AllThingsD » Overstock.com

Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics

Amir Efrati — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:41 +0000

Google Inc. has penalized Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.

Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.

The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging students and faculty to post links on college and university websites associated with an Overstock discount program.

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Coldwell Banker Wants to Ship Me to Aruba

James R. Hagerty — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:22:25 +0000

The Internet is aswarm with listings of homes for sale. Even Overstock.com (OSTK) has them, appropriately enough in today’s glutted housing market.

So how is a real-estate broker to draw Web traffic to yet another listings site?

Coldwell Banker Real Estate has just launched a beta site whose features include something called BlueScape, designed to help you figure out what kind of home you’d adore. The idea is loosely based on features from other shopping sites, such as Amazon (AMZN) and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, that recommend things to you based on what you bought in the past. Even though iTunes recently had the nerve to suggest I might dig Barry Manilow, I decided to have a go at BlueScape.

Since BlueScape doesn’t know what kind of homes I bought in the past (none of them were bought online), it shows me pictures to gauge my emotional responses. When a picture pops up, I can click on a thumb’s up icon or a thumb’s down.

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Overstock Fires Auditor Over Accounting Dispute; Files 10-Q Anyway

Eric Savitz — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:30:44 +0000

Seriously, Overstock.com (OSTK) has to provide more entertainment value per dollar of market cap than any company in America.

Consider yesterday’s developments at the online retailer. The company disclosed in both a press release and an 8-K filing with the SEC that it has fired Grant Thornton as its auditor. Grant Thornton had become the company’s auditor in March, replacing Price Waterhouse.

Overstock lays out the situation in a classically loopy press release that leads with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “all things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Overstock says that in February, it “was notified” that it had overpaid a fulfillment partner by about $700,000, but that the same partner asserted that OSTK might owe it more than $400,000.

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Overstock: Stifel Downgrades To Sell; Stock Off 24 Percent

Eric Savitz — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:37:17 +0000

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt this morning cut his rating on Overstock.com (OSTK) to Sell from Hold. He notes that the company, which reported second-quarter financial results this morning, trades for 21×2009 EBITA, “the highest multiple in the sector.”

Devitt says the company has had two consecutive quarters of mid-20 percent growth, but that it has had “fairly easy comps,” and that growth could drop into the low-to-mid teens by 2009. “Investors believe that Overstock is doing well for the same reasons TJ Maxx is doing well, but Overstock transitioned away from the excess market two years ago and sells more traditional retail merchandise in its current form,” he writes.

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