Toys.com Loses Google Ranking
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Toys ‘R’ Us loses search traffic from Toys.com domain name.
As I predicted a couple weeks ago, Toys.com has been de-indexed by Google because the domain is forwarded to ToysRUs.com. Now the value of Toys ‘R’ Us’ $5.1M purchase of Toys.com has been relegated to type-in traffic and potentially some of the inbound links to Toys.com.
The type-in traffic is valuable, but now the company doesn’t hold a lock on the #1, #2, and #4 positions in Google for the term “toys”. Its competitors, including Amazon.com, have a chance to creep up. Toys ‘R’ Us could have used 301 forwards on specific pages of the Toys.com web site to enhance its long tail product search.
It also appears the toy company could use some help managing its domain names. For example, it owns the typo ToyRUs.com (no ‘s’ on end of “toys”), but it doesn’t resolve or forward to the company’s web site toysrus.com. According to Compete.com, this simple typo gets over 60,000 unique visitors per month.
Although Toys ‘R’ Us registers its domains with Mark Monitor, it appears to not use its typosquatting services, as evidenced by the many typos of ToysRUs.com owned by unrelated parties.
Tags: toys 'r' us, toys.com
Nice catch on the Typo ToyRus.com and it’s misuse. I often scratch my head and wish it was easy to contact these companies as a domain consultant to offer advice!
eLoan.com’s eLoans.com needs it as well as many thousands of other big co’s that fail with assets they already own!
A domainer/domain consultant would be well worth a small fee to get advice from!
Things don’t get a lot better here in Blighty.
Toys.co.uk does forward to ToysRUs.co.uk
but ToyRUs.co.uk is squatted on and parked (although not showing a lander anymore, looks like it was cancelled by NameDrive)
That’s just goes to show every company should have a Domainer or Seo person on board to avoid these kind of issues. Simply amazes me that a company with there buying power and they acquire such a great name to just simply let it fall out of google.
Great story and I’m subscribing to your feed as well….Thank you
That’s why Monster.com has been running Jobs.com as a separate site since the day they bought it. The one exception was when they started forwarding it to jobs.monster.com. It took just a few days for Google to drop them from the rankings, and then magically Jobs.com was its own site again
Rankings were restored soon after.
It is very scary they dont employ someone who know this,
i mean a billion dollar company ? not having the sense to benefit rightfully from a 5.1m purchase.
i think your’e right, having 1 domainer on there staff at, what $60/70/80,000 a year ? would make them 3-4 times that amount
[...] Now, it looks like Toys.com has been de-indexed by Google. [...]
They’ve bought the land, and are now bulldozing the building.
I think people can always resubmit the domain to google again. Build it again, avoid the duplicate content, and google will give the domain a life again.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the decision to redirect/shutdown Toys.com was made by an internal team that never even considered SEO. This happens A LOT at larger companies that don’t understand SEO and don’t address it in every dept and in every related process.
[...] to forward the domain, rather than transfer it. Oops!There’s some nice background on the case at Domain Name Wire, especially the context about how much more value the different method would have realized. [...]
bah, you’d register typos to direct traffic to your site, what else?.. toysRus puzzles me there…
It was gone from yahoo’s homepage much sooner.. I was surprised it was on Google for as long as it was, being inactive
Best,
Mike
@toysrus – wow – i tried to warn you guys – http://tinyurl.com/crwyhh
RT @stuntdubl @toysrus – wow – i tried to warn you guys – http://tinyurl.com/crwyhh
RT @Rhea: RT @stuntdubl @toysrus – wow – i tried to warn you guys – http://tinyurl.com/crwyhh
Dear ToysRUs:
ServerAlias toys.com http://www.toys.com
Oops, too late.
Darryl.
> bah, you’d register typos to direct traffic to your site, what else?
trademark protection. they may also have taken them from others in pursuit of that.
It seems, on the surface, that setting up redirects would be a simple process. In reality, however, in a large company it just isn’t as easy as hiring an SEO expert to sit in house.
An SEO expert isn’t likely to have access to configure servers and redirects, so he can make all the recommendations he likes. Without resources to implement, it won’t happen that quickly.
I’d venture a guess, it’s been on someone’s list for a while, but isn’t a high priority. The fact is that even though 60,000 may have mistyped “toysrus.com” and received a browser error, how many of those people just gave up and didn’t end up at the ToysRUs wesite after a search or correcting their mistype a few keystrokes later?
In the ideal world with unlimited resources, this would all be setup perfectly. When you have a brand as recognized as Toys’R'Us is, however, setting up the typo domains becomes less important (as long as a competitor isn’t using it to drive traffic away from you). And owning the domain becomes more important than setting up the redirect.
