Anyone heard of GoBango.com

[OptWizard]

Anyone heard of
http://www.gobango.com

Just got an email from them

[MsSearch]

never heard of them...but they are pulling results from somewhere. I've got lots of sites with first page rankings :D

..will look into it later when i have more time...

[MsSearch]

FWIW: They are using AltaVista's search results.....

[OptWizard]

I knew that but you can also submit your site as well

[MsSearch]

why bother submitting if they will find your site anyway? You are making more work for yourself than is necessary...

ps..did they send you unsolicited email? If so, all the more reason not to want to submit to them...

[MakeMeTop]

GoBango is from our friends at Top-Pile. I think the idea is that because most of their doorways have been banned from other search engines, they should create their own :)

[highman]

hehe.... gobanggo

Just recieved another spam mail from these jokers, what a load of crock that S/Engine is

[PaddyBolger]

Hi Guys, excuse me for interrupting your little chat but I would like to explain to you the facts about gobango. Gobango has nothing whatsoever to do with SALSA. We still have several hundred thousand listings in the search engines and our hits are constantly rising. Gobango is our reaction to what we are hearing from our 5,000+ customers and the many people we have spoken to at exhibitions we have attended in the UK and US. Gobango has a backfill which is nothing to do with gobango's results. We have over 100,000 listings in the database which has been achieved in 3 months. To date, 6,000 companies have registered with us and we are adding companies at an exponential rate. We are in the middle of a fund-raisng which will result in you all being sick of reading and hearing about gobango :) . And in 2 years time you will be saying "who were overture anyway". It is good to see that you guys are already blazing a trail for us, for which I thank you, and Barry I love your sense of humour! Highman, as a matter of interest we make extensive use of mailshotting and we do it ethically and very successfully. Anyone who does not wish to receive an email can follow the removal instructions and they will be removed. Of course if there is another email address we have for them then we would need to know that one as well, but we will NOT mailshot companies who have elected not to receive our emails. The fact is that most do, as evidenced by the business we have done in the last few months. Thanks and regards, Paddy Bolger

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Paddy! :hi:

Your software is well-known for generating thousands of spammy pages for the search engines. They are constantly deleting those pages when they find them. I can't say I approve of this software nor the business model of it.

Sorry as I speak for myself and MANY other members in here and many other places.
Gobango has nothing whatsoever to do with SALSA.
I guess that's a good thing? :rolleyes:
btw, that's the software I am talking about. Known for cloaking/spam generated stuff.

[JuniorHarris]

If the majority opt-out, then why even require an email address or subject them to any email correspondence?!? I tend to stray away from any service that requires an email address and/or subjects participants to special deals emails!~:rolleyes: Course it might help to have a privacy statement stating that email addresses are not sold or shared with other special email services/programs....

btw, welcome to the forums!~ :hi:

[Hope]

BTW, you might consider fixing your site. It doesn't work for Netscape 4.6.

[markymark]

Paddy,

You send out a lot of unsolicited email that has neither been requested nor is wanted. Unsolicited email is spam, no matter how nicely you phrase it. I think anyone who has ever had a listing at Overture has received an email from you guys about Salsa.

I find it insulting frankly that you are trying to solicit my clients in this way. If I had 5,000 customers, I would be trying to concentrate on providing a decent service to them rather than marketing to clients of the rest of the SEO industry.

[PaddyBolger]

Thanks for that Doug. I think I had now better clear up a few misconceptions about SALSA! First of all we have been doing search engine optimisation for 6 years. We pionerred gateway pages in the UK. For 4 years of us doing it the search engines had no problem whatsoever, and we did it because many of our clients' web sites were incapable of optimisation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they actively encouraged it. That is the fault of the search engines, NOT us! Gateway pages are perfectly legitimate. The search engines do not own the web and if I choose to put up pages and the search engines choose to index them that is my right and their election. It is down to them to apply algorithms to sort out what they consider to be the wheat from the chaff.

I don't know who the various people who seem to disapprove of SALSA represent but I have to say that if they do not represent the search engines then there are alot of brainwashed people out there. Let's get one thing straight - the search engines want to remove optimisation because they want to monetise all the results for themselves. Of course that is their right but I do not think that anyone in the optimisation industry should be actively encouraging this monopolisation, and criticising their peers.

I represent SMEs primarily and an awful lot of them, and they are increasingly being disenfranchised by the search engines. They are the people who built up the search engines in the first place and they have a right to feel aggrieved about it. By disenfranchised I mean that pay-per-click is increasingly becoming a Fortune 500 game and google's algorithms naturally favour companies who can afford to have a large marketing department devoted to getting good inbound links, banner ads and paying for directory listings.

