Traffic-Power.com

[Matt B]

Came across this from a friend who forwarded it to me:
Search Engine Placement Program - How We Do It
At Traffic-Power.com we use our expertise and technological know-how to get you top search engine placement.
1. Keywords: A professionally trained technician is assigned to your account to help you choose the 20 keyword phrases that best reflect the main focus of your site.
2. 280 Attractions Pages: We build 280 individual HTML attraction pages that attract the search engines for your targeted keywords. The attraction pages are designed using a computer-generated analysis to conform to the ranking criteria of the top search engines. These pages provide spider food for the search engine spiders that includes significant unique content relating to your site.
3. Attraction Page Updates: Search engines frequently change their ranking algorithms so we update and change all client attraction pages as needed.
4. Meta Tags: We arrange the meta tags on your website to maximize visibility and placement. A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide coded information analyzed by the search engines when building their indexes.
5. Directory Submission: We manually submit your site to Web directories such as The Open Directory Project. We do not manually submit to spider-based search engine because recent studies indicate that these types of search engines give preference to sites their spiders find through links. Since submission to spider-based search engines can actually hurt your ranking we create link popularity for you and then allow the spiders to find your site through those links. It generally takes around eight weeks for the search engine spiders to find and incorporate sites into their database.
6. Link Popularity: Link popularity is the total number of Web sites that link to your site. Since many search engines now use link popularity in their rankings, we use systems developed by our programmers to build your link popularity. These include adding your site in our exclusive themed link pools, submitting your site to thousands of link sites weekly, and other automated link popularity building strategies.
7. Online Reports: You can track your Web site's progress and keyword positioning with real time reports available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our online client reporting system produces a current search engine placement report, link popularity report, and website activity report for daily tracking of your site's performance.
8. Customer Support: We offer free, unlimited customer support through our toll free customer service hotline. After your initial set up, our friendly support staff can help you amplify your results by suggesting design changes for your homepage and helping you to analyze your keyword performance.
Traffic-Power.com provides a complete placement strategy that will bring you traffic through technology.
So, "Attraction Pages." I guess that's what the kids are calling it these days . . .

[french dread]

Since submission to spider-based search engines can actually hurt your ranking

Lol...if something can hurt rankings of their customers it is not what they say...:rolleyes:

[ihelpyou]

Link Popularity: Link popularity is the total number of Web sites that link to your site. Since many search engines now use link popularity in their rankings, we use systems developed by our programmers to build your link popularity. These include adding your site in our exclusive themed link pools, submitting your site to thousands of link sites weekly, and other automated link popularity building strategies.
WOW. That's a good paragraph for WHAT NOT TO DO!!

What bozos...

What idiots....

What a scam....

The only thing they got right was that spiders will find your site via links. LOL

[Webmaster T]

Just the half of it, they were members of SeoPros until I tried a ranking program on their site. They emailed me with bogus positions and also added that there were coding problems on the page that were affecting the ranking (at that time we were #6 for search engine optimization?). So I phoned to see what they were calling "a problem with the coding". I'll only say they weren't very helpful. The report also said that SeoPros had no top placement on any engine. They also did not respond to any of the email enquiries about their practices. I pity the poor soles who fall into their web of deceipt!

[scottiecl]

All I can say is, it is no wonder the average business/website owner is:


Totally confused about what is the right thing to do for SE's
Distrustful of any claims from SEO's
Gives up after wasting their money on one or two of these "services"


There are so many of these jokers out there... who has time to investigate all their claims and determine whether or not they are ethical? (Here's a hint... if they spam mail you...possibly they are not the best people to do business with...)

It really gets back to needing some industry standards and a trusted, impartial body that helps sort out the helpful from the sneaky to protect people from this kind of mess.

Thanks for doing your part, Terry!

[ihelpyou]

And it's all because of the almighty dollar bill. Greed is Satan. These types of companies do NOT care how they make a buck. If they did, they would know what is good and what is not good. How hard is it to read what is right on the Google web site?

I am soooo damn sick of these types. Let's cart them off to jail as soon as possible. Let's get rid of ALL the places around the net that 'push' this stuff. Let's get rid of ALL the bogus marketeers who 'push' this stuff. Let's get rid of ALL the affiliates of these bogus marketeers who 'push' this stuff.

I'm sick of it.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
I am soooo damn sick of these types. Let's cart them off to jail as soon as possible. Let's get rid of ALL the places around the net that 'push' this stuff. Let's get rid of ALL the bogus marketeers who 'push' this stuff. Let's get rid of ALL the affiliates of these bogus marketeers who 'push' this stuff.

I'm sick of it.It's a full time job, been there done that and got the ugly t-shirt to prove it! Scottie, I agree if they solicit you by email avoid them like the plague!

[ihelpyou]

I'm going thru and looking at the PPC listings on Google and Overture. Another one:

http://www.servicewrap.net/internet_promotion.html

huh?

where are these people coming from? Will it ever stop? Why does Google and Overture allow these types of bogus services to advertise?

I simply don't get it. I never, ever will.

AND, btw, I LOVE clicking on these scammy PPC listings. And I don't mind tellin ya that.

I vote we all start clicking on these bogus ppc listings that advertise their seo wares that only serve to hurt all web sites on the net. You can bet that url's you have never seen before are pretty much scams if they have to do with seo.

