Weird title and description for our site.

[brian.mark]

When I search for tool parts on Yahoo, the first site is ours. However, it doesn't go to our site, costs us PPC, and gives a description that Business.com gave to our site that doesn't really fit.

Is there anything we can do to correct this? I don't want to pay for each click on SERPs that we're getting ourselves. This seems rather unethical on Business.com's part, as well as Yahoo's.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

Wow this is somewhat wierd, but I bet it is good traffic for you. I would first ask business.com how/why they are doing this for you before you ask them to stop.

Does business.com have a partnership with yahoo.com? Do a check of the headers and see all the redirections that take place:

#1 Server Response: http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=too...F12A0B01FDF62B
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 07:32:32 GMT
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, no-cache
P3P: policyref="http://p3p.yahoo.com/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV TAI PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi TELo OTPi OUR DELi SAMi OTRi UNRi PUBi IND PHY ONL UNI PUR FIN COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL HEA PRE GOV"
Location: http://rdrw1.yahoo.com/click?u=http:...F12A0B01FDF62B
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Redirect Target: http://rdrw1.yahoo.com/click?u=http:...F12A0B01FDF62B

#2 Server Response: http://rdrw1.yahoo.com/click?u=http:...F12A0B01FDF62B
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 07:32:32 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix)
Location: http://www.business.com/ink.asp?p=fc...7caaf3&track=1
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Redirect Target: http://www.business.com/ink.asp?p=fc...7caaf3&track=1

#3 Server Response: http://www.business.com/ink.asp?p=fc...7caaf3&track=1
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 07:32:31 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Location: http://rd.business.com/index.asp?par...irect%2Ecom%2F
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 121
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private
Redirect Target: http://rd.business.com/index.asp?par...irect%2Ecom%2F

#4 Server Response: http://rd.business.com/index.asp?par...irect%2Ecom%2F
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 07:32:32 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 439
Content-Type: text/html
Expires: Tue, 03 May 2005 07:32:32 GMT
Set-Cookie: bdchttpreferer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etoolpartsdirect% 2Ecom%2F; path=/
Cache-control: no-cache

It looks as if Inktomi is involved as well.

[brian.mark]

We already had this traffic. We were getting #1 rankings on that term long before we ever started doing PPC on business.com.

My main problem with this is that some of the URL's listed there are so business.com can charge us for PPC. They're charging us on our own organic rankings and making a title and description that doesn't fit this site at all.

This seems like it'd be borderline illegal for a 3rd party to be charging us for clicks on our organic results. This has cost us quite a bit, so the value of their service is very questionable. We're essentially paying someone else for traffic we would have had anyway.

I've heard of problems with Yahoo and the 302 status code. Does anyone know of a fix for that? When is Yahoo going to figure out how to make a 302 work properly? It seems like anyone with a grade school education would realize that it is the page you land on that you rank, not the page that redirects to it... especially on an external URL.

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

If you have this top ten listing without business.com why dont you stop bidding on it temporarily to see what happens to your first place listing on yahoo.com then?

[brian.mark]

It wasn't just a top 10 listing on Yahoo, it was the
top listing on Yahoo. Has been since Yahoo broke away
from Google. Same on MSN and Google since shortly
after that. Yahoo is the only one with a problem with
the 302 redirect as far as I can tell.

Business.com's response was that their page must be
ranking better than ours. Then I pointed out that it
didn't say anything about business.com but was just a
PPC click straight to our site. It never stops at
their site, just takes our ranking, charges us for
the click, and then goes to our site. She said nobody
else had ever reported this. Leads me to believe that
one or more of the following are true:

1) None of their clients track the clicks very well
2) None of their clients rank on Yahoo very well
or
3) Business.com has been ignoring other complaints

Since we do get 5 - 10 legitimate orders daily from
people browsing their site, it'd be tough for me to
just say "STOP POINTING TO ME". That's what I'll
probably end up doing though unless they give me some
resolution... but it'll have to be next week as I
have a new baby arriving tomorrow morning.

IT'S A BOY!!!

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

Congrats Brian!

Can you send me the link page that you are position on business.com. I used to purchase traffic from them and actually helped them develop a lot of their category pages that are now performing well in the search engines. Of course that was sometime ago and all I got back was huge headaches and non-converting traffic back.

[brian.mark]

They switched from 302's to 301's and the problem has corrected itself. Seems like it'd be pretty easy to use a simple 302 and a bit of cloaking to get the traffic from a #1 ranked site on Yahoo after experiencing this.

http://www.business.com/directory/in...ery_and_tools/ is one page that we are listed on. We have been seeing some good conversion rates on the traffic we're receiving, but for some unexplained (laughing, of course) reason, we're not getting nearly as many clicks counted from them now.

Hmmm... maybe I want to do a test on some really competitive keywords and 302's... maybe not. Sure seems like it'd be easy to fool Yahoo's spiders, though. I guess it's true, the program is only as smart as the people who wrote it.

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

Where is toolpartsdirect.com on business.com directory?

[brian.mark]

http://www.business.com/search/rslt_...chine+services

I found it on this page using "site:business.com toolpartsdirect" at google. They put it where they want and it create a mess (in many categories that it doesn't belong). They're supposed to be going to a self-serve model soon, and I'm sure I'll have to erase most of what they've done and put all new ads up at that time.

At least the PPC listing on Yahoo is fixed for now.

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

Yes I see the Yahoo listing is gone now.

Just so I am clear, are you bidding on both domains within Business.com

[brian.mark]

We're bidding on both. CPA has been fairly low for us on either so far, but having them write the ads and place them (since they don't allow you to do it yourself) really made for some bad ads in some awful categories. Still, we've been getting business from business.

Brian.

[wrmineo]

As I recall, it was just a few months ago that business/com found themselves blacklisted for spam and flagged by Google for bad, if not unethical, practices. Only after a lot wrangling, and no doubt some serious GoogleAd expenditures, did they come out of the issue successfully.

Being #2 in Google out of 1.6 Billion hits for "business" doesn't mean you get to ignore the golden rules of business and CRM ...

Good Luck!