The Truth in Forums...

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion among leading webmasters about the level of manipulation and misleading stats being shown by certain websites. In 2007, a petition will be presented to congress to enact laws that will make websites responsible for publishing accurate numbers regarding their hits, visitors and forum “views”. The group is pushing for penalties that will include having deceptive websites de-listed from popular search engines or database deletions.

There are a number of respectable forums that helped establish this new medium. Many of these forums have been running since the late 90’s. I invite you to take a look at some prevalent forums within the boating community. Also, check out some of the auto sites that have a staggering number of members and a huge amount of activity/participation. (some have nearly 500,000 members and over 4 million posts!)

While looking at these forums, notice the number of “VIEWS” the threads are receiving. Some of the oldest & most popular threads… running for many years…rarely go over 100,000 views. This is true for most of the automotive forums as well, which have far more lurkers, readers and members than ANY boating website.

Why am I pointing this out...?


If you participate in forums showing “views” that that are “off the chart” …
in time, they may be off the net.


If legislation is passed, sites using “Script Multipliers” for "views" may be forced to delete their forum databases. If so, your posts... just went poof! ​

*****​

GOOD LUCK finding threads with more than 100,000 views on any of the sites below. A few of the major sites have a couple of threads with over 100,000 views, but that's about it. Note the number of members! If a forum only has a couple thousand members, but they've got a bunch of threads over 100,000 views and much, much higher... this is a red flag!

Boat Forums...


www.OffshoreOnly.com : 36,266 members
www.ScreamAndFly.com : 22,132 members
www.SpeedWake.com : 10,519 members
www.iboats.com : 77,958 members
www.FloridaSportsman.com : 62,019 members
www.Boat-Design.net : 14,838 members
www.ybw.com : 20,430 members
www.sailinganarchy.com : 10,232 members


There are MANY more, but here's a few car forums…


www.automotiveforums.com: 461,880 members
www.ford-trucks.com : 340,418 members
www.supercars.net 130,976 members
www.honda-tech.com : 191,547 members
www.corvetteforum.com 122,565 members
www.superhonda.com : 113,319 members
www.stangnet.com : 104,470 members
www.corral.net : 82,620 members
www.dodgetalk.com : 73,153 members
www.honda-acura.net : 58,237 members
www.chevytalk.com : 36,227 members
www.dodgeforums.com : 36,346 members
www.mustangforums.com : 40,042 members
www.toyotaownersclub.com : 28,900 members
www.nsxprime.com : 11,711 members
www.ferrarichat.com : 30,307 members
www.mp3car.com ; 40,972 members
www.benzworld.org : 59,514 members
www.6speedonline.com : 47,435 members

You’ve raised the issue of greatest deliberation…

For 2 years, I've had to remain quiet while this has been taking place on another forum. Because some of these websites have VERY deep pockets, a group of leading website administrators have come together, pooled resources, hired a lobbyist and have retained council.

It is likely the group will find the support of major search engines, which are adamant about returning relevant, useful results. The technology exists to produce a viable solution, including a way to impose penalties, such as de-listing sites. The deletion of databases may not have to be forced. It is expected to be voluntary, because a watchdog group would list the violating sites. In this case, it would be in the best interest of the violating website to dismantle their database and start fresh… to keep from being black-listed. As this evolves, it might be part of a larger picture, such as a group that verifies website traffic via monthly subscription & submission.

For decades, magazines have claimed circulation figures that we all know are highly over-stated, including the education and income level of their readers. In turn, they have been charging exorbitant prices to their advertisers, which in many cases have been breaking-the-backs of builders. We want to make sure they don't do this with forums too!

Loren,

Sorry for the wired world techno-garbal. It’s the less glamorous side of the biz. I tend to be pro-active on issues and this is an important initiative because the Internet is already a treacherous place, i.e. viruses, spyware, adware, browser hi-jacks, re-directs, tracking software, etc. These culprits are costing people and business a large amount of time, money and aggravation.

The problem exists on many levels, but one of them is related to manipulating software code to inflate figures such as the number of “views” showing on a thread. Why would someone do this? Simple… to make the forum look like it has a lot more readers, which in-turn will allow them to charge more money to advertisers, or to make their competitors look less popular. These types of tactics are fraudulent and unethical.