With SALSA we provide the opportunity for SMEs to get traffic at one-tenth of the cost of pay-per-click and that is in my humble opinion a good thing. If in the process I upset the search engines frankly that is not an issue with which I am concerned.

We have never spammed the search engines, and I mean never. We create a page that focuses on a number of search terms and allow the search engines to index it. The ONLY time that we create another page for the same search engine and the same search terms is if the first one has in some way been penalised, usually through a competitor complaining!

As regards cloaking, I have to say that that is the greatest nonsense I have ever heard. inktomi for instance stresses that it wants the result a user reaches from their search results to be a page with content relevant to their search. That is exactly what we do with cloaking! I know of a company that is hugely successful at SEO and all their pages are gateway pages that are visible and you have to click to enter. They NEVER get penalised because they are visible pages, yet the search engines penalise us because we automatically redirect users through to the page with relevant content to their search - how ridiculous is that. I'll tell you what - we do a far better job of vetting sites for relevant content than the search engines' algorithms do, and they should work with us rather than trying to ban us. Before you ask, yes I have asked them!

Gobango is an extension of the raison d'etre of SALSA - providing traffic to SMEs (and corporates who have more sense than money) at a fraction of the cost of ALL other search engines. Now that seems to me like something to be proud of!

[ihelpyou]

Yes. Unfortunately, that is the only way some sites could make a living on the net..... sending spam email and preying on unsuspecting webmasters that don't know any better. People in the know in this industry are the very minority. The majority don't have a clue, so for this reason site's like this with this software and a mission, exist on the internet.

[ihelpyou]

When I have more time, I will rebutt virtually your whole post, point by point. Right now I don't have the time but I'm VERY sure other members will point some things out. ;)

[PaddyBolger]

Doug, whilst you are rebutting my post point by point can you add one more point in (linked to spam email). One fine day a load of guys formed a search engine that is now very well known. The following few months / year they spent their time visiting web sites and most of the time causing them to crash (their admission). Then they sorted their system out and crawled the whole web, pulled information that is in almost all cases copyrighted back to their database and then they sold that (copyrighted) information to Yahoo, etc etc for quite a lot of money. What does your average SME who let them in in good faith do about this? Nothing, because they thought it meant they would get some traffic from the exercise. What would your average SME do about it now? Take a class action for copyright theft might be one option.

We most certainly do send bulk mailers out and it is very simple - one person's spam is another person's important opportunity, and the former can remove themselves from the emailshot very easily and in accordance with guidelines. We are not in the business of misleading people. We have always undersold and over-delivered and it is the exact same with gobango. Of all the companies that have registered with gobango (6,000 in 3 months) only one subscriber has complained. I cannot repeat the vitriol he came out with for no reason whatsoever and we immediately refunded his money (less than $100) and took him off the search engine. We are not interested in anyone paying for priority, we are simply interested in lots of companies subscribing. We will make our money next year when we are delivering at least 1 million searches per day and people start upgrading to priority.

Regards, Paddy Bolger

[ihelpyou]

We pionerred gateway pages in the UK. For 4 years of us doing it the search engines had no problem whatsoever, and we did it because many of our clients' web sites were incapable of optimisation.
Incapable? NO site is incapable. ALL sites can be optimized the Right way.
It is down to them to apply algorithms to sort out what they consider to be the wheat from the chaff.
Right. It's up to us to help them do this and we do. They cannot find them all, all the time.
I don't know who the various people who seem to disapprove of SALSA represent but I have to say that if they do not represent the search engines then there are alot of brainwashed people out there.
All who respect the search engines, the se visitors, AND their clients are the people who disapprove of your software.
By disenfranchised I mean that pay-per-click is increasingly becoming a Fortune 500 game and google's algorithms naturally favour companies who can afford to have a large marketing department devoted to getting good inbound links, banner ads and paying for directory listings.
Google favors the big cos who have a large marketing dept.? Don't think so at all. They allow the small guy to achieve VERY good ranks. I've been doing this for almost 6 years myself with Never a need to spam.
We have never spammed the search engines, and I mean never. We create a page that focuses on a number of search terms and allow the search engines to index it. The ONLY time that we create another page for the same search engine and the same search terms is if the first one has in some way been penalised, usually through a competitor complaining!
Well gee, if you were Not spamming, no amount of complaining would get your penalized, right? LOL
As regards cloaking, I have to say that that is the greatest nonsense I have ever heard. inktomi for instance stresses that it wants the result a user reaches from their search results to be a page with content relevant to their search. That is exactly what we do with cloaking![quote]
Sure. If you have an agreement with Inktomi through their XML feeds, then NO problem at all. You have no agreement, right? You have no agreement with Google either, right?
[quote]I'll tell you what - we do a far better job of vetting sites for relevant content than the search engines' algorithms do, and they should work with us rather than trying to ban us. Before you ask, yes I have asked them!
If the content is Soo relevant, then no need to cloak or spam with redirection. The browser should see the same page then since all is so relevant. The engines do not owe you a thing. Most give you free referrals. They don't have to index a single page from your site or your client's sites. I'm not sure why people believe the search engines owe them something?

