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Sunday 12 April 2009

Spanky and the Web Cheats

A while back AW posted details of how UCG was trying to manipulate Web traffic. I guess all's fair in love, war and proselytizing, though there were UCG members among those most outraged by the "cheating" aspect. Now comes news that the LCG, home of some of the most highly moralistic poseurs of Philadelphian righteousness, is being accused of wheedling away in an even more blatant manner, this time to skew Alexa rankings in their favor.

Just a day or so ago we posted the latest Alexa rankings for COG sites - and lo, LCG was shooting up the ladder, both for the Tomorrow's World and official church sites. Could it be that God is moving powerfully to increase LCG's influence on the Web?

Well, no. These comments were received shortly after the posting went up.

"...the reason you're seeing LCG and TW pull up in the Alexa ratings is because LCG HQ sent out an email to all its ministers asking them to install the Alexa toolbar. So now when they pull up the LCG or TW websites, it of course helps their rating. Now you know..."

No Virginia, there is no increase in LCG's audience. It's all a pathetic jack-up.

A word to The Glorious Leader and author of The Ten Commandments: "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's Web ratings."

16 comments:

It's a hit said...

Hmmm. I'm sure they have their justification for this. But it reminds me of the old lady who bought stock in the telephone company (Telstra, Australia, when it first went public) and made lots of phone calls thinking she'd get the cost of the calls back in dividends.

Anonymous said...

Could this be likened to the PT distribution program?

Anonymous said...

If this person knows about this letter that was sent out to ministers in LCG then he should be able to produce a copy for all to see.

Pulling Rank said...

With RCM, it's always about Rank.

"It's God, Jesus, HWA, Garner Ted, MYSELF and a few other leading evangelists..."

Mr. Pack will NO DOUBT invest in this little package as well. It's about numbers with DP.

His autobiographical idea that when he came to Rockford, Ill it became THE fastest growing Church in the the Church of God is absurd. I was there. He probably, as he was wont to do, moved the church boundries between himself and others around him over twenty miles or so in his favor. You know Dave-mandering

Leonardo said...

But isn't this what COG religion has basically been all about: projecting a public image that camouflages the actual underlying realities?

So why be surprised by this deceptive tactic? – it’s fairly standard procedure.

Baywolfe said...

If this is the kind of nonsense that the "leaders" of these sects have been reduced to, then their members are even more pathetic sheep that I thought they were.

And this includes X-friends that I know have more sense than that.

        AMERICAN KABUKI said...

In the late 1980s a clever Brit noticed that "800" toll free calls were relatively cheap so he automated calls to his "900" number (used in those phome sex calls) and had British Telecom giving him free money. He was eventually caught.

Gavin said...

Can I say, Mr Bends sir, that it's nice to see you back up on deck, so to speak.

;-)

PG10 said...

Since when has LCG been ethical???? It's leadership and hierarchy is filled with some of WCG's biggest liars, crooks, con artists, and abusers of brethren. I've seen these sick men in action in Pasadena, and it was NEVER a pretty sight!

Anonymous said...

Despite the biblical admonition against "comparing themselves among themselves," when you peek behind the facade, there is an awful lot of competition among the cogs to be at the top of the various lists that are used to compare "who is doing the best at doing the work."

The flyweight golden gloves champion from Charlotte was bound to catch on one day to what the Branch Flurridians from Oklahoma and the Cincinnati disUnited have been up to for years. But unless LCG is prepared to disfollowship folks for not installing Alexa, they won't be able to compete with the iron fist from Edmond Oklahoma.

UCG has been promoting the use of Alexa at least as far back as the summer of 1999. PCG began doing the same thing shortly afterwards when UCG made comment in the United News about how well they were doing in Alexa.

Anonymous said...

I always thought rod and his LCG minions were a sneaky group!

Eddby

Byker Bob said...

And yet the annual baptismal figures are down in the weeds. Isn't that the real benchmark? General Motors doesn't really care how many people see their ads, or visit their website. The only measurements with which they are concerned are 1) How many cars are purchased, and 2) How profitable this is to the corporation. Everything else is just fluff.

BB

Anonymous said...

Back when my family in PCG would still speak to me, I remember coming over for dinner and afterwards jumping on their computer to check my webmail. I noticed something called the Alexa toolbar on their computer. When I asked my Dad what this was, he told me that their minister had installed it for them when he had been by to visit.

So back before PCG forbid members from having anything to do with their family outside of PCG, they were out installing Alexa on their members' computers.

Leroy said...

I first learned of Alexa about 10 years ago when I was asked by our local minister to install it on my computer. He said that the home office told him that unless a person had Alexa installed, that their visits to the church websites weren't being counted.

FWIW I installed it so that UCG would get credit for my web visits.

Anonymous said...

Alexa: Internet tools of war?

Let's take the hits off the toolbar and put 'em back in the the web logs where they belong.

OohRah, web dudes!

Anonymous said...

Whoever wrote "...the reason you're seeing LCG and TW pull up in the Alexa ratings is because LCG HQ sent out an email to all its ministers asking them to install the Alexa toolbar. So now when they pull up the LCG or TW websites, it of course helps their rating. Now you know..." is either ignorant of the facts, or intentionally twisting them for effect.

For example, the message only went to employed ministry, not the entire ministry--so the accusation that it was sent to "all its ministers" is an outright lie. Gavin's source of the above is unreliable, at best, a liar at worst.

Alexa, as anyone familiar with it can tell you, is not a true measure. It can only measure how many hits are received from those having the Alexa toolbar. It cannot therefore tell you how many hits or unique visitors a site has actually had. If everyone had the Alexa toolbar, then it would be a reliable measure--but that is not the case. The only accurate and reliable measure is a site's own web logs.

Alexa is a junk measurement. Gavin's source is a liar.