Search keywords are very important, most recently illustrated by utube.com owner Ralph Girkins. He complains that YouTube is ruining his website's business. Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp (his company) can't seem to conduct business because the popular video sharing site is hogging the spotlight. From what he said in an interview, it sounds like he doesn't know how to optimize his search engine keywords and meta information, but still I can see how YouTube may be slurping up all "his" traffic anyway. Let's think about this for a second, isn't this why we have such thing as a URL? Why is it that he can't direct customers to his actual website? If people search for what he is selling or for his company name, they won't get YouTube. I'm not saying I don't feel sorry for him, but come on, use your URL. He needs to broadcast the correct URL to all his customers. Every other site in the world does it. Perhaps hire a SEO expert to help your standing in the ranks of Google, etc. I did a google search for "utube." His listing is the first one, so why is this an issue? YouTube isn't going way soon, so deal with it.
UPDATE: Our readers have spoken. Apparently, the problem isn't so much that Ralph's customers have the wrong URL, but more that his site is being overloaded with misdirected traffic, due to Google buying YouTube, and people flocking to the wrong site. I still say Ralph doesn't seem to know what he is talking about asking Google to host his site, or that he got 68 million hits in August (which would mean his site could handle the traffic with no problem), so I still think he needs help in the web department. What he should do is buy more bandwidth from his host to keep his site online, and serve up Google ads to capitalize on the problem. Thanks to Franklin, Chris, and Greg R for pointing this out.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-15-2006 @ 12:36PM
Franklin said...
People are simply mistyping "utube.com" when they're really looking for "youtube.com". A search engine can't solve the bandwidth problems that the owner of utube.com is experiencing.
Actually, I think he should offer to sell his utube.com domain to Google.com -- maybe he can make a killing off of it. Then he can use another domain, like unitube or utubecorp, instead.
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10-15-2006 @ 1:05PM
mike said...
I had read in fact that he's been offered $1 million for the domain, but is "not interested" in selling. It's in fact rumoured that he's holding out for around $2.5 or $3 million. Seems he scored the jackpot if he gets his head out of his ass and sells before the media hype dies down back to >$1 million for his domain level.
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10-15-2006 @ 1:08PM
Chris said...
I think you totally misread this article. The fact that a search of utube leads to youtube.com first and utube.com second is only a minor complaint of his.
His main complaint is that millions of people looking for YouTube.com are ending up at his website utube.com instead and thus overloading his site. All of the false traffic looking for utube had made his website inaccessible for himself and his real customers. If anything you should be claiming that Google/Youtube needs to "perhaps hire a SEO expert to help their standing in the ranks of Google, etc."
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10-15-2006 @ 1:10PM
Ryan Carter said...
It sounds like he isn't having bandwidth problems, but that people can't find him, although he did say that he himself couldn't get on the site. If that is the case, then he should buy more bandwidth, and host Google ads to make some money off all the bandwidth, that way he'll offset his costs. It is like free advertising in a way.
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10-15-2006 @ 2:43PM
Brian Kirk said...
I think this guy is referring to the fact that his site can't handle the traffic of idiots who don't know how YouTube is spelled.
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10-16-2006 @ 11:35AM
Greg R said...
Oh, c'mon, I expect more than this from Download Squad. This has to be your shoddiest post of all time. If you had read ANY of the articles about this you would have known that the problem isn't that people can't find utube.com, but that people can't find youtube.com!
Despite YouTube's popularity, remember that most people over 30 probably aren't too familiar with it. So they hear on NPR or from a co-worker that "Google bought YouTube" and, since they don't know how to spell "YouTube," they take the first reasonable shot: utube. (iPod, uTube -- makes sense, right?)
Utube.com's problem isn't that their customers don't know the site or can't find it, as you mistakenly assume. Utube.com's problem is that their site is being overwhelmed with useless traffic from NON-utube.com customers who are heading there by mistake because they don't know how to spell "YouTube." Utube.com's loyal customers can't even reach the site because the misspellers have sucked up all the bandwidth.
Makes me wonder how many other DS articles consist of the same kind of poor research as this one . . .
A correction is warranted, I think.
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