[ihelpyou]

We most certainly do send bulk mailers out and it is very simple - one person's spam is another person's important opportunity, and the former can remove themselves from the emailshot very easily and in accordance with guidelines.
What kind of nonsense is that? ALL bulk mailers I know of do NOT get permission to send their spam first. Hence, you are sending spam. You all constantly say we have to opt-out. What kind of business is that? That's okay. Soon you all will be history when the courts catch up to things and spam email is rendered obsolete.

[PaddyBolger]

Hi Doug.

I have to say that I was hoping for a bit more of a rebuttal point by point than you managed. Maybe you should have taken more time:)

Up until 2 years ago NO search engines could index database-generated web sites, and most still cannot index Flash movies. I did not say they are not capable today, I said they WERE not capable.

Who are you and in what way are you helping them find gateway pages? I am a bit disturbed by that. Before you reply, please see the next post after this one.

It is a nonsense to say that everybody disapproves of our software. If they did we would simply not be in the search engines.

As regards google being favourable for the small guy, I suppose I am imagining things then when we send "unsolicited" mail and get an avalanche of positive responses back along the lines of "we like what you guys are doing".

The spamming point is just plain wrong. Guaranteed, if inktomi receive a complaint about a gateway page that automatically redirects to a web site they will remove it. That my friend does not mean that the gateway page was "spam" I assume you are aware of the definition of what spam is.

Maybe you missed my last post but I would have thought that it is pretty clear what search engines owe to the average SME when they "stole" and then sold their copyrighted content.

Regards

Paddy Bolger

[PaddyBolger]

Hi Doug

I have done some quick research on your marketing efforts. Very interesting.
archinet.co.za/africa_gateway/ai-net/guestbook.htm - posting on a guestbook related to Africa but with no message – an interesting way to look for reciprocal links. You are joined by some pretty interesting company, sex sites and credit card sites and all of them visiting Africa! I would say that this company is a little miffed at the hijacking of their genuine guestbook, wouldn’t you?

- another forum. Some people may actually enjoy reading forums but not after you and your friends have finished swamping it (or is spamming the right word?)

Well, I have to give up now, but if anyone is interested in how Doug does his marketing, just go to google and search for – freemoneyservices. You will actually find a pretty comprehensive directory of all the popular forums out there on the web. But Our Doug is a very busy man, so he does not even bother posting a message on these forums, he just posts his URL. Presumably, all the messages he has to post are contained in his web site, like “buy my services” and I could not care less about how nice Africa is or the problems in Tibet.

Now Doug, maybe I am very simple but it seems to me that you are just about the greatest hypocrite I have ever come across. I on the other hand will defend to the death what I do because I believe in it and I would suggest that regardless of what others may think about the specifics of what we do, that is an admirable position to take. Inserting links into a guestbook is an abuse of the invitation made to you and much more seriously leaves a genuine site open to be banned for being a “link farm”. Now that is outrageous.

(Please don't link the forums to SPAM. I know you endorse spam pages, and spam email in general, but we don't in here... thanks!- Doug )

[ihelpyou]

Nice try there buddy. Look at the dates of EACH one of those posts in the bogus guestbooks around. All are on Nov 16th of 2001. An auto program went around to Thousands and did that. Are you now going to do the same?

I don't need to defend myself at all there Paddy. You KNOW you have to defend yourself otherwise you would not be posting in here. Also otherwise there would be zero need for others to report your SPAMMY pages at all, now would there be?

Gateway bogus pages your spam software builds is in itself pure spam. Spam, don't ya know? Sure you know. Your business model exists to PREY on innocent victims. That is what it does.

I'm tired of hearing your bs now.

