Ten companies that need to fire their I.T. manager - today!
As the internet matures our use of it evolves, it doesn’t usually matter which you prefer the www or the non-www. Today we often tend to drop the www when typing in internet addresses into our browsers. In fact I have noticed the bbc.co.uk omitting the www part this year when mentioning their url which is a change from before.
So I think it may shock you when I list the sites below from my research who have not set up their hosting properly to forward or even show their website when omitting the www.
Giving a dead page suggests the following to the unsatisfied browser
- The hosting may be down
- The company may have ceased trading
- The person has already wasted too much time and may seek an alternative company, product or service.
Hall of Shame
10 websites who have failed to set the most basic of hosting settings and lose thousands of visitors per day.
Please Note: Firefox may default to the www and show you the website page however the links below have been checked through a proxy, IE6 & IE7 and Opera and do not resolve to a website. So due to good fortune Firefox users should be ok but that still leaves over 60% of internet browsers getting dead pages and that is bad business.
- http://cbonline.co.uk/ - Clydesdale Bank 3rd Largest clearing bank in Scotland – part of The National Australian Bank
- http://mazda.co.uk/ - Wow, can sell 1.25 million cars last year but not setup basic hosting
- http://anico.com/ - American National Insurance Company
- http://betterware.co.uk/ - Multi million pound UK home delivery retail company
- http://premierleague.com/ - Official site of the English premier football league
- http://littlewoods.com/ - Multi Million UK Home shopping company
- http://budgetinsurance.com/ -BUDGET is one of the UK’s largest insurance intermediaries
- http://ihgplc.com/ - Inter Continental Hotels Group
- http://petercox.com - National UK Surveying Specialists
- http://total.com/ - One of the six “Supermajor” oil companies in the world
The above sites are enough to make you think you have a serious problem with your internet connection. Sorting the above could easily be worth millions each year and would take about 5 minutes to fix.
Related Posts:
[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
That’s shocking
People should be doing this as soon as they set up a website to maximize its SEO potential rather than working on two different domains.
It does amaze me that so many companies don’t do this. The amount of times i’ve typed the premierleagues fantasy football address and got it wrong is astonishing
LOL, you should contact Mazda with a sales pitch. Give me a million dollars and I’ll increase you profits by 15%.
Or…
Maybe they can’t make cars fast enough and therefore don’t want visitors to their site!
While I can see a small internet marketer making this mistake (I’m not even sure all mine are right), companies this size definitely should have the personnel to take care of this.
[...] Ten companies that need to fire their I.T. manager - today! » This Summary is from an article posted at Self Made Minds on Monday, October 01, 2007 [ [...]
Great site, I will enjoy browsing the articles! I’m just getting started with my website, dropoutdiaries.com, although I’ve already given up the day job. Like to jump in with both feet, as it were. Anyway, I’m starting with your very helpful SEO checklist. Cheers guys!
Good find and a reminder to us to check our websites if the non-www version works. Thanks.
[...] highlighted the stupidity of some large corporations when thay set up their hosting accounts. | | | | | | [...]
HMV have also made this mistake with the launch of the .com, the .co.uk works fine without the www though.
Nice catch Carl, that is another big one.
Thats a great example it took me forever at work to get the boss on my side re SEO then I had to convert our ace designer / programmer
a lot of large companies dont have a clue about the basics & have relied on brand name uptodate i see that changing as years roll by.
You’re absolutely right, it’s quite shocking to find such oversight in the big league. I had been wondering if it was the fear of diluting link power or something.
I also find this is a UK phenomenon for some reason. You’ll find it less in .com domains and other European ccTLDs. At least that’s my impression…