In another example, there are some sites (no names, but you know ‘em!) claiming grossly over-stated figures regarding their numbers of hits, visitors and views. Because most people don’t understand Internet jargon, they don’t know any different and simply accept the figures. The truth is, only a few reputable sites are willing to disclose their “actual” numbers via their software control panel that gives very detailed & accurate figures.

Here in lies the problem… advertisers are accepting quoted figures without proof or documentation because the name behind the site is considered "established", i.e. major magazine or listing database. Each month, our site supporters receive YF’s Webalizer chart, along with hard stats on banners. All of these figures are derived from software programs, not some conjured up blue-moon number. I readily disclose YF’s stats and I’ve even posted them here…

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/27045-post6.html

Some of our more accepted websites (and medias) are quoting some staggering numbers to potential advertisers, because they don’t have to show proof. Let me give you an example… there is a listing database claiming traffic numbers that are way out of line with an independent verification study. They are also failing to inform that MANY of their hits are coming from automated searches (internal system programs) used by brokerage houses, or web crawlers and bots from search engines. BTW… bots “feed” on databases such as this, causing the numbers of hits and visitors to rise dramatically. These are not “real” people!

Another example is a magazine using a “forum service”, which means the magazine doesn’t actually host or maintain the forum. It’s in the best interest of the service (and the magazine) to make the forum look popular, so they found a way to make their particular “brand” of forums appear to be doing much better than other types of forum software, by using a "script multiplier for views". This should be illegal and hopefully legislation will be passed to prevent this type of deception.

Yes. Anytime a "thread" is accessed, it counts as a page view. In the case of this deceptive Script Multiplying Code... it counts every page within a thread as a view, causing the "views" to rapidly climb much higher.

For example, with the Script Multiplier, one person reading the thread will add a page view for each page. If the thread has 100 pages, then 100 views will be added if the reader looks at every page within the thread. This is misleading and should be illegal.

This is why you'll see a website administrator encouraging members to carry on a discussion within the same thread... and NOT open new threads.

Yes, but there are limitations and exclusions. For example, there’s a whole crop of one-page sites that have popped up with no useful or relevant information. They are simply vehicles for Google’s AdWords program and they are cluttering the net. On the flip side, there are live, continuously updated sites that are bringing useful information to all of us. I have my favorites and so do you. These sites require as much work to publish as a full-blown magazine, but are far more technical. Oh yeah… the hours a longer too. Ask me how I know.

I’m obviously a little prejudice, but I see your point and it’s valid. The Internet was founded on a completely different set of values, as a military communications network and a tool to connect research facilities and universities. And you’re right, almost everything is exploited for the almighty dollar and… given the value of the medium, the Internet is no exception.

If we set aside the fact that the Internet is not tangible (only virtual) then we must recognize it’s most powerful, underlying common denominator… collective knowledge. Knowledge has value. We have always paid for this, whether it is books, magazines, school or mistakes. It’s hard to put a price on the information that is readily available to us now, and I believe this is one of the primary reason that forums are so popular.

Most of the time, I find banners an annoyance and an eyesore. Like you, I usually don’t click on banners either, because they are often irrelevant to my interest. But… if they are properly presented and conducive to the subject, they can sometimes be complimentary. BTW, this is one of the reasons why we DON’T allow flash banners, or “outside” advertisers, or banners that look like billboards! I will admit… I’ll click on a banner if I have a specific interest and it may lead to further discovery, but I generally don’t like marketers pushing their wares on me.

Because of this, I’ve made a clear point to every advertiser on YF… if they want exposure, they can forget Flash and Billboards. If they are concerned with “Click-Thru” rate, then they have poor vision and questionable marketing smarts. Like you said, it’s not always about stats and all the marketing directors I work with understand this. They’re here to support a community because they learn from you and they’ve recognized the importance of the feedback, the opinions and the experience that owners & users can provide. I have to tell you… we have several reps/directors of major shipyards onboard this site and NOT ONE of them has ever taken a shameless plug. I’ve even seen some of them suggesting another builder because it would best suit the needs of the customer.