[tomj]

How about making a website naming all these jokers with a scam/spam rating for the whole world to know who they are!

tomj

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by tomj
How about making a website naming all these jokers with a scam/spam rating for the whole world to know who they are!Tried, all you do is get **** and abuse from the spammers. I have given up on both that and a "best practices" standard. IMHO, the industry talks a good game but does not walk the walk! Too many are so in the dark that they aren't sure that they may not end up on it!

[ihelpyou]

Oh shoot. I don't care about any abuse by some damn spammer. I have MANY spammers that HATE these forums and I could care less. They all talk about this place behind closed doors and I could care less. I even see posts elsewhere in open forum threads that indirectly talk about 'this' place and I could care less.

Bring on the spammers and I'll 'out' every single one of you and could care less.

come on..... bring it baby bring it!

[ihelpyou]

AND yes, I often thought about a site dedicated to just that. I just might do it as well. I've also talked to a lawyer about just that.

Spammers beware.

[Kal]

Oh yes, I'm well aware of these SEO cowboys. A potential client forwarded me a similar email. I think the best thing we can do is expose them like we've done here and spread the word as best we can.

I've made this thread my forum link of the day on my blog. Every little bit helps! :cheers:

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Bring on the spammers and I'll 'out' every single one of you and could care less.

come on..... bring it baby bring it!Words I look at where they are coming from and they roll right off me! What about the 30-40 emails with executables that may just get opened and installed by mistake. Virus protection does not protect you from a new virus or other unknown worm!

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
[B]AND yes, I often thought about a site dedicated to just that. I just might do it as well. I've also talked to a lawyer about just that. Hint an NFP org is afforded a lot of leeway in slander! That I know for sure!

[polarmate]

Blech! I just got an email from them...

I recently noticed that you are a current customer with Overture. I have worked with numerous overture customers before and I feel that I can help lower and possibly minimize your site's traffic costs.

I have prepared a search engine placement report for your <our domain> Web site. A search engine placement report shows how your company's web site is ranked within different search engines on the Internet. Your report may currently show placements as you are paying to have them. However, is your site as high as it should be?

Our firm, http://www.Traffic-Power.com provides the knowledge and technology that will give your company top search engine placement and substantially increase Internet traffic to your site. Please click on the link below to view the search engine placement report for your company's web site: <URL where report can be found> (Please be patient - this report may take a few minutes to load completely!)

I will call you shortly to make sure you received this email, and to confirm that you were able to access your report. I hope the keywords I selected are appropriate for your company. If there are better keywords I would be happy to run the report one more time for you, and I will answer any questions you may have!

Sincerely,
Ryan Deleon
Search Engine Specialist
1 (866) 424-8535


:rolleyes:

[Webmaster T]

Did you sign up they got a great rank checker always says you have no placement. That'll be great for business! That one definitely ain't AP compliant LOL

[ihelpyou]

Everyone call that number. It's toll-free so they pay for it. I just did and asked for Ryan and then got voice mail. A live one did answer the phone as ........ traffic-power. LOL

[Alan Perkins]

I recently noticed that you are a current customer with OvertureI wonder how much it cost you for them to figure that out. :rolleyes:

[verlaat1]

Want to see what beautiful doorway pages they build, go to http://www.hotelreservationsnetwork.com/amsterdamhotelL02.html or even better http://www.hotelreservationsnetwork.com/amsterdamhotelL14.html This is the great job that trafficpower does for their clients and I have 278 more of these crappy pages residing on my server.

They promised 8 top 10 rankings for $1500.- I talked them down to a thousand with 500 bucks upfront and the balance as soon as the rankings where achieved. We are almost a year down the road and needless to say the balance is still in my bank account (they did charge my card after 3 months for the balance but I've got that refunded) I am stumped to what their ultimate goal is, I think they just want to take their clients deposits and take a nice vacation in the Bahamas or something. Next time I want some stupid doorway pages I will ask my 4 year old son to make some.

Anyway, I am glad I stumbled upon this site. With a little bit of help here I should be able to get those 8 top10 rankings and then some. I hope that because of this post at least 1 other person gets saved from their unproffessional practices.

[boskyo]

Yes, you've saved one more person. I was considering partnering with them. Even checked their references, but something didn't sound right. The references raved about them, and didn't quite sound genuine.

I'm a web design firm and looking for a partner to do seo work. I've done some, but don't have the time to do as much as I want. Can any of you help?

Secondly, has anyone used web position **** to do any work? Thanks for all your help.

[scottiecl]

Hi Boskyo :hi:

Welcome to the forum!

You might want to post in the "Professional Help" forum. There are plenty of people here who would be glad to help.

Just to cut down on screening, you might want to give an idea of the average budget you have to work with for SEO.

[ihelpyou]

WOW verlaat1 !! That is AWFUL. That is DISGUSTING.

That company should be put in jail, and I mean that sincerely. I want to puke now.






Welcome to the forums boskyo! :hi:

[Bernard]

I must be doing something right because over the last few weeks, I'm starting to get the spam too. I don't know if I should be mad or glad! :D

[geoff]

It's a real problem. The overhype, exagerrations, unrealistic promises. I would much rather underpromise and overdeliver. Some of the really good SEOs I have known tend to keep a low profile anyway and are VERY busy working hard to get results for their clients. I am glad to see Doug Heil's "no holds barred" approach on this kind of thing. These types of companies only make it harder for the rest of us to get business. Go get 'em, Doug. Great forum and site by the way.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums geoff! :hi:

LOL. I try.

