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Friday, August 01, 2003
You Are the Company You Keep
I must admit I was a little taken aback by this month's Overture advertiser newsletter. They ran an article that made much of the fact that "Overture's alltheweb.com" (i.e. FAST Search) was preferred to Google (at least in some respects) by expert Dr. Elwyn Jenkins, publisher of Microdoc News [pagerank=5]. Jenkins is certainly an interesting commentator, but his offhand comments certainly don't seem like much to crow about, especially given that his site was formerly (in an obvious SEO ploy aimed at currying favor with Google's algo) called Google Village.
Even more surprising was the fact that Overture is promoting Cory Rudl's Internet Marketing Course. I suppose this is supposed to "help" their advertisers, but when you read through Rudl's sales copy, isn't there anything on there that makes you go hmm....? Like the bit about "how I FOOLED directories and search engines into making me $15,000 a month!!!" (remember Overture, you own that alltheweb.com thing which is supposed to give users good results?) And the magical secret of how Rudl sold his legendary automotive info product for $69 instead of $39 and actually INCREASED sales.
Rudl's got a right to sell people his course, of course, which is no better or no worse than a lot of the other hyped-up marketing info out there. But as for Overture endorsing it... well... it seems like curious behavior. Surely many of Overture's customers are beyond the training-wheel stage... they'd have to be, paying an average of 40 cents per click, and often much more than that.
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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D'oh!

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