We recenlty picked up a Hedstrom swingset for the kids. Interested in seeing what other Hedstrom products are out there, my wife found this review of a Hedstrom gym set on Epinions:
So if you need to get your kids out of the house, and out in the fresh air to run off some energy, think about adding a swing set to your backyard! It will be a great addition to your kid's life!
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For more information on products from Hedstrom, go to:
http://www.hedscape.com
Hey, that's why we got the set.
So my wife went to visit hedscape.com, and suddenly this pharmacy site came up instead:
We are proud to be able to bring you our wide selection of medicines, all of them are available to you online, 24x7. No Waiting for Doctors, you will enjoy Complete privacy, and you can order anytime, in your Own time, with No prior prescription needed! Now you can enjoy the convenience of ordering from your own home or office at the time that suits you! Order Safely and Securely through our secure transaction server, and pay using a wide range of credit cards.
Cialis, Flamvir, Tamiflu, and Tramadol -- no prior prescription required!
So how is it that we got from Hedstrom children's toys to an internet pharmacy?
Or as my wife said, why would Google allow this?
Well, Google does not run the world wide web. It does track links and use them to rank the value of pages, though, and does that very well. The trust people have in Google's ability to do this is probably why this has happened, though, so my wife wasn't too far off base.
That review on Epinions was from 2002. Shortly after, Hedstrom decide to jump into the trampoline business. That turned out to be a disaster:
Name of product: Trampolines
Units: About 116,000
Manufacturer: Hedstrom Corp., of Bedford, Pa.
Hazard: Welds on the frame of these trampolines can break during use, causing consumers to fall to the ground and suffer injuries.
Incidents/Injuries: Hedstrom had received about 700 reports of one or more welds breaking from the trampoline frame rails during use, resulting in 10 minor injuries.
Description: These are 12-foot, 13-foot, and 14-foot trampolines, which were sold separately, and also banded together with safety enclosures. They were sold under the brand names Hedstrom and NBF. The brand name is written on the warning labels found on the products. The recalled trampolines have model numbers 10136, 101366, 101442, 10146, 102369, 102949, 10321, 103217 or 10381. They also have four-digit date codes ranging from 0403 through 2103 with the last two digits always being 03. Model I.D. labels showing the model number and date code are located on one of the frame rail legs on the trampoline.
Sold at: Department, toy, and discount stores nationwide between January 2003 and May 2003 for between $160 and $225 for the single trampolines, and between $320 and $360 for the trampolines banded together with safety enclosures.
Manufactured in: U.S.A.
Remedy: Firm is out of business and a remedy is no longer available. Consumers should stop using and discard or destroy the product immediately to prevent injuries.
In December 2004, Hedstrom went out of business, in part because of the ascendency of video games as a means of entertaining kids, but also because of the crushing load of lawsuits from trampoline accidents.
You can track what happens by using archive.org. Versions of the website are archived as far back as 2001. In December 2004, the website changes. Hedscape.com then became the property of Brady Communications, a strategic marketing firms.
A domain name is like any asset. During bankruptcy, assets are liquidated, and Brady Communications probably picked it up for a song.
Brady is still in business, but in December 2005, exactly one year after Brady Communications grabbed the domain, the Brady page disappeared. The timing makes me think the Brady let the registration lapse. I can't tell if it was by design or by accident, but when you at Hedscape.com, it has some value.
There aren't too many backlinks, nor is there much traffic, but it retains a Google page rank of 6, which is very good. The rank is probably being driven by the age of the domain more than anything else. So it is a prime target for spammers and pill pushers. Hedscape.com is now a domain registered by Aleksey Nudilov, who specializes in playing redirection games.
In this case, a valuable domain is now permanently redirected using a 301 redirect to the 3-am pharmacy, owned by fellow Russian Anatoliy Zyabyikov (the pharmacy tries to pass itself as an American operation).
These people lurk in the dark corners of the web, waiting to pounce on valuable domains that have become orphaned in some way. In doing so, they get a valuable facade for their unseemly businesses.
And even if the redirection game doesn't pay off with a lot of sales of Tramadol, the domain might be sold off one day for a tidy profit.
So what does this mean to us? Not much, I suppose. I just found it interesting. For a lot of us, though, with our own domain names, it does mean that when we stop blogging, we have to plan to either maintain the domain ourselves, or expect that one day our good names will be used to peddle Cialis.
