Appreciate the middleman.

In our last post, we explained that customers knowingly and unknowingly misrepresent where they found out about you. One issue that merits expansion and explanation is the idea of "the middleman".

What brand of toothpaste do you use? Let's assume it's Crest. Where did you buy it? Walmart. And who makes it? Proctor and Gamble. Now tell me the name of the trucking company that brought the toothpaste from Proctor & Gamble to the Walmart warehouse. Stumped?

Now imagine that someone says they found you on Google. Did they find your web site, your listing in info guys, your Rominger Legal PI page, the NAPPS directory? Odds are they don't know. They know they started on Google, and ended on your "web site", which could have been your actual web site, or your listing on a site such as those listed above. Many consumers, including business professionals have no idea who owns the web page they are looking at, and actually why should they care!

Here at Rominger Legal we often are sent e-mails saying that "such and such state statutes are down", or "there is a search error on the such and such court cases". Many of these e-mails presuppose that those statutes or cases which we link to are under are custody or control. Many users just can't seem to tell when they have left one web site and moved to another.

So remember, whether it is toothpaste or hiring a PI, most folks never think about the middleman, nor do they need to care. That is your job. Evaluating a web listing's or web site's relative success requires much more information than what a customer reports. See our blog archive for some ideas on how to do this.