there's another thread on them here [webmasterworld.com...]
I thought i'd let people know how i went and what the CPC and ROI turns out like. It works out at £50 per month and we've justified it by doing some rough estimates based on stats they gave us (which i have in writing!).
I know many will be cynical about this type of ad, but if i get stung, then i'll let you know!
Has just been launched. It appears much the same as the PL boxes and is 199 per keyword per year ( min of three keywords.
If you're buying it to stop them calling you every day (its a small price to pay) it won't work- they'll still call you. ;)
Try a seach on casino and it is under the PL.
As most words do not have a PL I reckon the ROI, if any, would be better with Kitti.
Luckly they just emailed me. They don't phone Thank God
It’s a bit buried inst it?
I'm normally as suspicious as anyone, but i thought i'd give it a try (it's not my money!).
They drive virtually no traffic.
I would be highly dubious about buying an ad from a search engine which drives little traffic in the first place.
I am still paying for useless Banners at £250 per month for once click a month (if i am lucky)
Turn the damn thing into a dating site and be done with it.
I received Credit Notes for £1,500 for under delivery as per message number 11 in this thread.
Think i may take an early dart today and have a few beers ;)
Small bit of advice to anyone experiencing the same problems put a phone call in to the accounts and complain of under delivery - if its true they will credit you regardless of signed contracts. Fair play to Lycos
We were all ready to pay for a premium link on Lycos (why? i really don't know what made me want to do it ;-) ), and the Purple Circle called us to let us know where to send payment to.
However a couple of days later, we recieved another phone call from them saying that they had just moved, and could they send payment to an new address.
Fine, we thought, so we were just about to send the payment off , and we get yet another phone call apparently from the MD of The Purple Circle, saying had we had a phone call asking us to send the cheque to a different address.
According to the MD, some of his employees had set up a fake company with a similar name, and different address, so that they could redirect the payment to their bank account!
All very suspicous, so naturally we told them we would have no more dealings with them (we couldn't work out who was who anymore!).
Being the inquisitive person that i am however, i checked the date of incorporation of the real company and the fake one on Companies House, and it turns out they are the same.
Also, there's a whole group of companies situated in the same areas; Touch PLC, purple circle, Jsearch.
Anyway, make of it what you will, but thought i'd let you all know what happened. :-)
Cheers.
Chris.
don't know if i can post the link but the web site says it all
[edited by: engine at 2:27 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2003]
[edit reason] no links, thanks. [/edit]
Thank god you checked, what kind of company would employ such unscrupulous peeps in the first place...the mind boggles..
Like I have said in my previous posts my clients have also bought and got nothing...not to worry we are sorted with another company now but it really gets to me that we were taken for a ride and these people are still out there doing their level best to keep doing it...and probably making a lot of money in the mean time.
Its a shame myself and others didnt do our homework before handing out our hard earned cash...lesson learnt!
-Misspelling (in a bold heading) TESTAMONIALS
-assorted grammatical and spelling mistakes
-'orrible web design
-testimonials with names and id's that are clearly not identifiable
-absolute minimum of information apart from contact me, fake testAmonials, and a vague reference to "purple themes" and "strategic alliances with uk search engines" with no more explanation.
To be fair its in retrospect, but this screams SCAM at me.
It's cold-caller central at the moment, i seem to speak to the same people at least twice a day - they contact us through the numbers on the (10) sites we promote and they all get referred to me.
Starting to recognise their voices!
Also the Arndale (Adstreaming/Jsearch) whop have pop unders on ITV.com and Dixons. etc.
The results looked very similar to Google so I asked her how she put us there - she said that she does that to everyone who she calls to demonstrate how powerful their program is. I did a allinurl:www.mysite.com on their site and google at the same time and they were identical. At which point I hung up.
I can't believe they still think they can get away with stuff like this.
she said that she does that to everyone who she calls to demonstrate how powerful their program is.
LOL i wish i would get a call off them demonstrating the same thing since i would keep her talking for five mins while actively preparing a web page saying
<H1> DO YOU THINK I AM STUPID? </H1>
<H2> Have you seen Google lately? </H2>
<H3> Have you seen this thread on Webmaster World </H3>
then ftp it to server and ask her to visit the page.
It would certainly brighten my day up. ;)
Trying to sell the Kitti link now they've exhausted the Premium link! I refer of course to Touch Plc and Reach Global.
Not sure how this is working but I thought I'd give my 10p worth and save a few people some money before you dive in (like right):
1. The stats they quote are lifted from the overture search term page : [inventory.uk.overture.com...]
The woman even had the gall to tell me that these were lycos stats until I pointed out I was looking at the Overture page and what a coincidence they were the same LOL
Apparently Lycos provide NO stats - how dodgy is that. I have learnt the hard way when I started out, never buy anything without stats!
2. A colleague of mine has the Premium link for a generic financial term and paid £599 for it - so far since 14th Jan (they forgot to put it live for over a month) he's had 6 clickthroughs... on that thinking that's a whopping 36 clickthroughs per year working out at a ROI beating £16.64 per clickthrough..... bargain!
3. All of these companies (whether one or different) I believe have paid up front for the priveledge of selling at whatever price they can get.... so Lycos is laughing whatever the clickthroughs, because they've got cash in the bank from each of these muppet companies who are now panicking to sell the links to an increasingly dubious online audience.
4. Relevance of the Kitti link - the top result seems good and I would have liked to try a couple of generic terms, but what's the sense of Amazon and Halifax for something like casinos or toilet paper - they have no plans to sell the 2nd and 3rd positions to relevant companies which I find ridiculous - especially as a punter who would expect to find relevant links in these positions.
----
So in short, the lack of stats from lycos (I have a number one position on a normal financial link that provides very very few clickthroughs for one of the most popular financial terms) should be the biggest alert to all of you out there.
Oh and another rant.... do we really think they are the third most popular search engine in the UK as they have repeatedly told me ...hmmmm lets work this one out.... so that means google, msn, lycos then yahoo...... or google, yahoo, lycos, msn..... B*****T I thinks! Although perhaps they are the third most popular search engine after the top 10?
Of course all of the above is "without predjudice"
TW