[JGIRL]

And Just to think that I ALMOST fell for one of them. See your forums do help us little pee wees. :-))

IT is these kind of people that I have no clue and it is hard to tell what to believe and not to believe.

[barry24]

Signed up with them last night, then contacted them today to cancel out and they are giving me a hard time. Told them I'd contact the FTC and icop.com if my CC was not credited ASAP.

Any other advice?

[JohnC]

Originally posted by barry24
Signed up with them last night, then contacted them today to cancel out and they are giving me a hard time. Told them I'd contact the FTC and icop.com if my CC was not credited ASAP.

Any other advice? Call them back again and ask one more time for your money back. Tell them you will do a charge back if they dont give it to you. If they do not give your your money back then, call your credit card company and do a charge back, you gave them warning, which you don't even have to do.

[barry24]

John;

Is that how I say it? "chargeback" and it's done, or does my CC company then file a dispute with them. Really appreciate your help. Wish I had found you guys sooner.

Thanks.

[bigDugan]

Call your CC company and tell them that you never authorized the charge and demand that they credit your account immediately. Chargebacks cost more money for not only the Merchant, but their Merchant Account provider too-- and they do NOT like chargebacks. It's just like a NSF charge-- and nobody likes them either! It's wasted money. I would also be sure to file complaints with the BBB and the FTC. You can also send a copy of ANY UNSOLICITED email directly to the FTC at: uce@ftc.gov

[barry24]

FYI UPDATE:

After a one week run around and a promise from James Dennis in Accounting that we would get a refund, we were informed today by Traffic-power that we will NOT get a refund ($3150.00)., that our contract is iron-clad (we cancelled within 24 hours after signing), and that their decision is final. They said their contract is iron-clad.

We have filed a chargeback with AMEX, and also filed a complaint with the FTC.

I'm happy that we did not give them access to our site. Google has banned them.

These guys are bad news.

[ihelpyou]

Wow.

What's scary is that this company is getting a few grand for their non-existent services.

Very scary stuff.

[g1smd]

See also thread (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14212)

[jennid]

Hi There
New to this forum - I had to post regarding my traffic power experiences because I would hate to see anyone go through what I am going through now.

Signed up with Traffic Power approximately 3 months ago. They had me install doorway pages and link pages on my site (I refused to give them FTP access which in retrospect was a good thing). THey PROMISED these doorway pages would not get my site banned - and "no client of Traffic Power has ever been blacklisted from google..."

Well....guess what?

My site has been banned from google for the past month now, due to the html doorway pages put on the site. I have cleaned the site up, but am still having problems getting my site relisted.

Meanwhile, I am hearing from others, including some of their references, who also have been banned within the past month or two.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not do business with this company!!! They are unethical - it is not worth the risk of being blacklisted.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums jennid! :hi:

Scams like these prey on the innocent. It's amazing that some people actually try to protect these spammers. They would rather protect the spammers than protect someone like you.

I'm glad you found these forums. Keep up in here to learn about "who" to avoid. We will tell you straight out and will not ever try to protect a spammer.

[crymsntide]

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=19070&highlight=trafficpower


Not everyone in ihelpyouservices is as honest as they say. Nor do I believe that everyone here has much of a clue in the SEO knowledge department that they claim to be "experts" in.

[qwerty]

OK, I read the thread... was that a reference to this forum? If it was, I don't believe those claims were true.

[crymsntide]

I don't know what forums they were refering to. I simply posted the link for informational purposes.

There is always two sides to every story after all.....

[qwerty]

If you don't know what forum was being referred to, why did you follow the URL with this statement: Not everyone in ihelpyouservices is as honest as they say. Nor do I believe that everyone here has much of a clue in the SEO knowledge department that they claim to be "experts" in. It would be difficult for anyone to look at your first post and not believe you were making accusations about this forum in particular.

[g1smd]

There are various ongoing threads about both Traffic-Power and Traffic-Logic on a variety of web design and web marketing forums.

All of them feature a number of disatisfied customers and ex-customers. I haven't seen anyone on any forum put in a good word for them yet or say that they were helped.

The only talking up of their services is on their own promotional web sites.

[crymsntide]

sorry if i worded that wrong, I was basically saying that some of the posters here may not be giving the full story, but that is something that every forum has in common.

While I realize and believe in the statement that "everyone is entitled to their opinion" I also believe that unless someone has had first hand experience with the company, and if whatever went wrong was due to no fault of their own, (like the supposed banned websites on the other forum appearing to quickly blame traffic-power for their woes) Then it would be fair to give an opinion of the company services.

I don't think it is fair to give an opinion about a company to someone based on what so-and so heard. or what so-and so read from someone who doesn't deal with and has never had a business relationship with the company that they are slamming. It looks even worse when the person doing the degrading of said company just happens to be an owner of a company that is in direct competition with the one they are cutting down.

Some individuals may consider some of the remarks as libelous.

As far as which forums that post was refering to, there were none mentioned by name, and it was not a direct reference to this one. I apologize if it looked that way. It wasn't intended as such.

[qwerty]

Thank you for clarifying that. And I didn't welcome you to the forum. So... welcome :hi:

I agree that it's too common on internet forums for people to make posts without thinking about liability and whether they would be able to back up their claims in court.

My only personal experience with Traffic Power was a cold call from a salesperson who clearly had no idea what he was talking about. I pointed out to him that I do this for a living, and that the "facts" he was giving me were absolutely wrong, but he simply stuck to his script.