Getting back to banners, I’m going to elaborate on this and if you care to read, I’m pretty sure this is going to be an eye-opener. Banners don’t work on many websites, unless the site is a true portal, or has been properly optimized, or has become well propagated within a sector. A few people have heard me mention that YF is a portal 1st, a magazine 2nd and a forum 3rd. Due to the coding behind YF, a lot of traffic is finding the site when they use search engines to look for information on yachts. It appears the majority of our traffic is specifically interested in yachts because we have a good click-thru rate AND because unrelated banners have not performed well. For example, we recently brought on a marine travel insurance company. Short of being a builder, they were a decent fit for YF, however the number of people who chose to visit their website was low in comparison… even though they were receiving the same level of exposure.

Agreed! This has been an interesting dilemma. For the past 3 years, I’ve been a little baffled by the lack of forum participation, but I’ve recently begun to understand why. I've had some discussions with other admins on this subject. It was the concensus that banners re-direct a lot of traffic. Also, YF is a bit different than most forums. A younger, more net savvy crowd populates many forums. In the case of yacht owners, they are often a bit older, with businesses to run and due to time constraints or security reasons, choose to follow along quietly.

I also agree that readership and contributors are important keys in attracting the right… readership and contributors! Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy? We’ve all worked to create a helpful environment, but ultimately people want to be among their peers. If all we did was discuss the top 20 largest yachts in the world, how many people can relate to this or would want to join in? If we were all just enthusiasts and never owned a yacht, would we possess the knowledge that real yacht owners are looking for? These questions actually touch on one of my pet peeves… when an admin and/or editor of a magazine/forum has no experience in yacht ownership, navigation, construction or engineering. There’s something seriously wrong with that equation!

I hope so! That would be (excuse the pun)… priceless. :d

We know this much…we have a good number of large yacht owners as members and suspect some heavy hitters are reading YF because a few contracts have come as a direct result of exposure here. I honestly wish I could say more, but I’m walking a thin line disclosing this much. I can tell you this… our advertisers tell me that YF is the leading source of traffic to their websites. The banner stats support this.

I want to share something else that’s important… I could easily increase YF’s revenues by bringing on "outside" advertisers who have expressed an interest and willing to pay big bucks. Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not about the money...

...it’s about community.

DancersCap,

Sorry for the delay, but thank you for the kind words and welcome to YF.

Yes, sadly. It’s probably a poor analogy, but a segment in a news show titled the “Fleecing of America”… the potato chip bag comes to mind. 6 ounces of chips inside a 12 ounce inflated bag!

There should be, but in reality... there is not. There are two answers, but I'm not sure which one you were posing, so I'll answer both ways.

1. Up until recent years, the two primary ways to rate a website have been the data supplied by Alexa or Google’s Page Rank. Both are HUGELY flawed and most people are beginning to understand this now.

a. Alexa: is only capable of tracking the traffic of users with Amazon’s toolbar installed on their browsers. What is the number of people using this toolbar? The last figures I saw were just a few percentage points.

b. Google Page Rank: This tool is more accurate because of the large number of people that use Google, but the code behind this focuses on relevancy, not popularity. There are many sites that achieve PR 5-6 with Google, yet their traffic is FAR less than many PR 3-4 sites. More importantly, some of these PR 5-6 sites may have relevant info, but the quality and quantity of the info is lackluster in comparison to lower Page Rank sites.

2. If you're referring to traditional ad agencies for due diligence, there’s a major conflict of interest when it comes to the Internet. For example, an ad in one of the yachting magazines will cost around $4000 to $7000 per month/per page. In contrast, a banner on a website is less than 10% of those figures. If an ad agency makes the typical 15% to 20% commission… you can see why the Internet is not favored by agencies.

I can give you the name of an agency, well… no I can’t. Wait, as a matter of fact… I can and I will. Starmark was fired because a builder wanted banners made for YF, but the agency did not want to make them because there was not enough money in it for them each month. This is a classic example of an agency looking after their own interest and not looking out for the best interest of their clients.

Malware Warning...

For any of our viewers who follow blogs, be aware that a site based on the Blogspot platform can infect your computer. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the same magazine editor who also hosts a yachting forum, has a yacht blog based on Blogspot. No names needed here.

Link to article...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9997978-83.html?tag=cnetfd.mt