ReachLocal dot com - a PPC company?

[cimmeronstudios]

Anyone have info on this company?

I have a major client with franchisee sites, which are subdomains. Basically, reachlocal is *supposedly* providing local search research only in the major search engines while giving the customer one place to track everything. The problem is that what they are doing is mirroring the site and this makes me really nervous.

does anyone know anything about mirrors and SEO? I need any info anyone can provide.

For example:

rightathome4.reachlocal dot com

That is the DC franchisee group, which is shown in the bar across the top. A major problem I see is that there is no way to escape this mirror - when you click at the bottom for 'go to national site' you are still stuck in the mirror.

My gut tells me this is not a good thing to have happening, especially since it appears that there are currently 14 mirrors of the entire site that exist.

Any feedback is extremely welcome!

[seomagnet]

Hello,

To be honest.. I would not trust them..

If you are wanting to get in local directories, that is one thing. Sites that I am in such as MerchantCircle offer local listings with an upgrade to manage Google Adwrds an Yahoo Search Marketing Campaigns as well.

If you don't mind paying for a listing and ppc fees, around $400.00 per month, I recommend CitySearch.com

If I remember correctly, The company who owns citysearch also owns infospace, monster.com and tons of others.. I am not 100% sure because I talked with them months ago.

I found out about them because of an article in http://www.entrepreneur.com/ about a Resturant that utilized CitySearch and Google Aword to achieve a 500% increase in sales I think it was.. Not sure.

Anyway, just my thoughts,
Chris

[seomagnet]

Hello,

I don't know, reachlocal is listed as one of the Top 15 sites to generate traffic. It's #11..

http://www.entrepreneur.com/advertis...cle174914.html

Chris

[cimmeronstudios]

I see that...but mirroring? Is that dangerous?

[seomagnet]

Hello,

I'm not sure about the mirroring. It looks like they would have to be using a PPC program to list the search engines like that for a local business offering. Using a landing page on the same domain as your site is one this. Google allows this as others do but for reachlocal.com to host a copy on thier servers for tracking purposes or whatever I think would hurt a site in the long run in regards to organic search engine rankings. The google guidelines specifically states.. Don't use doorway pages, mirror sites ect.

Chris

[incrediblehelp]

Yeah this is a not ideal. Can you as reachlocal to block the spiders from viewing this subdomain website if you are worried about duplicate content?

[cimmeronstudios]

I'm going to talk to them today and see what they can do. Would blocking the spiders in robots.txt be enough? it still makes me really nervous because this is a very large site and contains multiple subdomains of franchisees, who are, I'm sure, going to want to jump on this bandwagon. We could be looking at 30-50 copies of the site and relying on ReachLocal to make sure they're updating robots.txt scares me a bit.

[incrediblehelp]

Well I cant think of another way around it. They are producing copies of your website on their website. So the blocking would have to come from them right?

[cimmeronstudios]

that's my thought, too...but can I rely on them to do this? Or possibly they're already doing it.

I guess my biggest question is will that be enough to eliminate any potential issues with duplicate content...simply editing the robots.txt file? Seems so easy :)

[incrediblehelp]

First off with duplicate content it is a filter not a penalty so one website (usually yours) will continue to rank.

The problem is if your website is new, then their duplicate websites could be seen as the "real" ones because of the existing link pop that the reachlocal website posses.

Also you cant rely on them to do it, but you can ask them if they can or if they have other work around for this issue. I am sure it is not the first time they have been asked.

[cimmeronstudios]

ok, so there's no potential in our website landing in google hell? the main site, rightathome.net has been around for quite some time, so I'm sure it would be considered the 'real' site. the problem is that we're dealing with the subdomains.

each franchise has it's own subdomain, such as franchise.rightathome.net. some have group landing pages such as rightathome.net/dcmetro.asp

it's the franchisees that are working with this company and if there's any possibility that it would cause issue for the site as a whole, I am leaning towards telling them they need to pull the plug. But I tend to be very cautious.

if the client was yours what would you suggest? they're looking to me for the answer - given that the franchisees will not be happy if we pull the plug because this tracking method is showing them results and that's what everyone seems to want - measurable results.

