"High Convergance Traffic" Buying keywords

Please take a look

[mahlon]

Have any of you ever heard of purchasing keywords that drive traffic to your site? Take a look!

What do you think?

[bigjohnt]

I think if RealNames couldn't get it together WITH MS's help in the browser, this is pure !@$#%!@$#.
IMHO, of course.

[Weblamer]

wow, i NEVER heard of purchaseing keywords to drive traffic to my site! I'm glad you told me about this.

</sarcasm>

[mahlon]

Your welcome!

</sarcasm>

[Marcia]

The domain name is owned by ohgolly, which no longer exists. I'm so glad they've come up with another innovative business model, though imho omigosh or gollygee would have been catchier. WebGuerrilla will be thrilled, I can't wait to hear his analysis!

</sarcasm>

[Weblamer]

heh, i tried typing 'Ign' into my browser adress box. it took me to MSN, where the number 1 choice was IGN.com, a video game site.

[mahlon]

The reason I asked about this is because we got a call from these guys, "owning keywords is like owning propery, it will increase in value, you can eventually sell them for more than what you paid". To be honest I had no idea this was going on.

[Weblamer]

oh, sorry, i thought you WORKED at this comapany, and was doing a little bit of spamming.
heh.

[Marcia]

Weblamer, we're still having a little fun with it.

mahlon, I never did know what that buying keywords was all about, and still don't. I don't think I missed anything.

>we got a call from these guys

In sales, people don't generally buy features, they buy benefits. So that's what gets pitched. If they were selling you on making money by the value of them going up, then they're selling them the same as if they were an investment. That benefit is that you'll make money - like a speculative investment.

The difference is that with aggressive investments, investors are expected to do "due diligence" in checking the investment out. In this case it wouldn't take much diligence, since a lot of figures say that over 80% of people use search engines to find what they're looking for. And those words won't get sites found, so there wouldn't be any kind of verifiable pitch to give when trying to re-sell them.

[mahlon]

I would never consider even thinking about doing this, I just posted this to get opinions on the idea of what they are doing.

[defanjos]

I think this company has been calling thousands of people in the last week alone. I received two calls and my mother inlaw received a call also.

The funny thing with this company, is that in order for the keywords to work on IE, users have to install IgetNet's software in their computers.
I can see a lot of people doing that....NOT

I think they want $350 per keyword
This screams SCAM to me

[WebGuerrilla]

WebGuerrilla will be thrilled, I can't wait to hear his analysis!

These guys aren't even worth the calories I'd burn typing a response.

[Weblamer]

people have to install a special toolbar? $350 a keyword? that's just silly. They must be targeting suckers.

[bigjohnt]

And targetting them quickly, to scoop the cash and go out of business. They've been in business since May 2002, according to their site. Its a cash grab, no doubt.

[TallTroll]

>> They must be targeting suckers.

Its one of the oldest business models in the world, and is particularly applicable to the Web. The only trick is not going to jail for it

>> been in business since May 2002

I guess the plan is to wind up as of April 2003, so they don't have to file annual accounts then, just make a submission to the recievers

[Weblamer]

what are the legal results of a company that scoops up cash from a lame service like this, and then just drops out of business?

Can a company that spent several thousand dollars on keywords find a way to sue them after they simply drop out of business?

[wicomputergod]

I have also recieved many calls regarding this. Igetnet was one of them the other is common name.com According to common name they have been around for about a year or year and a halfin europe. They just started selling in the US. They are trying to position themselves in place of realnames.
However igetnet was trying to sell me a keyword for $2000 a year And they have only been around since May 2002!!!

Both of these companies need to have the user install their own toolbar for this to work.
SO great a bazillion people might type the word igloo in their browser. But if only 10 of them have this toolbar installed then it doesn't matter.
This just smelled of a scam/cash-grab from the start but I wanted to see what others had thought.

[ade_uk]

after buying one of the cheap (luckily) names from realnames before they went bust i now realise how much of a con these are and how easy they can dissapear overnight...

i havent had any calls from those cowboys yet but no doubt they'll come as they always do

[Martin_H]

I typed 'aga', a keyword for a client of mine in the address bar. Because I am using Overture PPC, he comes no.1 as a result on MSN. So what's the point in paying for the keyword??!

[kosmodrom]

Hmmm... are those guys allready out of business? This is what i get when i click their 'demo':

cyScape.browserObj.1 error '80020009'

Unable to use BrowserHawk Editor license due to the following reason: Error 1271: Evaluation period has expired. Please visit www.cyscape.com to place your order if you have not yet done so. Thank you. Also tried .lic but got the following error: Can not find BrowserHawk license key. I am looking for C:\WINNT\system32\BrowserHawk.lic

/igndemo/default.asp, line 3

They shouldn't use evaluation software for their presentation ;)

[ade_uk]

Real Names are now out, yes

[James Torres]

RealNames has Closed as of June 28, 2002

Some helpful material that should enliven the rest of the commentary regarding Natural Language Navigation, “keywords” , IGETNET and Realnames can be found at the following
locations :

The Current Story

[news.bbc.co.uk...]
[scriptingnews.userland.com...]
[teare.com...]
[ai.mit.edu...]

Historical Interest

[redherring.com...]
[widgette.com...]

Other Articles and discussion groups

[zdnet.com...]
[zdnet.com...]

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 5:15 pm (utc) on Sep. 19, 2002]
[edit reason] URL Snip [/edit]