US State Sues Web/SEO Firm For Deceiving Mom-and-Pops

netbuzz writes "The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."

Comments

You would think

[Kilz]

Than they would have searched to see if the company was reliable.

Re:You would think

[morgan_greywolf]

Seriously. The easy way to do this:

1. Go to Google.
2. Search for 'search engine optimization'.
3. Go to MSN
4. Repeat step 2 ...

The company highest on the list of all search engines checked is probably the company you want.

Re:You would think

[mcgrew]

You're blaming the victims. That's like if I get robbed while walking home from Felber's and when the cops arrest the mugger, you're saying "well you shouldn't have been walking in that neighborhood". OK, next time I'll drive home no matter how drunk I am. The other drivers and pedestrians should know better than to be on any street between the bar and my house, right?

Wrong. The mugger should be prosecuted and if I'm drunk I should leave my car at the bar. If someone hires an SEO and is defrauded, the AG should prosecute. That's what he's there for.

Re:You would think

[rugatero]

The company highest on the list of all search engines checked is probably the company you want.

Wikipedia?

Visible.net phone message

[elrous0]

Thank you for calling Visible.net, your search engine optimization provider. Please select from the following menu:

1. If you are interested in Visible.net's exciting service and wish to become a new customer, press 1 now.
2. If you are an existing customer and are having a problem or wish to cancel your account, press 2 now.
3. If you are a member of the media and wish to inquire about recent allegations of fraud, press 2 now.
4. To end this call, press 2 now.

scam

[D'Sphitz]

The SEO industry in general is such a scam, it's amazing how many people fall for it.

Re:scam

[mcgrew]

Wow, that comment was modded "flamebait"? I din't see how. Looks like SEO employees have mod points today!

If your SEO company isn't a fraud, how about explaining yourselves to us? Using mod points to censor is itself fraud.

Re:scam

[Zebano]

Back when I was an applications programmer in IT, I was dedicated to creating apps for the Marketing department. This had an ancillary benefit of also making me responsible for maintaining our public web site and redesigning it to be "solution centric". I made some good tools like a product finder and comparison tool, and there are some pages out there that wasted days of my life.

After about a year of this, they decided against my and 2 other IT department employees advice to hire an SEO. We had a web tracking tool, but we now had to embedd 1x1 pixels + javascript images on every page so we could track how many users were using our site (we already had these metrics, but the SEO collated them in a prettier fashion); The best part about this was that the data was stored on their system and requires a yearly fee to use. After that we had to load up our pages with tons of misleading meta tags. Next we were encouraged to redesign our site to make it "solution-centric" (yes, we paid to be told to do this hokey redesign despite Marketing already deciding to do this; I still don't understand what's wrong with just advertising your products when your external app group has been decimated). Finally, they told us to buy paid search ads from google (about the only thing I agreed with).

In general we went from about 5th to 4rd on most search terms on the search engines we cared about (Google, MSN, Yahoo). I will third the opinion that SEOs are snake oil salesmen.

An amusing aside... After I left the group, they reviewed most of our pages and made suggestions on how to rework them (mostly the content which is in Marketing's domain) but they started trying to tell IT how the pages should be coded, going so far as to say that well-formed HTML is bad. That day, after another inane conference call; three of us left work at 3PM and spent the rest of the day drinking.

Paid laziness

[ZarathustraDK]

For goodness sake, how hard can it be to optimize a website for a search-engine?

There are a plethora of howtos out there on SEO, and most, if not all, can be implemented by the people making the webpage.

Just spend a single day reading up on the stuff and save yourself a bunch. But of course that means learning something new, the HORROR!

Yeah yeah, I know, my site uses frames, which suck SEO-wise. I know... I'll correct it some day, but I wont pay 10.000 bucks to do so.

Dunno, but I'm blaming the crooks

[Moraelin]

Well, if you were simply the victim, yes, i'd blame the mugger. But if it was you who hired someone to do a shady thing for you, and he shafts you, heh, I'm just going to say you got what you fucking deserved.

The fact is, there are honest ways to advertise. Just buy ad-words. There, you'll be on everyone's search page, if they search for that kind of product. Heck, Google even offers the option to show your ad when someone searches for a _related_ thing. E.g., it might show your sports shoes store, when someobody searches for slippers, if you activated that option.

It's honest, it's clearly marked as an ad, and it doesn't interfere with anyone else's search results.

But nah, that's too honest, I guess. Let's hire a "SEO" to do link spam, set up link farms, and try to _poison_ everyone's searches with your crap. It's a predatory model, in which a useful resource for everyone is devalued and turned into crap, just so some snake oil peddler can make a few extra bucks.

As business models go, it's akin to pissing in the town's water supply, so you can sell a few more bottles of soda.

And if you hired someone to do that kind of a thing for you, and he shafted you... good! Serves you right. I won't stop looking down on the crook too, mind you. But when the case is that one wannabe crook hired another crook, well, I'll look down on them both.