[ihelpyou]

Yeah, but I hardly think any good SEO could call traffic power any kind of competitor. That's funny stuff. :) They aren't a SEO. They are a spammer. A good SEO does not have to resort to cold calling websites out of the blue for one thing.

[JohnC]

Originally posted by qwerty
My only personal experience with Traffic Power was a cold call from a salesperson who clearly had no idea what he was talking about. I pointed out to him that I do this for a living, and that the "facts" he was giving me were absolutely wrong, but he simply stuck to his script. Ditto. Except because I kinda played along at first, I made it to the level where they put the "Sales Manager" on the phone, and yes he started berating me when I told him "No Thanks". He actualy told me "We'll see how you like it when I take this offer to your competitors and they get all the best rankings." I laughed at him... I don't understand why he hung up on me. He could have at least told the other 3 or 4 sales reps that called me over the next month or so not to waste their time with us, he was a "Manager" after all.

[gregone]

Got a call from these guys yesterday. They showed me a whole bunch of clients they got #2 & #3 positions for. Funny thing is I could not verify any of these 'clients' were actually using them. I basically told them on the phone I have plenty of clients I run PPC campaigns for. They quickly got a manager on the phone and he kept going on and on about there partner program (it reminded me of the scene in 'Boiler Room' where the cold caller got what he thought was a whale on the phone). They basically went on telling me at first they were a software company back in 1996 then they moved to SEO. They also said they wrote spider/indexing type software to crawl sites and collect info for various search engines & they are knowledgable in the area + able to produce these incredible results (which I could not verify they did). Well they tried telling me they'll fly me in to Vegas and train me (you should have heard my voice when he said 'Vegas') to sell this to PPC clients I have and I'd get 40% of sales etc. I kept trying to hold a straight face the whole phone conversation. They also showed me they had a satisfactory record with the BBB.org and they're not a scam that I could come down and check them out in Vegas. They'll be calling me later today I can't wait to break the bad news to them that I've researched the company and the techniques they use are straight up idiotic and bound to get anyone banned off Google and others. Of course there are plenty of complaints of just that happening out there. Keep away from these bozos. The thing is they hired some real professional sales teams/cold callers and they sound like they can sell. If I didn't know any better I would have for sure let these guys optimize a site or two.

[kendrid]

My partner had a cold call from them and was excited by the possibilities their sales guy was offering. When I checked out the site and saw all the no-nos I called this guy back. I played along a little, they do have a slick dog and pony show if you don't know better.

Anyway, the best part was when he had me enter "oil" on google and said shell.com was their client. BUT, when I clicked that link from google there was no redirect from a feeder. He said that was special software. Did someone replace all of our browsers last night while we were asleep?

I'm interested to hear your replies. (Or at least willing to be entertained.)

Ken

[gregone]

They used 'oil' in google search with me too. Funny thing is they were like we got shell.com 3rd place for it and I checked a day later and it dropped to 4th. That must be the #1 pitch line in the place 'oil'. There was no way I could verify they did that for shell also.

I got the call back from them yesterday. I basically told the 'sales manager' on the phone that I researched the company and a lot of people on message boards had some horror stories. They were like wouldn't we have BBB complaints if we scammed people? They said message boards were gossip boards and run by competitors. The conversation quickly detiorated when they were like I thought you were a serious businessman. My response was well I am and I'd hate to get any of my sites banned by Google from your 'software' like you seem to have done for so many out there. They basically hung-up.

Funny thing is put traffic power in google and they don't even come up in the top 3 or 10. You'd figure they would instead of mostly message board postings bashing them.

They do come up in 21st place under a site that redirects to them, but remember, they'll get clients top 3 positioning on the search engines but not for themselves!

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Kendrid! :hi:

You found the right place. :)

Traffic Power calling 'me' a competitor? Toooo funny. NO spammer is a competitor of me or these forums. Toooo funny. We are "Professional" SEO's. A spammer is Unprofessional. There is a difference.

What TP does is Not SEO in any way, shape, or form. It's spam. Anyone could build a different site for the search engines, and then redirect traffic to the "real" website. That's easy if I were a spammer as well. It does not lead to long-term success however.

Anyway, stick around in here. We will "out" any spammer in a heartbeat. We warn website owners. I actually think we are the only forums around that do this. We 'help' people.

[Blue]

Funny! I was out searching for "oil" just the other day! :cool:

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by gregone
They do come up in 21st place under a site that redirects to them, but remember, they'll get clients top 3 positioning on the search engines but not for themselves! To be found you must be in the Google index. Wonder why they aren't (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Awww.traffic-power.com&btnG=Search)? Could they be banned?

[SubmissoR]

I think almost every client I have received a phone call from these guys. I will say they must have a good sales pitch, becuase everyone was intrigued by their promises.

Of course once you pay...SEE YA!!!

[cline]

They called one of my PPC-only clients today. The client couldn't get them off the phone. Told them to call me.

They really put on high-pressure sales tactics. As they told me what they did, I said "oh, doorway pages". No! they said. We don't do doorway pages! blah blah blah, proceeding to describe what they did as doorway pages by some other BS name.

It was nice to have forum threads like this one to send to my client as evidence these guys were scam artists.

[ihelpyou]

I actually think the only people who work for them are telemarketers. I also had a client called by them yesterday.

The client asked him why TP was "not" indexed by Google. They told him they are "trying to keep a low profile so they don't want to be seen in the search engines".

Can you believe it?

