Blog homeIf you are going to write a blog, you may as well write it how it is - so no surprise that for a 2nd time in a week I am writing about some “unusual” activity being undertaken by the larger travel websites in order to game - or optimise - 3rd party websites (in order to assist with search engine optimisation - or general public relations)
Today it is, in my opinion, CheapFlights.com and Wikipedia. (However I am 95% sure that this time it is a US based PR agency doing the work, rather than a staff member as it was for Boo.com gaming Digg - which incidentally Boo have admitted to us through a comment on this website).
I am not going out of my way to “out” these activities - however these guys have chosen to involve me - and so its only fair that I mention them here for our collective entertainment (and education)! Boo involved this website by “Digging” one of the blog posts on this site - sending 15 or so visitors in this direction. Actually I don’t mind that - this is fine! Not sure it has helped Boo that much - but OK in my book if this is what they want to do.
In my opinion, CheapFlights.com involved me through a comment posting on an article I wrote about travel agents, published on this site. Actually the comment isn’t live (we moderated it) - but here it is:
I found a $129 roundtrip special on Cheapflights for Jet Blue flying between New York and San Francisco (Oakland). I didn’t see this anywhere else. Oakland is a real airport just a cab ride from downtown. I am definately going to use this airport again because it is much less hassle than SFO!
On the face of it, this looks pretty normal. No link or anything to their site - and on first glance it is more about the airport than the website. However the message is clear - CheapFlights is a good place to get great prices (which it is!).
I saw the visitor who posted this comment arrive as they caused a popup in the corner of one of my PC monitors, using the live website monitoring software we have running on this blog. They came via a Google blog search (specifically searching for CheapFlights.com) - which hinted to me that they were interested in the mention that I had made about CheapFlights.com rather than the blog post itself. (I also mentioned Dohop.com as well, in the same post, and soon had a visitor from Iceland - so they are tracking their blog mentions as well - hello Dohop!!)
Nothing wrong with tracking your blog mentions so you know what people are saying about you - this actually is good practice. It seems that CheapFlights are asking their PR agency to do the tracking for them - which is fine as well. However, the PR agency have crossed the line a little by leaving messages pretending to be happy customers from CheapFlights….. and really this blog isn’t the right target market - not many consumers read it really!
So - being a bit of an Internet investigator - I now have an IP address from the user who submitted the comment (and other DNS details which is why I am fairly sure it is the PR agency doing this). After a little bit of hunting I found a page on Wikipedia where you can see which edits have been made by which IP address:
Two edits in Wikipedia made by the same IP address caught my attention. The first is the addition of a link to CheapFlights.com on the Low-cost carrier wikipedia page. The external links used to look like this (on the 8th of March 07) - but has since been edited down and CheapFlights link removed! Perhaps they were victims of a change in Wikipedia policy regarding external links.
The second mention was added to the Vertical search wikipedia page
The mention now reads:
In addition, www.cheapflights.co.uk were the pioneers of vertical travel search in the UK. Founded in 1996, Cheapflights is not a travel agent but a provider of the best available fares to all destinations . This latter field, which comprises search engines designed to served the needs of businesses in specific industries, is still evolving as new technologies and innovative entrepreneurs create new opportunities.
You can’t disagree with the validity of this mention - CheapFlights have a well deserved place in Internet history.
The edit from the IP address I have was to add the “CheapFlights.com” mention (which now reads CheapFlights.co.uk and has been reworded).
Summary
The PR agency seem to be doing what they are paid to do - which is create positive mentions about CheapFlights. Nothing particularly wrong with editing Wikipedia to their advantage (although that is against the Wikipedia terms & conditions to make edits about yourselves) but I would prefer them not to be posting fake comments on this blog.
Finally, a lesson for all of us - nearly everything you do online can be tracked. Just by joining up some information from different sources we can build a picture regarding who is doing what. Boo got caught out because the username used on Digg happened to be fairly unique in the world - and the same username was used on a Bebo account that happened to mention Boo a great deal. CheapFlights seem to have been caught because their PR agency is surfing with computers that are sending out their address details…..
Legal note - just because one person has an IP address today doesn’t mean they had the same IP address previously. Please draw your own conclusions if this is co-incidence or not that the same IP address happens to be promoting CheapFlights in different locations on the web - once pretending to be consumer and other times as a Wikipedia editor.
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Why would the PR agency use Wikipedia? They added the nofollow tag to all external links some months ago.
Hi Gooner,
The nofollow tag was added to Wikipedia back on the 20th Jan 07. There are two other reasons (apart from SEO which I think you are hinting at) that the external link was added - one for direct traffic generation (which may be large if you are searching for “low cost carrier” - as the Wikipedia is the top Google result) - secondly - because editorially it was a relevant link - so should have been there (when other similar sites were also listed).
Besides, a PR agency isn’t just about search engine optimisation - but about message control. The agency, or whoever it was, was doing a good job until they put a dodgy comment on this blog!
Alex
PR agencies “do this all the time”, i have been reliably informed by a source familiar with your post.
I completely understand the whole thing about pretending to be a happy customer as being wrong. But I am having a little bit of trouble seeing the problem in changing a Wikipedia page. I mean, wikipedia is public information and if a company wants to change something about them on their or other wikipedia listings, shouldn’t they be allowed to as well as anyone else? (as long as its honest, factual information, not marketing or advertising copy that sounds “salesy”)
Thoughts anyone?