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Sphinn Home » Domaining
ToysRUs Throws Away Ranking on $5.1M Toys.com
Domaining News Source: http://www.brafton.com
Published: Mar 21, 2009 - 10:28 am
Story Found By: NickWilsdon 1521 Days ago
Category: Domaining
In a move which can only be described as genius, ToysRUs have managed to de-index the URL Toys.com by forwarding the entire domain. Toys.com previously dominated the SERPS for the keyword "toys", holding 1st, 3rd and 4th place.
 Comments15 Comments  

Comments

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from pageoneresults 1521 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Come on Nick! That’s 2 for 2, I can’t handle it. I think this is temporary. That domain is a diamond and it would be really difficult for someone to trash that one. All they need to do is clean things up and wait it out. Definitely a blunder at $5.1 Million. Theyll recover, stay tuned.

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from NickWilsdon 1521 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Stories like this are so depressing. As the article suggests, this backs up recent reports from Conductor which found that most Fortune 500 companies are failing in their SEO

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from NickWilsdon 1521 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@pageoneresultsHeh - we’re waiting around for an event tonight so I’ve had more time than usual to update blogs, twitter and Sphinn. I’ve got some good reading for the weekend though now.

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from planetc1 1520 Days ago #
Votes: 1

I don’t know that it’s depressing Nick, I think it exemplifies the importance for good SEO practices and shows how many big brands still don’t implement those practices.

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from NickWilsdon 1520 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@planetc1Yep, in these economic times I guess it’s good to know there is still so much work out there for us :) That report from Conductor was an eye opener.

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from DanThies 1520 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Well, that’s one way to grab a #1 spot.

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from seobro 1520 Days ago #
Votes: -2

They probably pay their SEO Professionals 50 cents an hour. You get what you pay for.

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from pageoneresults 1520 Days ago #
Votes: 0

That didn’t add much to the conversation now did it? 50 cents per hour? I have a feeling they were paying them much, much more than that. And they failed big time. How do you dock an SEOs pay for 5.1 million dollars? :) By the way, anyone know who the FAIL team is behind that? Is it someone we know dearly in the industry? Someone that speaks at conferences on Big Brand SEO? Come on, who made that mistake?

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from NickWilsdon 1519 Days ago #
Votes: 2

@pageoneresultsTo be fair, this may not be a mistake of the SEO/agency. I’ve worked for some big brands and had no formal connection to the people who buy domains/sites there. Could as easily be a lack of communication across the organisation. It wouldn’t be the first time lack of consultation/clearance with the SEO team has caused a SNAFU online. 

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from g1smd 1518 Days ago #
Votes: 0

... and yet they have a presence on Twitter, sending out discount coupons to the Twitterati.  

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from mwiegand77 1518 Days ago #
Votes: 0

How incredibly dumb. I can’t imagine any SEO worth a damn was behind this debacle.At any rate, it’s job security for good SEO firms. Proof that huge companies with massive amounts of moneys still make tremendous SEO blunders and need help from people who know what they’re doing.

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from Manley 1517 Days ago #
Votes: 1

ToysRUs should certainly have done better than pointing the whole site at their home page, but the decision to promote toysrus.com rather than toys.com was almost certainly political, rather than SEO dictated. There are 301s in place from one site to the other - now I would have 301ed every page on toysrus to the same page on toys.com and 301ed every existing toys.com page to the appropriate new page, but toysrus are at #1 for the term [toys] now and have sitelinks - which is what they were looking for. This is not the SEO disaster which everyone is saying, they have paid a lot of money for the #1 position and they have got it, or am I missing something here?I’ve been away for a couple of days, are the 301s new?

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from shoppingcart 1516 Days ago #
Votes: 1

THE TRUTH:<div></div><div>Maybe it was simply the fact that toys.com outranked them because they were exact match, which also explains why Toy’s R Us also owns Toys.org.  When you cant beat them, buy them out.</div>

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from johnandrews 1515 Days ago #
Votes: 1

In an article on DomainNameNews (http://www.domainnamenews.com/featured/armchair-seos-play-toyscom/4470) I suggest this is not "poor seo" but rather an opportunity cost consideration. Others add more perspective as well.

Avatar Moderator
from incrediblehelp 1510 Days ago #
Votes: 0

This is about as bad the recent NYT mess: http://gawker.com/5189745/times-nukes-itself-on-google

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