[Bernard]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
... They told him they are "trying to keep a low profile so they don't want to be seen in the search engines".

:uplaugh:

Yes, they wouldn't want to increase their business in the same manner that they propose doing it for those they cold call. :rolleyes:

[ihelpyou]

wow. Just talked to a "potential" client yesterday who got scammed and spammed by traffic-power. This company is hoarding the phone lines with a whole bunch of sales reps specifically trained to sell the website owner on the spot. He said they were VERY good. They truly snowballed this guy. He said it was the worse experience he had ever had and lost his money, and got zero support with anything. They take the money and seem to disappear.

I am amazed that someone has not shot this guy yet. I'm also amazed that scams like this can continue to operate with little or no legal ramifications.

[pielover]

Doug--

I dealt with Traffic Power yesterday, too, and confronted the sales guy...then blogged it. Here is a list of 'lines' I got while talking to them:

"They aren't redirect pages, they're mouse-over pages"
"We are going to start our own search engine (and be #4)"
"We work with hotels.com etc. and they don't have a problem with our ethics"
"We limit our clients to three from one industry, otherwise we couldn't promise top ten rankings, that's our ethics"
"We normally charge about $5,000 to get top rankings for 20 keywords"
"We are Google's top competition, that's why they don't like what we do"

I was just really surprised at how they didn't give up, even if I said that what they do is against Google's rules and is unethical. Like they believe they are right. I haven't dealt with someone so slimy since the vinyl siding guy from Sears.

[ihelpyou]

Well then, you have not talked to Paddy Bolger and his group from TopPile. They are "EXACLTLY" the same way and simply don't care what the search engines think.

[ihelpyou]

I should put this post in this thread as well so more people see it and are warned of the spammers.

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=15225

"Danny from Traffic Power
I just got a phone call from Danny of traffic power trying to equate "MY" SEO services to Traffic Power by saying what I do is just like what they do.

These jerks will be thrown in jail very soon."

[ihelpyou]

LOL Just noticed this:

We work with hotels.com etc. and they don't have a problem with our ethics"
Gee wiz, I wonder if hotels.com will have a problem with ethics when their website is gone from Google?

[james411]

YOUR DETAIL PAGE LOOKS JUST LIKE TRAFFIC POWERS:WHOS TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE? TRAFFICPOWER HAS AN OFFICE OF 200, YOU ANSWER YOUR OWN PHONES ...WHOS BETTER?

[james411]

as you say doug all your post are opinions and if anyone gets your details page...everything u do is the same just you use different 'words' than they do... your a one man operation that has no business going on or you would'nt be sitting here all day giving your opinon of your competitors...get to work...get more than a hand full of clients...do some real marketing...do some cold calls (business to business cold calls are not considered spam, and there is no national do not call list for businesses) make you some money..do it with dignity...and FOR GOSH SAKES GET A REAL JOB THEN RUNNING A FORUM ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS TO DRAW NEW CLIENTS IN...ALL SEO COMPANIES MAINLY OPERATE ON THE SAME THEORY...SOME JUST HAVE ENOUGH BUSINESS THAT THEY DO NOT NEED TO BAD MOUTH ANOTHER SEO COMPANY TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS...MOST OF THEM ARE TO BUSY WORKING AND GETTING THERE CUSTOMERS PLACEMENT TO SIT BACK AND UN A FORUM....SPAM? PLEASE!!! ONE DAY WHEN YOUR ALL GROWN UP AND MAKE SOME MONEY...MAYBE YOU"LL HAVE YOUR OWN REAL BUSINESS!!!

[ihelpyou]

Grow up Traffic Power. Get a life please, and stop calling me. The next time and you will be thrown in jail for harassment. Trust me on that buddy. Mark my words. I know cops all over the country. Your company will be abolished very soon.

[Quadrille]

Hey, Doug ... looks like you touched a raw nerve with this guy.

Shame he doesn't even dare admit who he really is.

But after some 0.562 seconds cogitation, i think I've guessed ;)

Strange he hasn't noticed that many SEOs have forums ... but then, he wouldn't dare do that, either :D

[ihelpyou]

ONE DAY WHEN YOUR ALL GROWN UP AND MAKE SOME MONEY...MAYBE YOU"LL HAVE YOUR OWN REAL BUSINESS!!!
They actually believe having a business means to deceive and harm their clients. Amazing stuff.


btw Traffic Power; You can go around the internet to "many" different seo forums and marketing forums, and do a search on your business name to find "many" threads about your company. Go ahead, try it and see. :)

[james411]

I know because most seo companies dont know how to drive business to there companies...thats why they sit in front of there computer and create forums that give other seo companies a bad name...if you were really doing something over there you would'nt need a forum...and anybody with a brain will realize that everything you say on here is contradictory to the things your trying to promote with your business...I truly don't beleive that this does anything for your company as far as drawing new clients...I've never seen a forum or thread that had a post from one of traffic powers clients..that had been 'blacklisted', 'ripped off'...so get to work optimizing your site so that you can come up in the results page when you type in 'SEO" instead of trying to come up first when someone types in traffic power...and since your promoting the keyword 'traffic-power' that would probably be a doorway page, that allows you to come up 1st when someone types that in....since your business has no relevence to traffic power. get to work!!! get off seo's shirttails!!!

