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The BUZZ on Buzzillions is that PowerReviews hit a huge home run already in just the first year of this new site. Buzzillions offers shoppers an innovative and exciting new way for people to find the right product for them using insightful and relevant feedback from other shoppers – just like them! This customer review/product research portal is exceeding all performance expectations in its first year.

Not only have our 250+ network of clients contributed more than 1 million reviews to the site from their more than 2,000 websites (yup, that makes PowerReviews the most implemented review solution in the world!) but other merchants, including those with their own in-house solutions or use a third party solution by Bazaarvoice, eagerly send us their product feeds and joined our site as well. Why you might ask?

Because companies like Overstock, Petco, HSN, Moosejaw and Drugstore.com fully understand the power of reviews in the shopping process and intelligently want to leverage this content on Buzzillions, which has now become one of THE TOP converting portals in the shopping site arena.

Buzzillions as an affiliate

Buzzillions has earned top-affiliate status at Commission Junction, LinkShare, Share-a-Sale and Performix because of the consistently high converting traffic that we send to our merchants – we send those merchants buyers not browsers. And folks, get this – the traffic we send them is proving highly valuable as well and here’s why.

Buzzillions operates almost entirely on a CPA (revenue share) basis that:

• brings all our merchants unlimited FREE traffic
• shares only in the merchant’s success meaning we make money only when they do!
• is non-coupon based traffic
• delivers highly loyal buyers who are focused on product performance, not price

Many merchants have documented that shopping by “Top-Rated” produces higher AOV and higher converting orders compared with any other merchandising strategy. Buzzillions does the same thing on a network-wide basis… which makes us one of the most profitable and highest performing affiliate for many of our merchant partners.

The SEO ”duplicate content” rumors are total nonsense

I know there are those of you out there that already saying to yourselves “Jay, this sounds too good to be true! What about all this SEO nonsense we are hearing these days, that Buzzillions is the SEO Devil?” Well, I am glad you asked, because it is nonsense and here’s why.

By intention, the Buzzillions site is optimized for the keywords “review”, “reviews”, “top-rated” and the like. That is where we make our money and that is where our focus lies. And even with that said, we are the inventor and originator of the SEO mini-site, which we create for our clients, is hosted on their site, and contains ALL the review content that is entirely “crawlable” by the engines. Basically, we created a page for that directly competes with our revenue generating efforts! We do this because we believe that we are NOT competing for the same customer… the retailer is targeting the directed shopper who already knows what they’d like to buy, while Buzzillions targets the researcher who is just beginning their shopping investigation.

That being said, with more than 250,000 products on Buzzillions, there might be those rare instances when a search generates a result that is perhaps one or two listings higher than the client’s. That is neither our intent nor our goal.

At the end of the day, if there was truly a significant negative SEO impact as is being claimed by our competition, then our direct clients like Staples, REI, ToysRUs, Walgreen’s as well as Bazaarvoice’s top clients like Petco and Overstock (who voluntarily send us their feeds) – all who have full-time staff devoted entirely to SEO efforts – would certainly have shouted loudly by now and demanded that we change our functionality. They have not done so because there is no problem. In fact, we hear nothing but the opposite with clients sharing with us that we are bringing them some of their highest quality and converting traffic – both through their SEO mini-sites as well as through Buzzillions.

Finally, Bazaarvoice actually engages in exactly what they accuse us of doing via SyndicateVoice to Smarter.com and other Price Comparison Engines, which deliver CPC based traffic that may not deliver a positive ROI and ultimately drives low price shoppers that are loyal only to price and not to the merchant. At the same time, these comparison shopping engines are competing directly with the retailers for the SAME CUSTOMERS, using the SAME STRATEGIES (SEO, SEM), with the SAME CONTENT.

It’s funny to think that, while BazaarVoice criticizes Buzzillions with claims of duplicate-content, its SyndicateVoice “solution” does exactly that – it duplicates their client’s content across dozens of price comparison engines.

Of course, you are the retailers and are faced with decisions like this on a daily basis; specifically where to send your traffic and who are you going to trust.

I want to leave you with this. You know me, my years as an online retailer and my passion for the customer experience. I could never be involved with something that I thought was intentionally detrimental to the rest of my network of merchant friends. In my heart I know there is no SEO problem because if there was we certainly would have heard it by now, loudly in fact.

What you are hearing these days is simply competitive nonsense, meant to do just one thing: stir enough fear into you that will keep you from doing business with our company – no matter what the cost in terms of lost revenue and opportunities.

So, do you want to join the ranks of REI, Staples, ToysRUs, Radio Shack, Overstock, HSN, Petco and nearly 300 others, maybe even for a 60-day trial period? Or do you want to sit on the sidelines because of something someone whispered into your ear without any real supportable evidence.

The decision is yours – please remember that.