Know your own URL

[vakkotaur]

This weekend jmaynard spent a couple days at the Des Moines renaissance faire. One of the vendors there was Summerset Winery. Neither of us had any wine, but some of their wares caught my attention and I asked for a business card. Alas, they had no cards or none with them. I was given their URL.

I was told www.summersetwinery.com (and I double checked that I had the name right) which is not what is really desired but a somewhat spammish site that has a bunch of semi-related links. That's why I did not make that link clickable: Whoever it is, they don't deserve the traffic.

Doing a bit of searching I find that www.summersetwine.com is their real, useful, site. By mistakenly giving me the wrong URL they nearly had me write them off as being too spammish to do business with.

Comments

[ken-redtail.livejournal.com]

renfurs
We'd love to hear your adventure!

< /plug>

[ken-redtail.livejournal.com]

Did you email them or write them to inform them of their error?
That can be very harmful to their business.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've sent them an e-mail about it.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Yes, rule #1 of having a web domain is "advertise the *right* domain!" Of course, they can't be blamed for having the spam site on www.summersetwinery.com, but they can be blamed for promulgating it. (And, having their name match the spam site, rather than their URL, I suppose it's inevitable.)

(FWIW, I've stumbled across the "doppleganger" of my own website, www.homepageplus.com (again, not linked so that they don't get traffic - missing an important s from the real homepagesplus.com.)

I think the same people buy a whole bunch of similar domain names, while the layout is different on both the winery's and my "fake" site, they both have the tagline "what you need, when you need it", and those definitely aren't the only ones that have that (and I've come across several that match the look entirely of either of those two examples).

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

* Does a bit of checking. *

Aha, both are from the same sleazebags: information.com and what is the information? Evidently that they are sleazebags who don't deserve my (or anyone else's) business, ever.