[ihelpyou]

Yes, that is right. We 'out' the spammers of search engines in here. We warn others about how there are companies out there who prey on uninformed webmasters and site owners who don't know that it is not okay to trick and spam the search engines. Many of us have "morals" and "ethics" and abide by the search engine guidelines. Spammers have no regard to the guidelines, and further, many spammers don't inform their clients that the techniques they use are "against" the search engine guidelines. This is why Traffic Power has soooo many upset clients. You don't inform your clients that you spam and can get their websites penalized or banned. You are a very bad apple and a big bad mark on all SEO's who have legitimate businesses.

[gregone]

If this poster is from Traffic Power, what a damn joke! The forum is here for anyone to discuss things like PPC campaigns, SEO techniques, etc. It's not Doug who started the thread. I got a call from you clowns and basically traffic power is full of it using every cold call high pressure technique in the book. I guess Traffic Power can't handle the truth that regular users of SEO forums like this one post there practices techniques & comments on Power Traffic. We also get a horror story post once in a while of how you got them blacklisted on major search engines. What does Traffic Power have an office of 200 cold callers? A bunch of smoke and mirrors. You guys have been exposed! You burn a few people on the net and yea they're going to post about it on forums like this.

[WebDude]

These jokers called a client of mine last week that I've nursed and more or less gave birth to their website by designing it then doing the SEO for them. It has become pretty successful.

They talk a good game but my client told them they don't do anything without talking to me first.

We'll I told my client if they like to throw their money away then go ahead but don't be surprised when they fall out of the SERPS and also if they do use them I will no longer be their Webmaster.

Traffic Rip-Off didn't get that sale!!!!!

[Dan0]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Gee wiz, I wonder if hotels.com will have a problem with ethics when their website is gone from Google?
I'd be surprised if they're working with hotels.com as anything other than an affiliate.

[Steve Sardell]

YOU ANSWER YOUR OWN PHONES ...WHOS BETTER?

Well Doug after reading James411's post I have to say I do agree with him.

Why in the world would you answer your own phone? Who wants to talk personally with a successful SEO when they could have something like this:

Welcome to Traffic Spam's automated answering service. Our options have changed, so please listen to the message in its entirety.

If you want to learn about cloaking and doorway pages press one.

If you want hidden text press two.

For keyword stuffing press three.

For any other devious methods press four.

If you would like to speak with a spammer, press five, and one of our certified spam scammers will be ready to take you for a ride to number one.

We appreciate your money, and want to thank you for calling The Best Spamming Company.

[ihelpyou]

LOL :D

[PennStateJD]

Doug -- I just posted this at webproworld.com as well. Perhaps this will help James (aka TP) see firsthand a victim of these turds.

***

For anyone still not convinced to avoid Traffic-Power, here is yet another tale of an unsuspecting small business being taken advantage of.

Their sales rep started calling last Fall, and eventually wore us down. We were assured that everything was legit and that "none of our clients have ever been banned from Google." I called 5 references and they all checked out. I also contacted the BBB and didn't find anything unusual there. After negotiating the price down and number of terms up, we signed the contract.

We immediately saw results, and many of the terms achieved the #1 ranking on Google. This lasted for about two months until one day we no longer appeared in Google. I contacted TP (kind of a fitting acronym for them) and asked what happened. I was told that Google frequently changes their algorithm and that we would be back up shortly. I decided to contact Google directly to make sure that we were above board. Of course, the answer I got from them said that we had been removed.

We immediately stripped the site of all the TP code. I also tried to reach my account rep at TP. No answer. No return call. This was kind of strange after they would return my call within minutes during the sales process. To date, they have never returned a call since we were dropped.

My take on TP:

1) they prey on smaller firms who don't have the resources to do their own SEO
2) the references are crap (part of TP)
3) you may get short term results, but YOU WILL GET BANNED eventually.
4) you will not get your money back
5) if a competitor doesn't report you to Google, one of TP's competitors will and then call you a few weeks later to see how your program is going.

I wish I had seen this thread prior to January. It would have saved money and a lot of aggravation.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums PennState! :hi:

Thanks for sharing. Sorry you did not see the warnings ahead of time, but your post will help others avoid the same mistake. :up:

[ihelpyou]

A clue to find any clients of Traffic Power. Do a search on Google for any letter at the end of the url with an .html extension. Ex:

"_c.html"

or any letter. Pages will be listed randomly. Find the ones listed with a _d or _b or any letter like that and with the .html extension.

These are Traffic Power doorway pages that do a quick redirect to the real client website.

Traffic power would be hurting if they were reported to yahoo and google. Google is starting to do a good job of weeding out the spam of Traffic Power right now, but TP makes it easy to find the spam and the websites they are hurting.

[ihelpyou]

Here is just a few clients of Traffic Power with just a little research:

www.web-magnets.com/_F.html

www.thesaundersgroup.com/_F.html

www.jiljordanproducts.com/_f.html

www.cleanair-air-purifiers.com/_F.html

www.cleanair-air-purifiers.com/_C.html

All those website owners who also got that phone call and bought into the spam of Traffic Power. It's sickening.

You would think that with sooooo much info on the internet at various forums and websites that owners would not be soooo naive and simply give away their money to scammers? I don't get it.

Click those links. Better yet, put this in your browser to see the actual html code that google is shown from these doorways. Do this:

view-source:http://www.web-magnets.com/_F.html

See? lol The worse spam imaginable. Owners actually think this is a good thing. It's truly amazing the depths Traffic Power stoops to.

We could certainly report as many sites as we wanted and at anytime we wanted to do so.

[g1smd]

Holy Crap!


Go straight to jail.

