Hi,

I wonder if anyone has any information on a particular type of site that's
started to crop up recently. There are probably hundreds of them already,
and I've no idea what their purpose is.

A few examples:

http://www.typhoon.co.uk/
http://www.directory.co.uk/
http://www.bankjunction.co.uk

They are all so similar they might well be using the same software.

The sites appear to be, at first glance, directory sites similar to Yahoo.
However as far as I can make out every "category" page on the site is simply
a snapshot of a results page from another search engine (possible Google)
when searching for the category name itself.

These sites are pretty irritating for web site managers because, as the site
itself is indexed in Google, they appear pretty high up in the search
results. This is because they match on so many keywords and link to so many
seemingly relevant other sites. I find they are overtaking real, relevant
sites in results for common keywords.

Does this phenomena have a name yet? Anyone any idea what these sites are
for? For example, www.typhoon.co.uk has no adverts or, it seems, paid for
links.


---
Frazingmore

In article <40b452da$0$6326$65c69314@mercury.nildram.net>,
frazingmore@hotmail.com says...

Looking at that site I suspect it's purely about referral revenue from
espotting (Big pay per click service). If you click on the add your
site link at base of the page it takes you to;

http://www.espotting.com/advertisers...eferralID=3705
&ReferralTypeID=1

Which looks like a referral link that no doubt gains them a few quid, or
a percentage of revenue generated.

HTH
--
Andy Flisher - dotUK

e: andy@dotuk.net
w: http://www.dotuk.net