FindMadeleine - GoDaddy Profiteering

GODADDY - MONEY ASIDE: DO THE RIGHT THING FOR MADELEINE

There is something smelly about this - The smell of money.

[UPDATE: GoDaddy did the right thing - Matter closed. Thanks to everyone who got in touch. Bo!]

A search for findmadeline on Google returns findmadeline.com as top result - Nothing wrong with that, you might say. Click-on that link, however, and you are taken to a parked domain page, hosted by GoDaddy. On that page are adverts. Each time someone clicks on those ads, GoDaddy receives some coin from the advertiser.

Also notice, on that Google page, you may be able to see snippets from other websites also linking to that site - Why? My guess is there are other genuine sites out there who have also mis-spelt the domain name, I'd like to hope so, anyhow (see below).

But keep reading, this gets arguably weirder...

In case you are not aware (If you are, you can skip this paragraph to the real "coincidences"), Madeleine is a four year old girl who has been abducted whilst on holiday with her parents in Portugal - She is still missing and there is a huge - and I really mean, huge - media-blitz across the UK and Europe at the moment. There is also in excess of 2 and a half million pounds up as reward.

Coincidences?

The official Find Madeleine website (that is the correct site, BTW) was launched just a couple of days ago - Today, it was reported that it had received over 60 million visitors... in just 2 days!

Look at the spelling: Madeleine - That is the correct spelling of her name. Now look to the start of this post; I used, what I originally thought, would be the correct spelling: Madeline.

I suspect both spellings are correct - depending upon who it is.

The point is, how many of those 60 million well-meaning visitors made the same search and clicked onto that page... and possibly an ad?

Enough, I'd wager.

More Coincidences?

More interestingly - or perhaps more disturbingly - is that Google's cache of the same page, as retrieved on 17 May 2007 23:42:26 GMT, has a "real" page; the top of which has a direct "donate" link to the correct "Find Madeleine" campaign site (findmadeleine.com). I have a screengrab which I'll post as soon as I've optimised it for size.

[UPDATE: The image is here - Another interesting discovery: Whilst the top "donate" text, links to the correct official campaign site, the images beneath (Not rendered 'cos sometimes Google's cache can't fetch the original images), are/were also links to our imposter GoDaddy ad-page - They are "supposed" to lead to different language versions of the official FindMadeleine site... now persuade me that that, is an accident!]. I'll post more images later but it's very, very late here now.

So, in essense, the page has been switched from a seemingly innocent, and basically, uninteresting page, to the parked domain page with ads... all within the same number of days the real campaign site was launched.

But There's More...

But that's not the end of the apparent coincidences...

Our "imposter" website was registered on 10-may-2007 - A week after Maddie's abduction - When media interest, and public concern, was beginning to really peak. GoDaddy was the registrar.

[UPDATE: Just noticed - On that same registration page, you can see the following: "Website Title: Find Madeline McCann | £1.5 MILLION Reward". Clearly, further evidence of intent to trick.]

Notice, under the heading, "Whois Record", how it is blank. That's unusual. Compare that to the whois of findmadeleine.com, the real site...?

Notice who that site was registered through? GoDaddy!

Notice the date that the domain was created too? The same as our "imposter" website.

I would say that the registered owner of that domain - Domains by Proxy, Inc. - looks suspicious too, but for the fact that privacy would be an understandable concern, in the circumstances... but still, America?!

All-in-all, this looks like a classic "switch and bait", to me... and it stinks.

Please post this wherever you can to shame GoDaddy into either:

1. Instantly redirecting searchers through to the campaign site - Preferable
2. Donate all advertising revenue from that page - not just profits - to the campaign

If you want to copy and paste this elsewhere; permission granted - If you want to link here instead; permission granted.

Feel free to post links to where you have posted below, in the comments - I'm sorry they have to be moderated before I publish, blame the spammers, but I will clear them as soon as I obviously can.

Not music, I'm sorry - But there are distraught parents stuck in Portugal, sick with worry. And there are a huge number of people entirely un-connected with the family, out looking for their four year old daughter - They need all the eyeballs they can get - Bollocks to this money thing for just one moment in time, eh?

GODADDY - DO THE RIGHT THING FOR MADDY