[pageoneresults]

Looks like Google got the message. Along with this recent PageRank update, mouseover redirect pages like those used by Traffic Power have been completely wiped from the index. This has been confirmed by GoogleGuy. It appears that there have been enough complaints to start the ball rolling.

[ihelpyou]

Not all.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22%5Ff%2Ehtml%22

All Google has to do is do searches on the alphabet like this:

"_f.html"

in quotes. And with the html ext. The first few are traffic power doorway pages with the same page that redirects to the client. You can see there are still a few left. I knew Google was working on deleting all the clients. This is why you see complaints from TP clients on forums around the net. There are a few left however. Hopefully, those sites will get the axe as well.

Maybe this will finally rid the internet of a notorious spammer who preys on the owners who don't know about the search engines.

[ihelpyou]

http://www.web-magnets.com/direct-mail-marketing-lc.html

sheesh. It appears there is a lot more of these pages. More research must be done. :)

:green: Follow the links on these type pages. Amazing stuff.
http://www.web-magnets.com/magnetic-frame-aa.html

Real bad spam. These guys are pathetic.
Sometimes the best place to start branding is with our promoting team to advertise and create a new customized corporation itemized identity, our expertise in imprinting advertised refrigerated combined promoting with our endless promoted magnetized presents, patriotic presents, and unique showcases for presents. Sometimes the best place to start branding is with our promoting team to advertise and create a new customized corporation itemized identity, our expertise in imprinting advertised refrigerated combined promoting with our endless promoted magnetized presents, patriotic presents, and unique showcases for presents. A firm that specializes in the creation, promoting production, and placement of vertized presents and messages and may provide other services that facilitate the marketed merchandising communications process. A media scheduling method that combines flighting and continuous presents scheduling.
Sometimes the best place to start branding is with our promoting team to advertise and create a new customized corporation itemized identity, our expertise in imprinting advertised refrigerated combined promoting with our endless promoted magnetized presents, patriotic presents, and unique showcases for presents. We offer top quality signage and bumper stickers too. Use inkpens and imprinting promoting automobiles with marketed tshirts and embroidering shirts and clothing promote promotions and sorority clothes, promoting and special advertiser merchandising showcase selections. We can also provide special personalized presents, like magnetized signage, you can fill christmas baskets with magnetized incentives.
That's two paragraphs on the pages.

Those pages remind me of the TopPile Salsa software that generates gibberish content pages just like that. I wonder if TopPile and Traffic Power have any relationship to each other? hmmm?

[ihelpyou]

The real sad thing is, this site:

http://www.web-magnets.com/

only needs a little bit of help to achieve good positions. Simply take the site out of frames for a start. Very simple stuff. A redesign would do that site some real good.

With all the referrals coming from here now, I'm surprised the owner has not stopped in to comment? he/she either believes in Traffic Power, or they are pissed off now. But they still should make a reply.

[Steve Sardell]

I do feel badly for the sites that thought they were hiring a respected SEO/SEM firm, and now are dumped after being duped. Not only have they wasted time and money, but now it is start from scratch, including a new name. For some, who have B&M presence, this could be a real branding problem.

Not only should TP be run out of business, they should also be dragged into court and their assets attached, that is if they have any.

They are a cancer that infects all of us.

Where is James411 now?

[ihelpyou]

They don't necessarily have to start over again. If they play their cards right and fess up to the spam, they could possibly be reinstated. But it will take doing things the right way in order to keep their present domain.

[Dan0]

Google's actually getting a lot better with reinclusion requests, but yeah, you have to really clean up the mess before they even try.

It can be a real rough process, fishing over all the code on all the pages, tracking down all the spammy pages. It's amazing some of the places where spammers will hide stuff.

[chrishirst]

there's a thread at High Rankings (http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7421) from a client/victim of TP getting banned from Google.

[Steve Sardell]

Google's actually getting a lot better with reinclusion requests, but yeah, you have to really clean up the mess before they even try.

After cleaning the mess one SEO , I use the term loosly, made on a site. It took nearly a year for the site to regain first page status in G. It may have been faster to start anew, but too much time and momey had been already spent on branding.

Read that HR thread and figured it was TP, even w/o the URL posted. They really have created quite a name for themselves.

[pageoneresults]

Here's an interesting site from a former disgruntled Traffic Power customer...

www.trafficpowers u c k s.com

[Dan0]

There may even be a whole "class" of disgruntled customers ready to take legal action:
http://www.girardgibbs.com/traffic-power.html

[ihelpyou]

This should serve as a warning to those SEO's who spam the search engines. You may think you are doing great things and you may be even getting away with the spam right now, but your day is coming.

[ihelpyou]

Registrant:
traffic-power.com
Matthew Marlon (webmaster@traffic-power.com)
2975 Tenaya
Las Vegas
NV,89117
US
Tel. +1.7022527005


LOL I wonder if that phone number works for Matthew? I also wonder just how many people he has who do nothing but call people all day long. Is that a one man band or are there actually full time employees who spread the spam? This guy probably hires part-time phone workers who he trains to say things to certain questions. They are very good at this.

[g1smd]

Someone try to convince me that this other thread (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/24523.htm) isn't all about Traffic Power too. Go on, just try.

>> Every time I see a site using it the filenames are always keyword_a.htm, keyword_b.htm, keyword_c.htm. <<

>> ... it appears that this particular SEO often convinced clients to put spammy pages on the client site as well. <<

Game over.