[ihelpyou]

Up until 2 years ago NO search engines could index database-generated web sites, and most still cannot index Flash movies. I did not say they are not capable today, I said they WERE not capable.

Who are you and in what way are you helping them find gateway pages? I am a bit disturbed by that.
Why do you feel the need to 'create' doorway pages at all? What kind of crock is that? NO need to do that. There are many workarounds to getting pages indexed without the need to produce all kinds of machine generated bs that clog up the search engine database's.

[PaddyBolger]

See my previous posts. As regards the automated post on 16 November, if I was as ethical as you claim to be I would be requesting them to be removed, yet 10 months on they are still there. Still, must be handy for the page rank.

Simple fact is, optimisation covers ALL sins, and if someone can explain to me how optimising a WEB SITE with search terms that are not even relevant to what the company does or getting loads of links into your site simply to appear higher in the search engines is any less ethical than creating a gateway page that links through to the client's web site I will be very pleased because I am struggling to see the difference. I totally agree with search engines' necessity to police this and prevent abuse. I say again, we do not abuse, we create gateway pages instead of optimising the client's site (far cheaper for the client by the way). And as for the search engines having to police it, is that not their duty? You cannot on the one hand say that they are entitled to do what they like as they own the search engine and then turn around and say that we should all leave them alone and stop clogging up their database. That is their job, not yours. Or are you concerned about how successful we are to your detriment? Why are you so worried about gateway pages anyway? If your optimisation was so good then we would be way down the list and no one would see us. You seem to be overly concerned about the size of google's database, yet they are very proud of it!

You are the moderator of this forum and I am very surprised that you feel the need to assert that my visiting the forum and responding to posts about my company suggests that I have something to defend, with the suggestion of course that it is indefensible.

[ihelpyou]

You are the moderator of this forum and I am very surprised that you feel the need to assert that my visiting the forum and responding to posts about my company suggests that I have something to defend, with the suggestion of course that it is indefensible.
Yes, your software and your email spamming is indefensible. Very much so.

The search engines all state the rules right on their web sites. You are doing as you do in defiance of those rules. Those rules are not mine, they are the search engines. Many of us choose to abide by those rules. Some more choose to not abide by them. That is the big difference between you and I. Your take is good ranks at any cost. Your take is get the client's money at any cost. Your business model preys on the ignorance of webmasters out there. That is not the fault of the webmaster as this industry is very new. It's just that the sites with that kind of attitude about the search engines and about email spam are what gives other, true SEO's a bad name.

These forums are here to help people and teach. Your software is there to fool and deceive.

[PaddyBolger]

Thanks for not answering my post! I think we have thrashed this out as much as we can. It is late and I am going home! We will just have to agree to differ. Sorry I could not persuade you to buy a SALSA site, but do feel free to register with gobango - the early bird catches the worm!

[Matt B]

Sorry I could not persuade you to buy a SALSA site, but do feel free to register with gobango - the early bird catches the worm!

No thanks. On both accounts.
:cool:

[Advisor]

I for one have received numerous email spams from Gobango. That's all I know about 'em, and that's all I care to know.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

No Jill, Paddy says he does not spam. He only uses a bulk mailer to send out thousands of unsolicited emails, BUT he does not spam. He then believes since he is giving you a Chance to opt-out, he is not spamming. Kind of funny. Gee, what the heck is spam email then? LOL

[Advisor]

Well, I am not sure what he's talking about, but I'm quite sure I was spammed by Gobango. I'm fairly certain I reported it to SpamCop, but maybe not. I get about 3000 these days, so most of the time I have to ignore them. The Gobango ones slipped past my filters for some reason.

Jill

[Phoenix]

I have to say that I do believe that there are lots of people who do respond positively to their spam...there are always people who are too lazy and too stupid to find out how to do things the right way.

Catering to the research-challenged still doesn't make spamming right. Unsolicited bulk email is spam, regardless of what you want to call it. Calling spam filet mignon doesn't make it so.

MB

The early bird catches the worm but the early worm gets eaten.

[PaddyBolger]

Well, there you go. You think our clients are lazy and stupid. I think they are very clever and forward-thinking. We will just have to differ, but I wonder what choice words you had to use about early users of Overture's system before it had any traffic worth talking about. I would not be surprised if you thought that those mugs who put $100 into an account with no possibility of it being used up for the next decade were lazy and stupid too:)

[Advisor]

I would not be surprised if you thought that those mugs who put $100 into an account with no possibility of it being used up for the next decade were lazy and stupid too I gotta admit, I sure did! When they were just GoTo, and had no partners, and no one searching there, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay to advertise there.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

I have to say this quote sums things up very well:
Well, one thing about Paddy - he is pretty upfront about what he does. Who else would defend cloaked, redirected, spammy no-content auto-generated pages - and then when these are eventually banned - blame the search engines?

