Ashley Madison has caught the attention of the press this week after it emerged that the adultery website had severe issues with cyber security.
At a preliminary stage, our team has concluded that Ashley Madison’s owners — Avid Life Media (ALM) — seem to have very little understanding of basic indexation, too.
Avid Life Media
Consider that ALM, which also owns websites such as establishedmen.com and cougarlife.com, is essentially telling Google not to index the content of its own website. The charts below prove the point we are making, and we will provide more disclosure on our findings tomorrow.
One possibility is that ALM has decided to disappear from Google searches since the bad news emerged on Monday — but that is highly unlikely to be the case, in my view.
As far as Ashley Madison’s website is concerned, we spotted some structural issues on the tech specs.
All this is particularly relevant because ALM’s mission is to engage users, while expanding its presence in niche markets.
“Driven by high-tech advancements and outside-the-box thinking, we have become infamous for our clever, direct advertising that never fails to capture an audience,” ALM says on its website.
Investors
Moreover, did anybody notice this headline from The Financial Times earlier this year: “Adultery website Ashley Madison plans London IPO?”
A lack of attention to details and basic indexation rules ought to be a very serious matter for investors, who will be asked to commit to a business whose owners must be at the forefront of competition in the technology space if and when the float of its subsidiary is pursued.
In mid-April, the FT said that the company valued itself at $1bn, but now several questions have to be answered before the fair value of Ashely Madison can be assessed. SEO strategy is one of them.
Our findings are documented in a comprehensive audit package (“Ashley Madison Audit”) that will be published over the next 24 hours.
Stay tuned.