I guess my point is, although these are all valid issues to raise, don’t assume Toys’R'Us isn’t aware or doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s more likely an issue prioritization of resources and calculated ROI on that implementation.
(didn’t mean to hijack the original thread from toys.com, but just wanted to shed some light on the typo issue a couple people commented on.)
[...] That assumption was faulty. Domain Name Wire reports that the rankings are gone. [...]
Google De-indexes $5M ToysRUs Domain, Toys.com http://budurl.com/toyscom
Also toysrme.com goes to the wrong people and the FBI is looking at toysrtoys.com and toysrus.org also is being canvassed for a possible blackmail attack.
However, the money involved ($25 million) is too little for the big boys to worry about. Though our cut is only $5 million.
Toys’R'Us domeen Toys.com Googlest väljas…
Toys ‘R’ Us ostis 5 miljoni dollari eest domeeni ja lasi selle raisku….
[...] has been relegated to type-in traffic and potentially some of the inbound links to Toys.com.From:http://domainnamewire.com/2009/03/16/toyscom-loses-google-ranking/ Posted by Makin at [...]
Oops: Google just de-indexed the “toys.com” domain, after ToysRUs pays $5m for it. Learn why here: http://bit.ly/Gvo5L
Some interesting search machinations with ToysRUs losing some Google love via Toys.com and a typo URL http://bit.ly/Gvo5L
[...] a story I wrote about Toys.com losing its Google rankings made it to the front page of Digg on Saturday. At the peak Saturday, I had well over 500 people on [...]
Toys.com de-indexed by Google because it is forwarded to ToysRUs.com. http://tinyurl.com/crwyhh
Toys ‘R’ Us spends $5M on toys.com domain and then gets it delisted by Google http://bit.ly/Gvo5L
If you are Toys R Us and you pay $5M for Toys.com domain, DO NOT FORWARD, make a new website! Drives me crazy. http://tinyurl.com/crwyhh
[...] other day I saw a DomainNameWire post about Toys “R” Us redirecting its newly acquired domain, toys.com, and that [...]
[...] Want to know who should have hired his services ? ToysRUs pays $5m for toys domain. After they bought the domain they reported lost traffic and creditibility with google for transferring the domain to a new registrar. Toys.com looses google ranking. [...]
[...] light of the news that Toys.com lost it’s Google placement, DNN reached out to SEO consultant John Andrews to get his take on the Toys.com deal and his view [...]
[...] light of the news that Toys.com lost it’s Google placement, DNN reached out to SEO consultant John Andrews to get his take on the Toys.com deal and his view [...]
[...] Domain Name News titled “Armchair SEOs Play with Toys.com“. It was a good article about Toys.com losing its Google ranking, and how it’s easy to sit back and say “Toys ‘R’ Us” screwed [...]
[...] Toys.com Loses Google Ranking – thanks in part to getting on the front page of Digg, this story about Toys.com losing its ranking [...]
[...] of the end-user, but they keep a closed loop on valuable analytics. And as long as you make sure to redirect intelligently, you can build it right on top of your existing site without sacrificing [...]
It seems like the damages are under control…but yes there where some opportunities left aside
[...] The auction was closely watched by the industry, though a number of popular blogs (click here and here) focused on how the deal would affect search engine optimization (SEO), which is, at best, of [...]
[...] That assumption was faulty. Domain Name Wire reports that the rankings are gone. [...]
[...] its newly purchased ($5.1M) domain name Toys.com to ToysRUs.com. This resulted in the company losing its search rankings for Toys.com. The story was viewed 30,000 [...]
Redirects (302 temporary or 301 permanent) are easy to overlook…and when it comes to stable SEO, it turns out to be one of the most important factors. A simple 301 redirect would have helped Toys.com avoid the ranking slippage.
[...] Toys.com Loses Google Ranking – Toys ‘R’ Us spends $5.1 million on a domain name with great search rankings, only to lose [...]
Wow, millions to lose and 301 redirects must solve this problem easily !?
Wow… thats great information. Amazing that a company that size makes the same types of mistakes that I would make… although they’re playing in a completley different league!
Thats crazy… wonder if there is a way to rectify the situation. Surely they must have people employed who would have known that the wrong move was being made???
What an investment up in smoke!
Now, 2 years later you do not see any problem. It is a good lesson that whatever happens may have different outcomes in the short run and the picture may be different in the long run.
Wow, amazing weblog format! How long have you been running a blog for? you make running a blog glance easy. The overall look of your website is great, let alone the content!