[incrediblehelp]

I dont think anyone can say what will actually happen. Just be cautious and tell the client how you feel about the situation and monitor from there.

[cimmeronstudios]

still makes me nervous...but I hate to just pull the plug.

thanks for all your help!

[searchninja]

Guys, I just want to clarify on ReachLocal's tracking technology because your question is a common one. ReachLocal ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT "mirror" sites. The post that said that website mirroring is bad is absolutely correct. ReachLocal is not making a "copy" of anyone's site. Copying one's site can HEAVILY interfere with natural search engine optimization. You are right on that. I will explain ReachLocal's technique.

When someone clicks on a sponsored link on a search engine (of a ReachLocal customer), Google/Yahoo/MSN, etc. sends the searcher to a ReachLocal proxy server which grabs the ORIGINAL site and displays it to the searcher in REAL TIME. What happens is that ReachLocal proxy server changes the way the site appears (actually alters the code as it passes through the proxy) ONLY for the person who just clicked on sponsored links that we placed.

This is a brilliant concept because:

1) RL does not have to make any modifications to the original website. The webmaster of the site does not have to get involved.

2) The business who advertises with ReachLocal can validate all traffic ReachLocal reports because the clicks originating from the search engines are really directed to the orginal site (through the ReachLocal proxy).

3) ReachLocal can produce excellent reports that give the type of information that businesses REALLY care about, including phone calls (calls can be recorded for playback at customers request), emails, forms submitted, etc... as well as traditional data (CTR, CPC, etc.)

4) ReachLocal uses this proxy server system to log which clicks actually generate phone calls, emails, etc. Make sense? ReachLocal is really attempting to watch which keywords at which search engines result in a phone call/email/form submission, etc. to the business. Since ReachLocal has CLICK-TO-CALL visibility, all of this data can be fed into the RL Optimization Engine (a different system and REALLY IMPRESSIVE TECHNOLOGY) that optimizes each campaign based on the clicks that generate real world leads. This is called AUTOMATED CONVERSION-BASED OPTIMIZATION. Let's define:

Automated: The local business owner does not have to log in to each search engine and "optimize" campaigns constantly... that's a pain.

Conversion-based: Most campaigns are optimized today based on click-cost. Keyword phrases should be bid based on the real results they generate. The keyword "auto glass manhattan" yields different results that "windshield repair manhattan." You can only optimize intelligently by matching these search terms to phone calls that are generate from them.

Optimization" Self-explanatory.

Lastly, please note that ReachLocal does not allow the search engines to "crawl" the proxy server... so Google does not mistake as duplicate sites.

I hope this helps. Definitely know that I love these questions... very good questions, but 100% not an issue with ReachLocal...

Sincerely,

Nathan Hanks
Chief Distribution Officer
ReachLocal

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by searchninja

Lastly, please note that ReachLocal does not allow the search engines to "crawl" the proxy server... so Google does not mistake as duplicate sites.

I figured as much Nathan. Thanks for clearing that up for everyone.

[cimmeronstudios]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the post. I spoke to Kyle yesterday on the phone and he said basically the same thing. I do appreciate your taking the time to post here, as well.

Thanks!

[searchninja]

By the way:

1) We use a no-index/no-follow robots.txt file for all proxy pages (serving oriinal sites through proxy).

2) All proxy pages have modified metatags to prevent indexing and following as well.

3) We replace the proxied robots.txt file with a no-index/no-follow robots.txt file as well. i.e. http://www.abc.com/robots.txt would be http://abc.reachlocal.com/robots.txt when proxied. Because it is most likely that the original robots.txt file requests indexing, following, and includes sitemaps, we replace the original with a standard no-index/no-follow robots.txt file when it is served through our proxy.

All three of these things serve to ensure that our services in no way impair the SEO efforts of our advertisers.

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU for good questions!

[Jackyboy]

One of my sites was recently given a facelift. Afterward, the Pagerank went from 3 to 4. Then, the client decided to try Reach Local. The problem is the Pagerank has dropped from 4 to 2 in the two weeks with Reach Local and the natural results position for certain major keyword phrases has dropped from #6 to #12. The PR is now back to #3 but the results are still behind.

Any insights on why this drop may be happening and any suggestions?