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I've seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web.
Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT
Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing
is that the problems are usually preventable.
Here is a list of what must be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever,
in reverse order.
10) Missspellling a Domane
Easily done but preventable just by double checking before you buy. Back in the glory days of the late 1990's when I was working for a large
Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration
of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to
face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to
register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and
was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly
emailed the client.
An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he'd had a
call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register
CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn't available and
the whole office dined on his mistake for months.
9) Letting the Domain Name Expire
Now what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after
site launch? A very large one, that's who. I'll save the company some
embarrassment and won't reveal their name but the site was offline for a
total of 2 days while they scrambled to pay their registrar, sort out DNS
propagation and cover their tails.
8) Flashing your Cyber Underpants
One of the most common web site management platforms provided by hosting
companies used to store the site statistics in a common folder called
/statistics/. You could password protect this folder, but the default was to
leave it open to the public and so many unwary webmasters unwittingly
published full traffic data for their site on the Internet, open to any
person who knew where to look.
I learned this the hard way in a public forum from a member who said he had
just reviewed my traffic for the previous month and was very impressed.
Publishing site statistics for all the world to see is what I call flashing
your cyber underpants and I haven't let it happen again!
7) Publishing Sensitive Company Information
Quite a few companies have been guilty of doing this, including AOL,
who published a search data report in 2006 that contained the private
details of thousands of AOL customers. Although the report was taken offline
within a few days, it had already been mirrored and distributed across the
Internet. The fallout eventually led to the resignation of AOL's Chief
Technical Officer.
Although not quite as serious, an ex-client of mine once published a page
that had notes on it from the Sales Manager about the best way to strong-arm
a customer into purchasing a higher-ticket item. Apparently the web designer
didn't realize the hand-written post-it notes were not part of the web page
copy. Duh!
6) Using an Insulting 404 Error Page
I clash with the web design team of one of my clients on a regular basis.
Earlier this year, my client completely re-designed their web site and so I
recommended they ask their web design team to design a custom 404 error page
in case visitors navigated to a page on the old site that no longer existed.
Their web design team put up a message that read:
"404 Error. You've obviously typed in the wrong URL. Either that or the
page you are looking for no longer exists."
That was it! No apology for the missing page, no recommendation to use the
navigation to find what they were looking for, just an insulting message
that accuses the visitor of being an idiot. Persons viewing that page would
be clicking the "back" button as fast as they could.
5) Taking a Site Offline for Maintenance
I find it fascinating that very large sites run by intelligent people still
get taken offline for maintenance on a regular basis. Search engines don't
understand the "Back in 15 minutes" sign and the longer the site is down,
the bigger the risk.
If search bots try and index a site while it is down, they will most likely
assume the previously indexed pages have expired and drop them from the
search index. This means that all your hard-earned rankings could be flushed
down the toilet until search engines can successfully re-index your site.
Surely a mirror site for maintenance periods isn't that difficult to set up?
4) Buying a Dot Biz When the Dot Com Was
Available
Ok, I'm putting up my hand on this one. I'm not going to reveal the domain
but yes, I registered a dot biz domain back in 2000 when the dot com was
actually available. The dot com version of my domain was bought by Yahoo a
short time later and turned into a product site. Ack! My excuse is that, at
the time, dot biz sites were rumored to be the next big thing and all
companies were being urged to choose them over dot coms. Ok, I was wrong!
3) Allowing a Customer Complaint to Remain
on a Site for 12 Months
When I was working as a public relations consultant, I was given the
responsibility of re-writing the web copy of a large real estate client. One
of the areas I was asked to re-write was the welcome paragraph on the
Customer Feedback page where existing customers of the estate agent chain
could login and leave comments about their experience.
While writing the copy, I scanned some of the customer feedback and came
across an aggressive message left 12 months earlier by an obviously unhappy
customer. She had used some of the most colorful language I've ever seen
(and some that I hadn't) and very detailed descriptions of how she was going
to take her revenge on the company for allegedly allowing a tenant to
destroy her house. Nobody in charge of the web site had even noticed the
comment and I still wonder how many potential customers would have been put
off from using the estate agent after reading it.
2) Switching a Web Site Off for a 3 Week
Christmas Vacation
Yes, many moons ago, an ex-client of mine decided to take her entire web
site offline (without telling me!) while she was on a 3 week vacation over
Christmas. Only a month earlier, she had paid me $5,000 to optimize it for
search engines.
It had just achieved some impressive top 10 results and all the carefully
optimized pages were attracting good traffic when she shut it down and
replaced the entire site with a 1 page sign that said "closed until after
Christmas". I noticed the traffic and search ranking declines in her stats
and was completely flabbergasted when I found the site gone. Her response
when I confronted her? "Why didn't you TELL ME this could happen?"
And the No1 dumbest web site decision I've ever witnessed?
1) Promoting a Domain Name You Don't Own:
My Alma Mater, the University of Newcastle, have spent thousands of dollars
on television advertising here in Australia, marketing their new site for
online post-graduate coursework: GradSchool Dot Com. There's only one
problem. The domain for this site is actually Gradschool.com.au. They don't
even own Gradschool.com!
Sadly, this glaring marketing error seems to have totally escaped them and
they are happily referring to their brand as Gradschool.com on all their
marketing material and throughout their .com.au domain. It's tragic to think
of all the potential students typing in Gradschool.com expecting to find the
University program. I see that whoever purchased Gradschool.com has slapped
up some AdSense code on it so at least somebody will reap the benefits of
those thousands of advertising dollars wasted by the University.
Don't let any of these web site tragedies happen to you. Make sure that your
site decisions aren't in the hands of dummies!
About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization
experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry,
particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily
Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages
Search Engine College - an online training institution offering
instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search
Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects. YourDomainUK Team  | 
