A website set up by the family of the missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann has received more than 50m hits in just over 24 hours, its organisers said today.

The rapid and astonishing prominence achieved by the http://www.findmadeleine.com shows the success of her parents in keeping their daughter’s case in the headlines despite more than two weeks without any real clue as to her fate.

In the 15 days since Madeleine was apparently snatched from her parents’ holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, police have turned up virtually no leads and only one man, 33-year-old British expatriate Robert Murat, has been named as a suspect. He has repeatedly insisted he is innocent.

The campaign website, launched yesterday, carried a message saying that as of 1.20am today it had received 50m hits.

Family members say the campaign is being led by Madeleine’s parents, doctors Gerry and Kate McCann, who have stayed in Praia da Luz with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie.

While they have spoken only occasionally to the media, the couple have helped keep the case in the news by appearing before the cameras daily, Mrs McCann tying her hair back with yellow and green ribbons to symbolise the hunt for her daughter.

Several sports stars have made appeals for information, with England’s cricketers wearing yellow ribbons to show their support yesterday in the first Test match against the West Indies at Lord’s.

Today it was announced that a video of Madeleine would be played to fans at tomorrow’s FA Cup final at the revamped Wembley stadium.

An FA spokesman said the two-minute clip, Find Madeleine, would be shown on big screens before the match between Manchester United and Chelsea, and again at half-time.

The same clip was screened at the Uefa Cup final between Sevilla and Espanyol in Glasgow on Wednesday.

Some of Europe’s largest corporations are spreading Madeleine’s image and news of her disappearance across Europe through posters and text messages, while money has poured in to support the family.

“We want to make sure that if Madeleine isn’t in Portugal that the rest of Europe is aware of the image of this little girl,” family member Michael Wright told reporters yesterday.

Posters of Madeleine are to be put up in aircraft and at restaurants, petrol stations, supermarkets, banks, airports and car hire offices. From BP to McDonald’s and the French supermarket chain Carrefour, her face is set to be the focus of an unprecedented publicity campaign.

Telecoms companies such as Vodafone, O2 and Spain’s Telefonica will send out text messages to clients asking for help.

Despite the publicity, and the questioning earlier this week of Mr Murat as the first “arguido”, or officially named suspect, police conceded last night they had very few leads and did not yet have sufficient evidence to arrest anyone.

However, when asked whether the search was “struggling”, Chief Inspector Olegario Souza, one of the officers leading the hunt, replied: “No.”

Mr Murat today remained inside his family’s villa, around 150 metres from where Madeleine disappeared.

A Russian man who designed a website for Mr Murat, 22-year-old Sergey Malinka, again protested his own innocence today after his home in Praia da Luz was raided by police on Wednesday. Mr Malinka was questioned by officers but released without charge and has not been named as a suspect.

Today, the Russian stressed his relationship with Mr Murat was “strictly business” and added that while he could not comment until the police investigation was over, once he could give his side of the story “it would prove me innocent, that everything is correct”.

He condemned reports in Portuguese newspapers alleging he had closer connections with Mr Murat, saying: “I just feel I have been misunderstood and the information about me has come out of nowhere.

“It’s been false, untrue, it’s really not helping me with my name and my career.”

A YOUNG lifeboatman who was left in a coma after a boat’s propellers sliced through his skull has made an amazing recovery and is setting his sights on a return to work.

Doctors had told Alistair McLean’s family that even if he survived, he might never be able to walk or speak again after the accident which saw him crash head first into the blades at the back of his boat.

However, after less than two months of recovery, the 20-year-old has returned to his home in Kinghorn, Fife. Despite doctors’ fears he might not recognise his relatives and would need 24-hour care, he is able to chat with family and friends and is already anticipating a return to lifeboat rescue missions.

“I don’t remember what happened, but I know I am very lucky and very happy to be here,” he said yesterday. “It feels great to be back at home. I have a lot of hard work to do to get back to full strength, but I am going to put everything I have into it. It is my dream to return to the lifeboats.”

Mr McLean, a crewman for two years, had been on a training operation in the Firth of Forth with a volunteer lifeboat crew from RNLI Kinghorn on 16 July. He fell head first off the twin-engined Atlantic 75 class lifeboat and into the water.

The spinning blades smashed into his head, slicing straight through his helmet and shattering his skull. The crew hauled him out of the water and raced back to shore to meet a waiting ambulance.

Surgeons at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh removed a piece of skull from measuring approximately 10cm by 5cm, the biggest piece they had ever removed from a living patient. Medics then intentionally put him into a coma for a week to prevent him moving and further injuring himself.

Doctors believed he had only a 50 per cent chance of survival and told his parents, Neil and Pamela, his sister Sharron, 27, and brother Ian, 23, that it was likely he would be paralysed down his right side and that he might have lost his speech and sight. They also feared the injury to his brain might completely transform his personality.

But when Mr McLean was awoken from his coma he began to make a recovery. Gradually, he regained movement in the right side of his body and started to say a few words. Within weeks, he began to walk unaided and could hold a conversation.

Doctors allowed him to return home in time for his 20th birthday on 1 September. In six months’ time, doctors hope to replace the missing bone with a metal plate.

