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Where are our visitors going?

March has seen a 50% drop in visitor numbers and there is no discernible pattern.

The rate of decline is the same on Google and Yahoo and in the major Keywords there are no obvious victims. Similarly the most frequently visited pages are showing no distinctive performance.

Our updating efforts on the streaming sample pages have brought no obvious benefits. The bounce rates on them have gone up nearly as often as they have gone down.

Just looking at the competitive sites on a 'Debussy MP3' search flags up the changes which have been going on. It looks as if there are legitimate piano recordings on sale for as little as $0.17 and there are amateur piano recordings offered free of charge by an Italian pianist. Where as in the past these offers were not evident we were often the first site you got to with a straight forward download offer. Our strategy from the outset was to take our price from the market leaders - iTunes and it is beginning to look as if we need to seriously reconsider our market positioning.

Meanwhile back at the Big Daddy ranch a Reladvance.com search on 'chopin mp3' combined with 'chopin polonaise mp3' produced 10 different combination and permutations of results across the data centers - not big differences in the search results but evidence of widespread upheavals non the less. It must be nice for them working in the goldfish bowl of webwide surveillance!

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