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Ouch - Numbers can hurt you!

by JOSourcing Banned
4 replies
I was just about to buy a paid membership into a programming group I belonged to years ago, and noticed the number of participants, once in the thousands, dwindled down to the hundreds. I decided not to buy based on that factor alone. Something's wrong with the group and I'm not going to pay a hefty sum just to find out what it is.

So lesson learned. Think twice about displaying "your numbers" in public. It could cost you sales.
#hurt #numbers #ouch
  • Profile picture of the author Lightlysalted
    Yep totally agree, this also goes for people displaying their page rank on their website. It's great if it's going up but can turn off potential advertisers if it's in decline
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    • Profile picture of the author JOSourcing
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Paid Surveys View Post

      Yep totally agree, this also goes for people displaying their page rank on their website. It's great if it's going up but can turn off potential advertisers if it's in decline
      I never understood why some people displayed their pagerank on-page. It's already available through various browser tools.
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      • Profile picture of the author mindreaderwriter
        Banned
        Hi JOSourcing,

        Some people still show their PR score on-page so those who do not have these PR toolbars installed would still see the PR score of their website. Same thing goes when we add an ALT text to an image in HTML. If the user's browser's capability to show images is turned off, the ALT (alternate) text will still appear.


        Originally Posted by JOSourcing View Post

        I never understood why some people displayed their pagerank on-page. It's already available through various browser tools.
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Originally Posted by mindreaderwriter View Post

          Hi JOSourcing,

          Some people still show their PR score on-page so those who do not have these PR toolbars installed would still see the PR score of their website. Same thing goes when we add an ALT text to an image in HTML. If the user's browser's capability to show images is turned off, the ALT (alternate) text will still appear.
          You're missing the point. Unless you are doing something shady, like selling SEO links, who cares what the page's PR is?

          And why on Earth would you blatantly advertise the fact that you were participating in something Google made a huge deal out of combating?

          It reminds me of the days when people all had little meter graphics at the bottom of their pages, telling people how many 'hits' they had.

          If you were selling banner ads (back in the day when you could make money with naively high CPM rates and modest traffic), then a meter that increased steadily was a good thing. Otherwise, it was a 'so what, I got one too' feature.

          And if the meter never turned? It was not a good sign. That told you it was time to get one of those animated graphics that looked like the meter was spinning so fast you couldn't read the numbers. (Bringing this post back on topic with the original post up top...)
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