His mother said yesterday: “It’s an incredible recovery, considering what we were told. We were given very little hope. Once we knew he was going to live, the most worrying thing for us was that they said that his personality could change completely.

But he’s our Alistair: he’s thoughtful, he’s kind, he’s got his smile and his sense of humour; that’s the most important thing for us.”

His father, Neil, 51, added: “The first thing he communicated when he regained consciousness was ‘is everyone else on the lifeboat OK?’” THE UNLIKELY SURVIVORS

ALISTAIR McLean’s miraculous recovery is the latest in a series of against-the-odds survivals.

Chris Stewart, 12, survived “internal decapitation” separating his skull and neck, when he hit a barrier in a stock-car crash at Alton, Hampshire, last year.

Sarah Yeargain, of San Diego, California, somehow survived the loss of all her skin after a reaction to an antibiotic. She lived long enough to receive successful grafts of artificial skin.

In Kirkcaldy in October 1988, exiled Croat politician Nikola Stedul was shot in the mouth and chest by a former Yugoslav intelligence officer. The victim survived and now lives in Australia.

All too often banks, potential investors, and creditors will determine a company’s value based on financial statements. This is a mistake. Financials don’t come close to telling the true story. Sure, they present the tangible value. But what about the intangible value? Company valuation is emotional—a company is worth what an acquirer will pay, what the market will pay, what the interested parties perceive. We see evidence of this frequently when companies with a trickle of revenue are acquired for gushing millions or even billions of dollars.

Maybe you aren’t planning on raising financing, securing a credit line, being acquired, or one day going public. You still need to continually boost the value of your company. A higher-value company has more options. It gets the right partners, preferential terms, and often a more glorious future. There’s an art to value-boosting, and I am going to tell you how to do it. First, know the facts:

Company valuation is emotional.

Intangibles often matter more than tangibles.

You can’t build value if your business isn’t enticing.

You should always be selling: to financiers, customers, strategic partners, staff, and strangers.

I’ve used some or all of the following seven value-boosters to quintuple the value of my clients’ companies and my own. These value-boosters have also worked for companies such as Google («www.businessweek.com»), Microsoft («www.businessweek.com»), YouTube, and many, many more.

1. A killer team and a killer business plan (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/20/07, «www.businessweek.com»).

2. A hot board of directors and/or advisory board (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/07, «www.businessweek.com»).

3. Specific strategic alliances. An LOI (Letter of Intent) with a partner ain’t gonna cut it. You need a binding contract spelling out exactly what the terms of your deal are. Clarify how many widgets they will buy/distribute/co-market, the time period, as well as what happens if they default on the agreement.

4. New sales channels. Distributors, value-added resellers, outside sales forces, affiliates, joint-venture partners—all boost the value of your company. Of course, you’ll track the performance of your sales channels. Use the affiliate tools in your online shopping cart to track the performance of your online sale channels, and use your accounting system or sales force management software (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/17/07, «www.businessweek.com») to track all others.

5. Product line extension. Let’s assume you sell a supercool widget. What’s next? Son of Widget? Platinum Widget? Widget Extraordinaire? Map out your future product lines so financiers, partners, and staff can see where you are headed and how you plan to get there.

6. Intellectual-property (IP) portfolio. Protect your corporate jewels! A patent portfolio can be worth gold. A friend of mine sold his company for $425 million (with about $30 million in trailing revenue) because he had locked in so many patents. That’s what the acquirer bought. They didn’t give a hoot about the business.

7. Compelling prototype of product. This is key when you’re in the zero or near-zero revenue range, as you’ll see below. People need to see/touch/feel what the product will be like. Then they can envision your fabulous future.

Consider this example. A professional services firm with an initial value of $2 million hired me to help boost its value. But the trouble with services firms is they are often valued at only revenue times one. Ick. So we beefed up the board and advisers (adding $1 million in value), helped nail down specific strategic alliances ($3 million), mapped out a line of “productized” services ($2 million), and developed new sales channels ($2 million). About six intense months later, the firm sought financing with a respectable pre-money valuation of $10 million. It closed the financing in three months.

Then there is the example of the Internet promotion company I started with no revenue. Before seeking financing, my team and I had to answer the question: How do you make an idea into a hot commodity? The solution consisted of pulling in a rocking team and coming up with a hot business plan (adding $1 million in value), developing a compelling product prototype ($1 million), locking in killer alliances ($1 million), and building an IP portfolio ($2 million). We took its value to $5 million in four intense, somewhat sleep-deprived months. Then we raised $2.5 million in financing with a pre-money value of $5 million, and a post-money value of $7.5 million. The $2.5 million invested bought one-third of the company.

Value is about potential. Potential today, potential tomorrow. The main reason you keep building value in your company, in all the tangible and intangible ways (and as I’ve shown you, the “intangible” ways often do have dollar values attached to them!), is because a high-value company gets the financing it wants on the terms it wants. It also gets multiple acquisition offers at fabulous terms. The high-value company gets the alliances, the staff, and the opportunities it wants, too.

Remember, you are selling the future as you are selling the present. The present must look promising for the future to be potentially glorious. What are you doing to boost the value of your company today?