On finding a site to buy - something I discovered today

**Clinton** · March 23rd, 2010, 06:44 AM

In a business forum I visit occasionally there was this thread yesterday from a guy who's got a four month old site who's been offered the chance to buy a competitor out at a very good price. This competitor is tops in Google for all his main terms. He wanted advice on how to analyse the traffic data etc.

He went to great lengths to not disclose any information about the industry he's in or the site that's up for sale. He was very cagey about it all as he doesn't want competition. But I thought I'd do some digging.

I used his forum name which is a first name followed by four numbers - think Clinton4581 - so lends itself nicely to Google searches. I did a site:businessxxxforum.com Clinton4581 search to call up all his threads. Fantastic! In one thread, he discussed being just down the road from someone in a particular town, in another thread he mentioned he was in the printing business. In a third thread he mentioned a new local directory service that he uses and recommends. Bingo. Went to that local directory and searched for printers in his home town and he was the only one listed.

Read his thread again to see what he said about his competitor. Given that information and knowing the town and industy, it was easy to narrow down the competitor who's selling to two choices. Now all I need to do it email them both to declare an interest in buying

Even when you think you've provided no information you could have given away too much!

Damn, I need to fight this urge to dig out sites to buy. I just realised I'm not buying and I have other more pressing work to attend to!

**TrustButVerify** · March 23rd, 2010, 01:53 PM

Clinton... lol!

You sound just like me...there are so many way to find information - I find myself on that EXACT same path when researching a site for sale... or anything I really want to find.

The older the internet gets, the more historical data that builds up on all of us...

Re:using the same username - that's pretty common... not to mention the same passwords. I know some spammers create membership type sites, simply to get users to give up their email and passwords. Many times the passwords are the same for everything.

Good detective work Clinton.

**TrustButVerify** · March 23rd, 2010, 01:56 PM

p.s. Clinton - what should you be working on? Your network of 4 million interlinked-but-non-traceable-to-one-another finance sites?

**Clinton** · March 23rd, 2010, 02:38 PM

Yup, that's the one!

Some are connected, some aren't. And I've no idea which ones are which! Arrggh!

But in another thread I requested suggestions for domain management software to help unravel everything and then keep track. I didn't get any useful replies but, I'm glad to say, I've tested some and think I've found the best one. More on that in the domain management software thread if I can find it.

**DomainMagnate** · March 29th, 2010, 04:23 AM

Originally Posted by Clinton

I used his forum name which is a first name followed by four numbers - think Clinton4581 - so lends itself nicely to Google searches. I did a site:businessxxxforum.com Clinton4581 search to call up all his threads. Fantastic! In one thread, he discussed being just down the road from someone in a particular town, in another thread he mentioned he was in the printing business. In a third thread he mentioned a new local directory service that he uses and recommends. Bingo. Went to that local directory and searched for printers in his home town and he was the only one listed.

Read his thread again to see what he said about his competitor. Given that information and knowing the town and industy, it was easy to narrow down the competitor who's selling to two choices. Now all I need to do it email them both to declare an interest in buying

Even when you think you've provided no information you could have given away too much!

Damn, I need to fight this urge to dig out sites to buy. I just realised I'm not buying and I have other more pressing work to attend to!

and I thought I'm too nosy

Sometimes it scares me how easy it can be to find everything about people online.