McAnerin Networks Inc. > Search Engine > Spammers and Scammers

Spammers and Scammers

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Search engine optimisation (SEO) is beginning to get a lot of interest. A lot of people have websites, but are beginning to discover that the ownership of a website doesn't mean anything unless people are coming to it. Many of these sites are owned by honest, hardworking business people who don't have the time to become computer experts. They just want people to visit their site and (hopefully) buy their products and services.

Unfortunately, the combination of non-experts requiring help and commercial (meaning money is involved) ventures attracts con artists like flies to honey. There are many ethical, hard working, and effective SEOs out there, but sometimes it's difficult to tell the good from the bad.

The Most Common SEO Scams

#1 - Monthly Submissions to 1000+ search engines.

 

There are about a dozen major search engines today, and most of them are sharing their results with each other. There are more directories, but legitimate directories typically require a payment for inclusion or an editorial review - neither of which you are likely to get from a "submission service".

Once you are listed in a search engine, you do not require constant "refreshing". It certainly will not help your listing in any way. The monthly submission service is a way to part you from your money on a regular basis. Monthly reports = good; monthly (or quarterly) submissions = bad.

 

No ethical or knowledgeable SEO offers this. As soon as you see this on an "SEO" site - you are at the wrong place. SEOs do submissions manually, aimed at each service individually, and tailored for the guidelines for each service. There are 1000's of what are called FFA's - all they do is collect the emails that go along with the submission and spam them. You usually never even get listed. When you do, these types of "incoming links" can actually harm you by putting you into a "bad neighborhood" in some circumstances.

 

We had a customer whose web host offered a submission service as part of the package. It advertised 1000 search engines submitted regularly. A back link check showed that not one of those 1000 directories had actually linked to her site. However, 3 days after submission, like clockwork, she got about 1000 spam emails dropped into her mailbox. In this case, the web host honestly (but wrongly) thought they were offering a valuable service to a customer. Just say no. The idea of "the more, the merrier" does not work for these type of link systems.

 

Some people feel that even if it's not totally effective, that it couldn't hurt. Not true. First, it's not effective at all. Second, it does hurt. Using these services could get you penalized, dropped, or even banned from major search engines. There is no "quick and easy" substitute for doing it right. You are often better off not doing submissions at all than using these "services". Nothing happens to your site in either case, but at least you haven't paid a spammer for the ability to spam you.

#2 - They will host your optimized pages.

And why would they want to do that? What benefit would it be to you? The benefit to them of course is that now they have your website hostage and if you don't pay them every month you will lose your rankings. Worse, it's not uncommon for the scammer to then take the same page (that you paid for) and, with slight changes, resell it to your competitor. Sometimes they don't even bother to wait until you have cancelled your account.

Unless the SEO is doing something that is considered "wrong" by the search engines, there is no reason to have the pages hosted anywhere but as part of your site. And if they are doing something "wrong" then you shouldn't be dealing with them at all.

Never, ever, create a "shadow domain" - intended to basically double the amount of traffic to your site and to provide "cross-linking strategies". This is a common mistake. Almost every single client we are working on getting off the search engine blacklist right now had "shadow domains" or multiple domain names done improperly prior to getting banned. Moving these to another server just delays the inevitable and makes the penalty worse when it happens, since you can't really claim "innocent mistake". If your SEO didn't tell you about this, it's still your fault, according to the search engines.

#3 - They have special software that tricks the search engines

Well, the first thing that you should see here is the "tricking" part. The search engines don't like to be tricked. There are many, many cases where a strategy worked for a while and then got everyone involved penalized - sometimes for years. Some of those involved were innocent and simply trusted the wrong people. Very messy.

 

At the end of the day, it's your website and therefore your responsibility to market it ethically. The SEO just shrugs and continues scamming others - it's your website that gets flushed down the tubes.

It is possible to design a system that can fool a search engine spider. But you can't fool a human the same way, especially if the human happens to be an experienced SEO. If you think that no one else in the world is interested in your keywords, then you don't need SEO. So it shouldn't surprise you that others will hire SEOs as well as you in your area.

It is McAnerin Networks Inc. policy to locate and report ALL instances of search engine spam that may affect our clients. Yes, we can usually tell if a site is using a system like cloaking or artificial techniques. We report every one of them and in most cases the site is penalized shortly therafter. We are in no way the only company which does this. Many ethical SEOs report abuse and trickery, since it makes us look bad, and it's bad for our clients and the searchers. Go ahead and trick the search engines - it's not illegal, just unethical. But don't expect any sympathy for your site disappearing - if one of our clients was interested in one of your keywords, then we were the ones that probably reported you. "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

 

#4 They have a "Special Relationship" with one or more directories or search engines

This one can be partially true. If the search engine or directory in question is owned by the SEO, then obviously they can get you on it. Be aware that except for some very specific portals, it's unlikely that the directory or search engine in question has any traffic to speak of. Ask questions here. What search engine? What directory? What, exactly, is the relationship?

Google has clearly stated on their site: www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html that they have no special relationships with any SEO. By the way, this is a great link and we highly recommend checking it out for further information on what a good or bad SEO is. Naturally, MNI meets or exceeds all of these guidelines.

 

We could say that we had a "special relationship" and prove it by getting you to the first page of Google or MSN within a day or two. Of course, the "special relationship" in this case is to buy advertisements. Which you can do yourself. We do it for you (if necessary or desired) with no markup other than our normal fees, but you can do it yourself anytime you choose. It's not a special relationship and does not show any special "control" over the major search engines.

 

There are companies out there that will attempt to convince a potential customer that they can "control" the search engines by buying a #1 placement in Overture (which feeds the paid placement links for Yahoo), then saying that they can control the results. Over the next few days, they then bid on #2, #3 and then #1 position again, each time telling you what position they are going to get, leaving you with the impression that they control the results. They naturally don't mention bidding at all during this phase.

 

Of course, if they get you a position with this method, you will have to pay them regularly in order for them to continue to set bids for your position. If you stop paying, you drop off the results instantly and totally. As you can imagine, this is a very effective scare tactic to use on unsuspecting website owners.

Disclosure: McAnerin Networks Inc. does own several portals for Calgary, and intends on opening up others in the future. It is our policy to include our customers into these portals, if relevant to the portal, for no extra cost. In this case, we DO have a special relationship as owners, but that should not be taken to mean that we have a special relationship with "the search engines", as that is far too vague and very misleading. It's an extra service, not a marketing scam. We have the same relationship with MSN, Google and the other major search engines that you do (i.e. happy users). We just know a little bit more about how they work than the average searcher.

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