appear. Using links for established sites will get you indexed faster
@damien – where is the branding/logo and copyright. And proper press release? All in all this is hardly a credible service.
🙂
keith
How established is the Omniserve blog? As far as I can see, it has a Technorati authority of zero and an Alexa rank of 1,517,029.
Mulley has a Technorati authority of 482 and Alexa rank of 97,718.
Even my own humble site comes in at 134 and 185,256 respectively.
Maybe Mulley is onto something with his Fluffylinkulator. For a smaller fee, I’ll Bockalise you.
in the husky voice of Max from Hart to Hart “Because all the ladies like to be Bockalised”
I definitely want a Fluffylinkulator… where can I buy one?
I don’t know what is more disappointing, that we have an Enterprise Ireland funded company providing misleading information or the fact the the Enterprise Ireland e-Business list stops healthy discussion.
Tom
I am tempted to ask if a Fluffylinkulator is similiar to an orgasmatron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgasmatron) but I mustn’t. Must Not.
And how is it that neither of those words is in my spell checker 😉
keith
As of right now this article is number one on Google for the phrase “Google Rapid Submission Tool” http://www.google.ie/search?q=google+rapid+submission+tool&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a so you may be on a winner there Damien!
Seriously though, wouldn’t being linked to from a blog that’s a link farm not do more harm than good for Omniserve customers?
Well, they might prefer to be Mulleyfied, but I imagine their hopes of that are slim.
Hah!
Bockalised… as in “I had so many pints on Saturday night I wound up totally bockalised and had to be poured into a taxi home”?
me suggests they might try tree hugging… it has to be less painful than being bockalised. theres’s also definitely no chance of an orgamsatron and the fluffylinkulator may take you a little more serious….
Think this seems to be a decent service for people to get a website up quickly and relatively professionally. Maybe the “Google rapid submission tool” is not exactly what it seems 😉
But for someone needing a quick website, scratch the bells n whistles and just get started it strikes me as fairly ok for 400 euros.
One issue is if clients actually do think their website has now been indexed so just sit back and watch the dollar ticker soar.
Maybe you could create ‘Fluffy Blocks’ which would be fluffy links, once a month at a cost of 5 Euro each. The proceeds could go to some useful charity, or even pay for some Google Ads for this site to further benefit the users of ‘Fluffy Block’ links.
Do they actually charge 400 quid for those websites. I could knock one of those up in a couple of hours on Joomla. What a crappy service.
Nice post Damien !!
Who cares! Its a hard sell when anyone can do it? Right Eoin? …………..literally anyone? Where’s the money?
Quote:
“Justin Mason Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am
‘Today Eoin Costello explained how this rapid submission tool works… he links to you from the company blog.’
hahaha, I called it!
As marketing, it’s good in a borderline-misleading way. Sure, it’ll get the site _into_ Google’s results quite quickly — but probably on page 4 of the search results, where nobody will see it.
Indeed, if you search for “Blackwater Band†as their own blog post suggests, the blackwaterband.ie site no longer appears at number 1 as they claim — but at a rather lacklustre position 30. Cue sad trombone.
In fact, at position 12, you can even see the “seed post†on their blog…”
If I type Blackwater Band (as most people would, not sure why someone would type a URL into google search rather than just put it in the address bar?) and click Pages from Ireland I get results 1 & 2 as:
The Blackwater Band (Traditional Irish Music) available for …7 Jul 2008 … The Blackwater Band – Playing Traditional Irish Music for over 25 years. “We are the best traditional Irish music band you will have heard …
http://www.omniserve.ie/…/2008/07/07/the-blackwater-band-launches-their-traditional-irish-music-website/ – 18k – Cached – Similar pages
Traditional Irish Music by the Blackwater Band from Ring County …The Blackwater Band Playing Traditional Irish music all over the world for over 20 years.
http://www.blackwaterband.ie/ – 12k – Cached – Similar pages
Blackwater Band – Traditional Irish Music, Irish music WaterfordTraditional Irish Music by the Blackwater band – An Rinn, County Waterford. “Black Water has been a huge help to us! We highly recommend them!” …
http://www.blackwaterband.ie/5904.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val* – 12k – Cached – Similar pages
More results from http://www.blackwaterband.ie »
Funny, my link to Google didn’t make it through in the original comment. Naturally, the results I was talking about was for a Google search, such as this one:
http://www.google.com/search?q=blackwater%20band
the omniserve.ie post is at #15 . Blackwaterband.ie doesn’t appear until #63.
Choosing “pages from Ireland” is a new one. I wonder how many Google searchers would bother doing that. Funnily, the blog post on omniserve.ie doesn’t mention that important step. 😉
“Justin Mason Says:
Choosing “pages from Ireland†is a new one. I wonder how many Google searchers would bother doing that. Funnily, the blog post on omniserve.ie doesn’t mention that important step. ”
Hi Justin,
This was raised on another forum. In terms of the % of people that search Pages From Ireland we are hardly responsible for Google user habits. It is likely however that those that do select Pages From Ireland will be qualified leads rather than the unqualified type.
