Smugmug surge in popularity

mcgil

Somewhat of a random thread. I just noticed on Alexa.com the recent surge in popularity for Smugmg:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Smugmug.com
This seemed to happen in the second half of May. Did something meaningful launch? Anybody guess?
I was just genuinely curious

leftquark

That is very curious! The largest product launch has been the Mobile Web Apps but it could also be from our new marketing pages, which we launched a few months ago and could have had a delayed reaction. Additionally, we made some updates to the way that search bots see SmugMug, which could help. I'll ask the team if they have other ideas.

photoclick

I can answer this one: remember this thread Direct link for photo no longer through my own domain? About Smugmug making a change to serve images from photos.smugmug.com instead of mydomain.com for customers with custom domains. I did say back than that the main reason is to boost the popularity of smugmug's domain despite SM's saying something about providing better service for us:) I was right. Now we know that ALL customers with custom domains provide an outstanding service for smugmug!!!

Alexa's stats comparison from before (left image) and after (right image) the change. And this is a true reason for surge in popularity



Now, for the record, I must say that I am still impressed that the company is talking and discussing with customers internal working mechanism of the platform - that is a plus. and I am thankful for that. But if you are already being so open, why not just say from the beginning: "...hey, we found a way to dramatically boost our ranking, we do it by employing back-linking from all the sites with custom domains, it won't hurt nor affect custom domains but will help to promote our company which is good for all of us, and by the way, here is $50 off your next yearly subscription dear custom domain owner because if not for you we would not be able to boost our ranking TWICE" That would be the honest way in my book.

leftquark

photoclick wrote: »

But if you are already being so open, why not just say from the beginning

I've always been open and honest with you all. If that was the reason why we made the change, I'd tell you that, but there were a lot more technical reasons for the change. SEO and rankings boost were never part of the decision.

94lincoln

This gives me heart burn

photoclick wrote: »

I can answer this one: remember this thread Direct link for photo no longer through my own domain? About Smugmug making a change to serve images from photos.smugmug.com instead of mydomain.com for customers with custom domains. I did say back than that the main reason is to boost the popularity of smugmug's domain despite SM's saying something about providing better service for us:) I was right. Now we know that ALL customers with custom domains provide an outstanding service for smugmug!!!

Alexa's stats comparison from before (left image) and after (right image) the change. And this is a true reason for surge in popularity



Now, for the record, I must say that I am still impressed that the company is talking and discussing with customers internal working mechanism of the platform - that is a plus. and I am thankful for that. But if you are already being so open, why not just say from the beginning: "...hey, we found a way to dramatically boost our ranking, we do it by employing back-linking from all the sites with custom domains, it won't hurt nor affect custom domains but will help to promote our company which is good for all of us, and by the way, here is $50 off your next yearly subscription dear custom domain owner because if not for you we would not be able to boost our ranking TWICE" That would be the honest way in my book.

One reason I signed up with SmugMug was the fact my photo clients could easily share photos of themselves across the internet, facebook, twitter, etc. I intended to allow this because the benefit to me is better rankings for my website. But, now, with the photos being shared from the Smugmug site and not my custom site, I don't get any SEO juice. Frankly, this gives me heartburn. I might as well have the minimum subscription, or just go to another provider. Seo does matter, and sharing from my custom site (not smugmug.com) does matter.

leftquark

Your visitors don't get access to direct JPG's to share -- they share the Lightbox URL which always points to your custom domain. Are you sharing links to JPG's instead of to your lightbox?