The Un-Reporter
This Forbes writer must have been drunk when he made this false dichotomy between Overture and Google. See if you can pick out the stupid bits in this short article: Overture is a "search company" (not really); Overture is better than Google because it's in the advertising business (now we're getting somewhere, but, ah, can you say 'Google AdWords Select booted Overture off AOL Search'?); Overture signed a great deal with Yahoo Japan (uh, so did Google).
So, basically, Google has all the things going for it that the reporter says are great about Overture, and plus they have the runaway world-leading search engine technology that generates unheard-of levels traffic that Google can and does sell advertising on without having to share revenues with a portal partner.
You get the feeling that when Google finally does trade on NASDAQ, the financial press' and Wall Street analysts' heads will explode when they get to see the first couple of quarters of ad revenues. "Uh, so tell us again, how does this search thing make money? Cuz that Overture is a shopping deal you know, and that's all about money... and we really like money... money is great... and y'see, these nerds never.... What? Google makes HOW MUCH?? I told you, honey, I TOLD YOU we should have encouraged the boy to finish that computer science degree instead of dropping out to play arena football..."
Posted by Andrew
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Tuesday, November 19, 2002
LOL @ AOL
Too many people are putting stock in the traffic rankings and user reviews at Alexa these days, it seems. The reality is, Alexa's traffic rankings are wildly inaccurate, and they tend to favor busy message boards with no business model. If you see a site out there with tons of posts and a pleading "DONATE!" logo at the top, chances are, Alexa thinks it's great.
The user reviews are unreliable, too. Because there are so few of them (many sites in the top 5,000 have no review at all), they can be manipulated by people working for the sites in question (if you really wanted to waste your time doing that). By any objective measure, sites like Slashdot are "must reads" for their loyalists, and companies like Yahoo are wildly popular with real users. But Alexa's random reviewers typically give big sites like these an average of say three out of five stars, while crummy sites you've never heard of get five. (One of the common complaints about Slashdot is that it's "biased." Actually, many of the user criticisms revolve around bias. The site you're on now, Traffick.com, was accused of being "overbiased" [sic] and having a "vendetta against certain companies." No, I'm not on any kind of vendetta, I do this because it's fun and informative, and I calls 'em as I sees 'em. Problem?)
All that being said, you have to laugh at the treatment AOL gets by the random Alexa reviewers. Of the 90+ available reviews, the first thirty are almost all negative, with nearly all assigning AOL.com one star out of five. One poster asked, "can I submit negative five stars?" After reading the first 20 of these (no doubt underbiased) comments, I burst out laughing, thankful that most of the planet agrees with my vendetta-driven overbiased opinion that AOL sucks.
See for yourself: The Alexa people have spoken: AOL, you are the weakest link. Goodbye!
Posted by Andrew
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