Update 29/06/2010: They’ve fixed it now, well done!
I’ve just been browsing the Independent’s list of the 10 best money saving sites, it’s a rundown of the usual suspects, such as Gumtree, TravelSupermarket and MoneyDashboard.
But it looks like somebody at the Independent failed to check out all the sites in the list, check out the screenshot below:
Spot the typo? That should be theenergyshop.com they’re talking about (at least, we think so), but the spelling mistake has sent them to a spammy “Made for Adsense” website – essentially it’s designed to get visitors clicking on their Google ads, which earns them some money – and the Independent have used the screenshot of that site, and spelt it incorrectly in their review.
Whilst it’s a little poor for a big site such as the Independent to make such a mistake, it highlights how easy it is to visit a spammy site with a simple spelling mistake. In these sort of cases, there’s probably little harm done, as the adverts featured should point the visitor in the right direction. Indeed, there’s a ad for The Energy Shop on the site, so they’re probably paying for some of the traffic that should really be theirs.
It’s probably made someone very happy with the extra traffic and clicks though, let’s see if the Independent rectify the mistake.