

How Blocking Search Engines Can Increase Ad Click-Throughs - credo
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2010/04/how-blocking-search-engines-can-increase-ad-click-throughs102.html

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Semiapies
Somewhat interesting phenomenon that the writer gives no real analysis or
background on, just, "We did this out of spite, and look, effective
frequency!"

Trying out dailyrepublic.com, I wonder how much of this is inflated by the way
the search engine appears to turn up multiple versions of the same articles,
with altered bylines and modified phrasings (I searched for "murder" and saw a
number of such duplicates). Someone looking for more information on a local
story could apparently open up many pages - all with ads in the header - just
to find slightly altered versions of the same two or three articles.

This appears to be borne out in the other two sites the guy mentions running.
Hilariously, searching for "murder" on davisenterprise.com brought out two
completely identical articles on Anwar al-Awlaki - but searching for "Anwar
al-Awlaki" returned _zero_ results. Thank goodness they weren't using Google
or anything...

Looking at all three of these sites, squinting through all the ads and trying
not to get distracted by the the help-wanted scrolling marquee lists, I think
it might be wise to consider what Boydston _doesn't_ say about the experiment
- whether it's _earned more money_. Supply-and-demand certainly doesn't
suggest that they're getting top dollar for all these ads. Nobody will
remember to check, but it would be interesting to see whether these newspapers
even still have websites (or exist) in 2, 3, or 5 years.

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jacquesm
That's very interesting. It would be nice to see corroboration from other
local periodicals doing the same to see if it holds up.

