I Spy Search Marketing

I Spy Search are a relatively new player amongst the big names of UK search marketing agencies. Having been around for about 2 years they have yet to really crack in to the big time.

I was taking a look at their website recently and found a few things which I'll describe below:

1. The CEO of I Spy cannot spell his own name
   The CEO of I Spy Search is Christopher Whitelaw, but according to I Spy's contact page, his name is spelled "Chirstopher Whitelaw"
   
   
   Upon looking in to this in a little more depth I found that this has been the case for at least the last year.
   
   You might assume from this that:
   a) There are no users using the site, or
   b) The users using the site aren't very observant, or
   c) No one from I Spy checks their own website, or
   d) Chris Whitelaw doesn't use the site, isn't very observant and can't spell, or
   e) All of the above
   
   You'll also notice in the above screen capture the small blue line above I Spy's logo. This is actually an erroneous &nbsp that has been included in the logo div. This is actually on quite a few of their pages and again shows their lack of attention to detail.
   


2. I Spy Search News & Search Engine
   I've always believed that if you are going to do something, then do it properly. If you are not going to do it properly, then do not do it at all.
   It looks like I Spy decided to start publishing Search News, they had the new site designed with the functionality for a news feed, then decided not to do it.
   Instead of removing the code, that enabled them to do this and removing the files off their live server, they commented out the links (using HTML comments) to the Search News page and left the files sitting on the server. You'll see a screen capture of the Search News page below:
   
   
   Good old Lorem Ipsum!
   
   It also looks like I Spy have developed their own Search Engine, or maybe they are still in the process of developing it, that's why the link is still commented out and the content is again Lorem Ipsum.
   
   Either way, I'd love to see it and give it a test run!
   
   Both pages are linked to from the left navigation and are both commented out:
   
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/searchnews.html
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/searchengine.html
   
   Both pages also have Google Analytics installed, which, if it was being used correctly, should have flagged up the fact that these 2 pages existed. The version of Google Analytics installed is also the old code.
   


3. Screen Captures
   Have a close look at the following pages:
   
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/naturalsearch.html
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/paidsearch.html
   
   Better still, have a close look at the following screen captures:
   
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/images/google2.jpg
   
   
   - http://www.ispysearch.com/images/google3.jpg
   
   Notice anything? A few things here:
   
   
   
   1. Email Address
      You can quite easily make out the email address of the Google Account of the person who took these screen captures. Big mistake!
      
   
   
   2. Other Items
      Again you can quite easily make out the user's links and tabs and see what they are looking at. This can be quite dangerous, as you can often give away too much, and give away things you don't want anyone else to see.
      
   
   
   3. Cutting Remarks - A Question of Hair, Make-up & Beauty
      Looking closely you can see one of the other tabs open in the browser is for a website with the title "A Question of Hair, Make-up & Beauty". A quick Google search and we can find out that this belongs to a website called Cutting Remarks. Nothing special here, might be a client of I Spy, might be nothing, but on closer inspection of this web page I found a link at the bottom with the following anchor text "Website Design, Online Marketing And Search Engine Optimisation By Hatch".
      
      
      Hatch was interestingly enough one of the open tabs shown in the above screen capture! Now I got interested, so I checked out Hatch.
      
   
   
   4. Hatch
      Hatch have a number of websites:
      - http://www.hatchpartners.co.uk/
      - http://www.hatchfirst.com/
      - http://www.searchengineoptimise.me.uk/
      
      Looking at all 3 websites their SEO is not great, for example, http://www.hatchpartners.co.uk/ has a Meta Refresh to http://www.hatchfirst.com/.
      
      But the most interesting thing is on Hatch's Clients page:
      
      
      Now I'm wondering exactly what Hatch do for I Spy? Did they design their website? Do they do their SEO too?!?!
      
      One thing is for sure, neither the folks at Hatch or the guys at I Spy can list "attention to detail" among their qualities!

I wonder if I Spy are undertaking any online brand monitoring? If so I expect these aforementioned issues to be corrected and rectified quite quickly. Let's see how long it takes!

Update - 25/06/2008: It's now 25th June, over 2 weeks since this post was made and no sign that I Spy have even read this post, let alone updated and corrected their site. I'm guessing they don't even have a Google Alert set up for their company name.

Update - 01/07/2008: I received an email from Nick Jones, a Director at I Spy Search in response to this post, which I have posted here: http://badseo.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-spy-search-their-reply.html