He genuinely believes he is right and the search engines (and their defenders) are wrong.

Nothing you (or any of us) say, Doug, will convince him otherwise. From Anonymous
Oh so VERY true. This can also include the bulk spam email Paddy uses but says "Not Spam". It's one of those....... "amazing but true" kind of things. :)

It's one of those: "Anything for a Buck"

(paraphrasing this next sentence from another anonymous)Besides, a revelation of some sorts where he suddenly believes what he does is SPAM just ain't going to happen as then he would not have a business on the internet anymore.

These type business models are truly what gives the good, quality SEO's a bad name out there and why sooooo many webmasters are leary about hiring a SEO company.






The more I think about how you go about getting email addresses and then spam, the more unbelievable it all is. Do you really go through the Overture system to see who are advertising and then spam the advertisers of Overture? If that is true,(I have No direct knowledge as I do Not advertise with Overture), That is probably one of the lowest things I know of. Do you realize that many advertisers of Overture are also a client of a legitimate SEO company? You have to know but yet you go about spamming these webmasters anyway? That is sooo amazing. I don't know how you could possibly live with your conscious. I am agast.

[ihelpyou]

I had to move the thread to an appropriate forum.

[Phoenix]

I apologize, I should not have said these people are stupid. Ignorant would have been a better choice. Not because they are your clients but because they respond to spam.

I had no opinion about the first clients of Overture. Do you mean to imply that they promoted their services through spamming also? If not, it isn't a valid comparison.

As for your business itself, I can't make any judgements since the site won't load for me. All I have to go by is the search results for top-pile.com and gobango...and most of what I've seen there are complaints about spamming.

MB

[ihelpyou]

Yes. The site is not online now. hmm.

But, I have noticed top-pile is a greyed out PR bar, which only means it has been banned by Google since it's been online for awhile. I'm sure permanently.

[Phoenix]

I was hoping to find a client list....

[Glo]

The site in question opens for me and the google pr bar is very gray.

I was hoping to find a client list....
Try the Way Back Machine on archive.org :cool:

glo

[Glo]

I didn't read this whole thread before posting and assumed you all were taliking about top-pile but now see it was gobango.

It is also available for me and its pr is not gray.

But because it condones spam practices, it's on my blacklist!

glo

[ihelpyou]

Oh yes, I was talking about top-pile with the VERY permanent ban on Google. They are sooo banned with zero prayer of ever coming out of it. :) They own gobango who does the spamming of email addresses who buy ppc from overture and others.

[mayapple]

Read if an email gives you the opportunity to opt out, don't. It only gives more spammers a chance to spam you. So the fact Salsa, Gobango gives the option to opt out, I strongly suspect will only lead to more spammy emails.
Opt out really means opt in.
mayapple

[g1smd]

A friend of mine received a spam mail last month with an opt out link to "unsubscribe". Analysis of the URL in that link revealed that it passed the email address as a parameter in the link, so we altered the email address to a fake one and only then clicked the link.

The resultant website said "you have been delisted" but then tried to add some scumware using the Windows CHM Exploit (using malicious code stored inside enrypted javascript) and then tried hooking the Java VM to install a program called "Get Access".

The attempt failed, but the resultant HTML page contained a link to a stats page http://www.webstats4u.com/s?tab=1&link=1&id=3744516 and from that you can see that over 70 000 people were stupid enough to click the original fake link in the email in under 48 hours (and many now have the malware on their computer, and all now receive a LOT more spam having confirmed their email address back to the spammers).

[mayapple]

I see from reading your reply, clicking the so called opt out link is worse than I thought. Now there's a chance of malware.
Ugghhhh how disgusting. Those scums.
Thanks for the helpful info. Sorry for what happened to the victims. Thanks also the reminder to use fake emails
mayapple

[grungee]

Have both top-pile and gobango been deregistered I couldn't bring up either website, just curious as to what happened?

[ihelpyou]

Completely out of business now.

Go figure.

[grungee]

Doug has PaddyBolger redeemed his ways or is he still getting banned from the search engines?

[ihelpyou]

He's "completely" out of business.

[grungee]

Originally posted by PaddyBolger
And in 2 years time you will be saying "who were overture anyway".

If I am correct overture is still around and Paddy is gone.

Thanks Doug for the info.