Hi,

Can you guys view this website
http://www.magicshop.co.uk ??

I have a pretty big order placed with them,
when I checked today the site wasn't working,
I am a bit worried...

If the site works for you, please let me know,
or if you have any information concerning the website,
also please let me know.

Thanks guys,
N

It's not working for me at the moment either (I'm in the UK). I imagine that it is a temporary fault with the server - I've ordered from them in the past and they have been fine.

Mike

Ok thanks for the reply Michael,
I hope you are right...
N

I too am in the UK...the site comes up for me but there's a message saying it's down for maintenance.

I just checked and got the site with the down for maintenance message...
So all is well, thanks for responding...

All the best,
N

Has anyone noticed the links at the bottom of the product and category pages? The names of other magic shops and companies with links directing to the magicshop.co.uk home page.

Nice unethical business tactics.

Matthew,

Jeez! Don't you have anything better to whine about. If you knew anything about magic retail, you would see that many other dealers do that as well. Did you try clicking on one of those links? If so you will notice that when you click on, Jay Sankey Magic, for example, it brings up all the Jay Sankey products they carry. As a customer, I appreciate it when stores do this because it makes it a lot easier to find what I'm looking for.

There is nothing unethical about what they are doing.

Yes, I did actually click around. Clicking on 'Magic Geek Inc' brought me to the same home page as 'Penguin Magic' and 'Hank Lee's Magic Factory'.

Clicking 'Jay Sankey Magic' did not bring up any Sankey products.

Linking another stores name to your home page is unethical as it is an attempt to jump into google search results for the other store

It's one thing linking the names of manufacturers to their products, but to link another stores name to your home page? that's not right.

Matthew,

What site are you complaining about? This thread is talking about http://www.magicshop.co.uk/

On the left hand side of the page there is a category list, which does list Jay Sankey Magic, Mark Mason Magic Tricks, Ben Harris Magic, etc. When you click on those links, it brings up all the products of those people that the store carries. For example:

http://www.magicshop.co.uk/JAY_SANKEY_MAGIC/c52/index.html

That DOES bring up Sankey products.

MJMMagic.com & TheMagicWarehouse.com are just two other sites that do that as well. Nothing unethical about it.

I too am confused...I went to the magicshop site but couldn't find anything off about it.

I am talking about stuff like this:

http://www.magicshop.co.uk/STAGE_ILLUSIONS/c44/index.html

Go to the bottom of the page. See all that? You will find Magic Geek Inc in there, as well as Penguin Magic, Hank Lees Magic Factory, Hocus Pocus, Dr. Bob's Magic Shop and several others.

Clicking any of those link to the home page for magicshop.co.uk.

The stuff on the left is part of the catalog navigation.

Matthew,

Thanks for that. I see what you're referring to, but I don't see it as an ethical issue and I'll explain why.

If there was a magician in the same market you are and they were using your name as part of their SEO strategy, so their site came up when people searched for you, then yeah, I'd have a problem with that. But this is a different scenario.

While I didn't search on their site for every word in that cluster, what I did search for I found products. Jay Scott Berry, Jay Sankey, Penguin Magic, etc. are all products they carry.

Add to that they are in the UK and people in Europe may prefer to do business with them rather than order from the US.

Searching on Google.co.uk for some of the search terms didn't seem to give them an upper hand on any other dealer, specifically the dealer in the search term. Searching for L&L Publishing, for example, L&L was at the top of the search results. This site was in the Top 10, but it was for an L&L product and not just their home page. Other search results didn't have them showing at all, which tells me this strategy could be better executed. If they went through the trouble of listing all those names, they would be getting better SEO if the link brought you to a page with those products. Relevancy for both the customer AND Google.