kanetrain - 10:54 pm on Mar 24, 2005 (gmt 0)

Joe - I think we have a communication gap.

This traffic (and the numbers I quoted earlier) is directly attributed back to blowsearch.com's search engine. Blow search is, without a doubt, the referral source and the engine providing the link is either kanoodle or looksmart. We have a very sophisticated tracking program and we know exactly where each clicker comes from and what PPC they are attributed to.

The numbers quoted above a correct. A user searches on Blowsearch.com and gets a list of results from all kinds of sources. They click on a link (actually from looksmart or kanoodle) and come to our site. We track it and we know that they came from blowsearch.com and that we paid looksmart or kanoodle for the traffic.

1 out of almost 3,000 visitors buys something when they come from blowsearch.com. I'm not talking about people who come from kanoodle.com, looksmart.com or any of their other "search partners." I'm talking specifically about traffic generated from the blowsearch.com domain.

Contrast that with users who search at Google.com and come to our site through an adwords ad.

42 out of 3,000 visitors buys something.

You are correct that I did not purchased the advertising DIRECTLY from blowsearch, but that shouldn't make any difference. If I buy from you or Kanoodle, it's still on blowsearch.com's results. And why would I want to buy advertising from you when the traffic you are sending me from blowsearch.com (through links from kanoodle and looksmart) doesn't convert?

I'm actually willing to try it if you think that my results will be comprable to other engines out there.

Is there going to be a marked difference with the traffic I get from blowsearch (through kanoodle listings) and the traffic I get through direct blowsearch traffic?

I'm really not trying to be difficult... I'm just sharing my experience with users here.

What you are doing by limiting Ip's is wonderful, but it's only the beginning. Perhaps there are other reasons why traffic from blowsearch.com isn't converting and I'm sure that you guys are concerned with that too.

What I'm saying is that IP blocking is just the beginning because something else is definately going on (at least for us) with the traffic sent from blowsearch.com.