On December 10th, 2004, American Historic Inns (AHI) received an anonymous threat via fax. Many of you are familiar with American Historic Inns from their online directories iloveinns.com and bnbinns.com. You may have also noticed that they were a recipient of our 2004 INNtelligent Editors Choice award.

Following is the anonymous fax received by AHI

After this fax was sent the anonymous sender went on to send out hundreds of much less professional and inflammatory emails like the following - many of them through the reservation request form on the AHI web sites.

What the heck are iframes?
The quickest explanation is that I have just used two iframes above to give you the ability to read a different web page without leaving this one. Essentially what I did was to embed the fax web page into this web page or rather, I put a frame around it. However, instead of making the web page full size, I provided a small window (a frame) about 200 pixels high and 400 pixels wide which you could scroll. This was the original purpose of the iframes tag.

So what's all the hullabaloo?
The first thing you need to understand is that if the above iframe were a link to your website, then your home page would have loaded in the above window. This would have produced a page view (aka "hit") to your web site which your stats package would have registered as a visitor.

The second thing you need to understand is that I control the size of the iframe window and if I wanted I could make the window a 1x1 pixel or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The effect is that your web page would be loaded, your stats package would have registered a visitor to your web site but the reader never actually saw any part of your web page.

This is exactly what AHI has done on the pages of each B&B listing in their directory. So whenever a potential guest views a B&B listing on iloveinns.com or bnbinns.com, it produces a page view on the home page of that B&B's web site. This occurs even though the potential guest never visited the actual site. If the potential guest does indeed click on the link to the home page of the B&B site, this would then register a second page view.

Why would AHI do this?
Back in 2002 it was discovered that two other directories (theinnkeeper.com and charmingcountryinns.com) were using 1x1 pixel (aka invisible) iframes. I asked the webmaster of theinnkeeper.com why they used iframes and he told me it was to preload web sites. In other words, when a potential guest clicked on a link to a B&B's web site, the page would load instantly because it had already in effect been visited. We advised them of the erroneous clickthroughs this could cause and the iframes were quickly removed. Not long afterward charmingcountryinns.com also removed their iframes tags.

So when I heard about AHI using iframes the other day, I called my long time colleague David Sakach of AHI for an explanation. David's response was that numerous innkeepers had expressed difficulty in tracking how many people viewed their listings in the AHI web sites. David's response was to implement iframes. You can see the official AHI response below - iframed in of course! ;-)

It is obvious from AHI's response that this was NOT a malicious attempt by AHI to deceive innkeepers. That said, there are better ways to provide statistics on listing page views and clickthroughs to innkeepers which do not employ the misleading iframes tag. Back in 1995 our directory (BBExplorer.com) became the first online guide to send out statistics reports to our clients. Since then, many other guides such as BedandBreakfast.com have created stats packages for their clients. I would encourage all online guides to follow suit and avoid iframes at all costs.

How should we feel about this?
Again, it's obvious that this was not an attempt by AHI to deceive innkeepers so I would leave emotion out of this. However, it does seriously affect how you view any clickthroughs from AHI in your stats program especially since the iframes tags are still being utilized by AHI. On the most basic level, the effect of iframes being used by AHI would make their site appear about 10-100 times more often in your stats than most other online guides. Amazingly, even with this HUGE advantage, we have not seen the AHI sites outperform the other Editor's Choice Award guides in the INNtelligent ranking report.

There are three possible ways you should feel about this depending on your tracking of clickthroughs to your web site. Simply pick the line below which best matches your profile as an innkeeper:

1. I use a state of the art statistics package such as SuperStatz, BlizzardTracker, Urchin and/or WebTrends which show me "Unique Visitors" as opposed to page views in my referral report.
   
   What you need to understand is that if your stats show 10 referrals from iloveinns.com or bnbinns.com, it's quite possible they never visited your site at all. All this number means is that this many people viewed your "listing" on one of these web sites. Furthermore, if someone does click on the link to your site, it will count another page view but NOT another unique visitor as all quality stats packages differentiate between the two.
    
2. I use a stats package other than above such as Extreme Tracker.
   
   A. Your situation is similar to that of #1. However, your numbers will be even more inflated as your stats package will count each page view as a unique visitor in your referral report. This is why for years we've recommend innkeepers move up to a professional stats package such as those listed in #1.
    
3. I don't have web stats or never check my reports.
   
   A. While I could spend the next hour chastising you, I'll resist. That said, you need not be concerned at all as ignorance is bliss.

How does the staff of INNtelligent.com feel about this?

INNtelligent.com was created as an information resource for the innkeeping community for instances just like this. However, after ten years of serving this industry, I've become painfully aware how apathetic many innkeepers have become. So while we've gone to considerable effort to explain this situation, I know that the majority of innkeepers will be left completely unaware. This is probably the most troubling aspect of this report in that uninformed innkeepers will make unintelligent decisions based on inaccurate (or non-existent) stats.

While I believe in the credibility of AHI and their online guides, I must comment on the troubling consequences their actions could and may have caused. One good measure of their ethics will be whether they refer all their clients and all iframes inquires to this report. Since they have as yet provided a means for innkeepers to turn off the iframes feature, we've hacked something together for all of you.

The following code will disable the iframes code and send visitors directly to your web site. Simply place it in the html code on your home page right after the title tag and let it go to work ;-)

<script type="text/javascript"> var ref = document.referrer; if( ref.indexOf("iloveinns.com") || ref.indexOf("bnbinns.com") > 0 ) { if (top.location != document.location){ top.location = document.location} } </script>
 

How does this affect the iloveinns.com INNtelligent.com rank?

After careful analysis by our team, we have made a deduction in the bonus score for iloveinns.com. However, this amount was not enough to change their currently ranked position. This deduction will remain in effect for future updates to the INNtelligent ranking report until the iframes code is removed.

We sincerely hope you have enjoyed this report. For ten years we have tracked the online guides of the Bed and Breakfast industry and want innkeepers to make informed decisions. After all, your money should be spent on guides which truly perform well. We encourage you to read over our full online lodging guide report. You should also sign up for our newsletter so that you may be apprised of these situations as they arise.

Best of luck to all of you,

Scott Crumpton
INNtelligent.com