How many times have you seen a website being used on TV and thought that it was either an amazing example of product placement or that you couldn’t understand why such an obscure site was being featured?
Quite often I take a look at sites featured in popular programmes to see if they really exist and more often than not the sites are live but are just fake websites developed by film production companies.
One of the most famous fake websites is Erinsmail, the email service often seen being used on Neighbours. The website doesn’t exist on the real internet but Erinsmail is used by almost all the residents of Ramsay Street.
A website often seen in the UK on Eastenders is the fake search engine search-wise.net, Google is giving a malware warning for this domain so visit at your own risk. Checking the about page of the site reveals the following:
This is NOT a real search website!
Owned and operated by Compuhire (Eccentric Trading Company Ltd), this website has been set up for clearance purposes so that it can be used in film and TV productions when scripts require that a search engine is shown in vision.
Doctor Who has used dozens of fake websites including www.unit.org.uk in the past as part of some clever viral marketing campaigns. One campaign encouraged users to search for “doctor blue box” on Google to find the site but this campaign has now been ended and the site altered so that it no longer ranks for this term.
Do you know any other fake websites?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick
I made a few quid with http://www.lostarmymates.co.uk (via friends reunited sign-ups) – this fictional domain was featured in an episode of Silent Witness last year.
And my very own http://www.sewellmarbury.com has proved to be quite popular with Bourne Ultimatum watchers from around the world.
I don’t watch the show myself but someone mentioned that CSI often uses fictional websites.
This was interesting. Maybe more companies should be aware of this and try some product placements. They do that all the time for other stuff, why not websites?
I remember watching the movie copycat (1995) starring Sigourney Weaver and I really wanted to get the e-mail software she was using. It looked really cool, the coolest e-mail software I had ever seen.
… it was a fake one
on icarly and zoey101 theres zaplook.com, sorta like google.
and on zoey101 is toonjuice.com, like youtube.
There is a fake website called SplashFace.com, a parody of YouTube.
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