EarthLink Establishes Their Own "Site Finder"

Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."

Comments

Profit is the Motive

[eldavojohn]

I visited the earthlink help page and noticed that it contained four things.

1. A box showing suggested search terms
2. A box in which I could search (through Yahoo!) for my page.
3. Two banner ads.

When I enter in a term, say 'guitar', I get a page with yet more ads and sponsored links but still directed through earthlink help to Yahoo!

I wasn't born yesterday, I understand the concepts of paid search, sponsored links & banner ads. They generate revenue and insult me. They waste real estate on websites and obscure my information that I would prefer to harvest un assaulted by sales pitches.

I'm betting I'm not the first to say this, but this is insane.

If they wanted to be 'helpful' they would provide you with some sort of new service. In this solution, they are simply deciding which search engine you will use and cashing in off of it also. If we want to search for another answer, I think we know where to go. If you doubt our abilities to select a preferred search engine, at least give us some choices. Do you know what happens in Firefox when I pull down the search engine on the upper right? I can select from a number of sites.

"By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes."

You're not improving anything, you're laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Profit is the Motive

[whoppers]

Agreed on all points, but it doesn't matter. Picture the average earthlink user in your head and then realize half are dumber than the person you're picturing. Maybe 5% of earthlink users will realize and give a damn, the other 95% are just happy they have something new to click that may take them somewhere that may be useful. An error page is a dead end for them that makes them think they've screwed up.

A best friend used to work in marketing for earthlink and told me about the users they brought in to test websites, systems, etc... I was absolutely horrified and now weep for the future.

The difference is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Earthlink subscribers can opt by not being Earthlink subscribers any longer. When Verisign did it, it affected everyone because they've been granted a monopoly on certain domain extensions.

The address you entered could not be found.

[Avillia]

Please try the related content suggestions and paid advertisements below, or try another search.
You entered "http://www.slashdot.org/".

Advertisements for cow steroids, cars, and free computers followed.

Stay In the Box

[Doc Ruby]

The place for offering "help" in the user interface is in the client software. Perhaps the DNS error needs a metadata field for offering messages, perhaps hyperlinked, for exception handling. But those must be presented by the user agent, like the browser, not tricking the browser into "passthru" to server misdirection. That violates the DNS specs. And makes that essential global system vulnerable to unpredicted failures when dependant systems get nonstandard results.

These ISPs attract marketing people with dreams of empire and ignorance of Internet. Execs put them in power over the engineers, and just rip across the careful system designs that make the Net work. Then they cry when their stuff doesn't work, and blame the engineers.

But they compete with each other on how well their stuff works. As long as we can switch ISPs among a pool with critical mass size, they'll exploit each others' weaknesses to grab customers. These "DNS hijacks" are going to be with us forever, avoidable only while we have a choice between independent, competing ISPs.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

[LiquidCoooled]

Only terrorists would run their own DNS server.