The travel search engine — which began as a coalition of major airlines fearful of independent booking sites such as Expedia — was one of the properties listed by researcher Ben Edelman in his most recent study of "forced popups". That's a technique with which unscrupulous marketers trick naive internet users into visiting their pages.

After reading Gigaom's analysis of Orbitz's plans for an initial public offering, the travel site's shameless traffic-pumping all becomes clear. The company's financials are, according to Paul Kedrosky, absurdly complex; it is still lossmaking; the proceeds will go to paying down the debt of its current parent company, Travelport; and Travelport will retain control.

With a proposition as unattractive as that, no wonder Orbitz needs to bamboozle investors by showing audience growth it doesn't actually have. Yes, as the site's tagline states, Orbitz is indeed "a step ahead" — a step ahead of the internet measurement services upon which investors will rely.