From reading your post above you rightly “called it” which would suggest you have good SEO experience. If you are prepared to offer SEO services at a very low price to our customers (in fact free like the one we are offering) that would achieve the results that you seem to expect from a free service, we will gladly consider using you for all our client websites.
Regards Eoin
hi Eoin — no, I have no real SEO experience. Just an interested observer on the sidelines, that’s all 😉
The average punter is NOT going to click on the “pages from Ireland” link. They’re going to chuck the keyword into the search box (if you’re lucky) and belt “enter”
Now of course if someone has conducted extensive, impartial studies on this (ie. asking a large group of typical users and not just their family and friends) then I will be “all ears”…
Michele
This comment thread is getting better and better 🙂
Yes, it is getting better and better 😉
Michele has a point about the average punter not giving a damn about whether a search is “in Ireland” or not. I think most of us bang the search term into the search box and then expect the correct hit.
However, a part of Google’s algorithm does use location of the searcher as a determiner in the search results given. And they try to “help” you use the local version. So if I search from Ireland for a particular product or service at least some of the results will likely be local to Ireland, unless I’ve chosen otherwise. Another determiner of ranking is the location of the links coming in. I guess the links in this case are also coming from a site with an Irish top domain hosted on a server based in Ireland. These are also taken into the equation. You can see this very clearly if you search for relatively international products from different locations and on different local versions of Google. The results vary hugely for different variations of search, even the web search is a localised version.
For instance, I did a search on Google Sweden http://www.google.se/search?hl=sv&q=blackwater+band&btnG=Google-s%C3%B6kning&meta=
Note the local Swedish results topping the listings and I’ve chosen “the web”.
Then on Google.com after Google really tried to cajole me into using the local version.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blackwater+band&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
Black water band turns up first on placing 17 for the Omniserve listing, place 37 linked from an Aussie article, and then this blog has the next link on place 39. I could have missed something there as it’s a bloody long list 😉
But this shows you how hard it is to predict and influence rankings. If Eoin has managed to put Blackwater band in top position for local Ireland searches then fair play. Calling it a “Rapid submission tool” is putting the spin on it a bit too much. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind here:
People searching for “Blackwater band” from Ireland should be able to find the site anyway. It’s a keyword without any competition. Now say it was “best Irish band” or something along those lines, or say you want a No. 1 1 ranking for “U2”. Then you have a challenge. But as Eoin mentions people choosing to search locally are better qualified leads as they are probably looking for the Irish Blackwater band.
What percent of users are actually searching/getting results from the local Googles? I’ve heard 20% before but am not sure what the definition of “local search” is there, does anyone on this discussion have the figures maybe? If you do, that would be cool to know. That figure has a direct impact on the value of ranking No1 and No2 for Blackwater band in Ireland.
The number of searches indicates the value of the keyword: 210 searches on average per month in Ireland is what the Google keyword tool tells us. Knock that off over a year and Eoin should be driving about 400-600 visits to that site per year. How much is a visitor worth?
Once you know that then you know if it’s worth 400 euro or not.
Chris
Quote “Chris Mortimer Says:
The number of searches indicates the value of the keyword: 210 searches on average per month in Ireland is what the Google keyword tool tells us. Knock that off over a year and Eoin should be driving about 400-600 visits to that site per year. How much is a visitor worth?
Once you know that then you know if it’s worth 400 euro or not.”
Hi Chris,
A very well informed post re Google algorythm. Please bear in mind however that the E400 is NOT for traffic from Google (our Google Rapid Inclusion system is free) but is for the following:
1. The domain registration with Digiweb
2. The hosting of email and the site with Digiweb
3. The CM4all licence to enable customer to edit/add new pages through a control panel.
4. The building of the website in front of the customer’s eyes over a Webex connection
5. The time with our consultant who trains the small business person in how to use the control panel to make changes/add pages etc.
6. Basic search engine configuration so that the most important on page factors are correctly set up for Google
Regards Eoin
[…] Mulley has a bit miffed by Eoin’s claims as he has being offering a similar service, ‘Fluffy Links’, for […]
[…] haven’t been following certain stories … http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/w…post34535.html Damien Mulley Blog Archive Mulley’s Google Rapid submission tool Competition – Win a free 5 page website completed in 60 minutes from Omniserve.ie – boards.ie Few […]
Eoin
You forgot to SHOUT ‘FREE’ over and over again.
When are you going to grow up and stop already with your ‘Google Rapid Inclusion system’. You seem to believe your own bullshit now?
And while you’re at it – why not act ethically in your marketing collateral and drop references to ‘Free Google Traffic’ on your testimonials page? It’s quite obvious from your newly created PDF that only Omniserve.ie receives the free Google traffic, and that in fact your clients receive free referrals from Omniserve.ie.
The saddest thing of all is that you probably have a great product, but you’ve made the poor decision (IMO) to dress it up with SEO bullshit.
Or maybe all publicity is good publicity?
Is Fluffy going to IPO soon?
Very interested about the Fluffylinkulator tell more please how do you access it?
Omniserve – I was shocked when I seen your portfolio, I have seen better websites back in 1995.
I cannot believe a company is producing designs like these and expecting people to PAY for them. One thing will say you can dish out the bullshit.
I would expect you to pay me for loss of business, if you wanted to put one of those designs as my own site .