Did TP drop a hint that they have 9000 clients? At USD 2000 average spend, that is USD 18 million. That is a serious amount of money, and if criminally earnt, the penalties should be very very high.

[ihelpyou]

I cannot view that as it's asking me to login to view. :( I can't view any threads over there.

Can you give a brief description about what you mean? I know those url's are standard for Traffic Power, but are you saying that another SEO is partners with them?

[JohnScott777]

Traffic Power is spam. When I lived in Las Vegas they were even leaving business cards in restaurant bathrooms.

[ihelpyou]

The spam pages used by Traffic Power seem to be on the same order as spam pages generated by Salsa, which is a software spam generating program from TopPile. I wonder if Traffic Power purchased the Salsa program to use? The gibberish content used is the same stuff I've seen from the TopPile doorway pages.

Oh and btw, TopPile is the same company that the SES conference always asks to be a speaker at the conference. LOL well, I should mention that Jupiter Media owns the SES conference so they are culpable in it.

[g1smd]

>> Can you give a brief description about what you mean? <<

On the webmasterworld thread: Someone posted that he had noticed that most of the spammy "mouseover" pages that were previously in the SERPs just suddenly disappeared from the results a day or two back.

Googleguy posted and confirmed that they had indeed wiped them from the results, because they were spam. He also directed people to read the relevant parts of the Google Webmaster Guidelines where it was stated that such pages were spam and would be dropped when found.

Someone else posted what to look for on the various sites (pages ending with keyword_x in the filename) as I quoted above.

Googleguy then went on to say that Google were aware that one particular SEO company had scammed many people into adding these spam pages to their sites, that the sites were gone from their index, and that their only redress is to delete everything that the SEO had done to the site and then email a "reinclusion request" to Google with details.

At no time was the SEO company named and shamed over there, but anyone with a double-digit IQ should be able to work it out based on reading what is on this forum, jimworld, webmasterworld, and a few others.

[ihelpyou]

Okay yes. It's a shame that "all" forums don't name the spammers. Not everyone can or will read every se forums on the planet. Many average website owners would not know "who" to watch out for by simply reading that thread, or other threads like it at other places.

Us and SEF seem to be the only forums that want to warn website owners of "who" the actual spammers are and what they do. That's the only way to stop the spammers and clean up the internet from scammers. It's also the only true way to "help" the average website owners in avoiding the scammers.

Congrats to SEF! :up:

[Papadoc]

Originally posted by james411
I've never seen a forum or thread that had a post from one of traffic powers clients..that had been 'blacklisted', 'ripped off'...so get to work optimizing your site so that you can come up in the results page when you type in 'SEO"
WOW!!! Cannot believe the guy actually had the stones to write in on this one. If he's not seeing any pissed-off customers, he didn't read very far. He'd be a fun one to drop a bag of burning doggy-doo on his front porch and watch him try to stomp out the fire.

But TP, I do have a couple of questions for you if you have enough stones to answer:

1) Why is it that your own site doesn't appear anywhere on any major search engine? Are you as the fellow said, "trying to keep a low profile" so you don't get all that business? What a tricky move!!! I think that you must be related to the guy I saw the other day who said he'd be making 10 times his current income, but doesn't want to do that because he'd have to pay more in taxes.

2) Why is it that you don't identify yourself? Everyone knows it's you anyway so nobody's thinking... "Hey, wow! Gotta be a legit board member with a different view." I mean come on dude... be a man, not a coward with a caps lock key. What's with that anyway? So you caps everything so that everyone takes you seriously?

3) I bet the old CAN-SPAM Act was a serious blow, wasn't it? I used to get your crap 2-3 times per day sent to every email address you harvested from my site. But now that's gone, you aren't liked very much, and the world has an address for you... WOW!!! That could have been trouble, huh? Kind of like David Duke posting his home address and phone number on the stadium board at a Louis Farrakhan rally!!!

4) Hey... can I send you a list of my competitors? I'd be glad to give you a hundred or so domains that I'd like you to go to work for. No commission necessary. Just knowing that they are in your hands is thanks enough.

[qwerty]

Kind of like David Duke posting his home address and phone number on the stadium board at a Louis Farrakhan rally!!! :uplaugh: :uplaugh:

[ihelpyou]

This is up for all current Traffic Power clients and also former clients, and anyone looking to hire a SEO:

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/clients/

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/resources/

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/whois/

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/domains/

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/pages/example.asp

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/pages/

I figure this stuff needs to be posted all over the internet so as to warn everyone.

I would imagine TP is going to file for bankruptcy, open up a brand new domain with a new physical address, a new business name, etc, and then continue to do what they do best...... scam website owners.

[sharky]

Originally posted by Papadoc

1) Why is it that your own site doesn't appear anywhere on any major search engine? Are you as the fellow said, "trying to keep a low profile" so you don't get all that business? What a tricky move!!! I think that you must be related to the guy I saw the other day who said he'd be making 10 times his current income, but doesn't want to do that because he'd have to pay more in taxes.


My company got hoodwinked by Traffic Power and I raised this point to two of their representatives within the past week and got different answers.

Answer the first: "We've had problems with our competitors hacking our website. We're in the process of registering other domain names to try to correct it."

Answer the second: "We choose not to be listed with Google. We have agents who sell our services and we don't want to compete with them."

Your milage may vary.

[RandyDotcom]

Originally posted by scottiecl
All I can say is, it is no wonder the average business/website owner is:


Totally confused about what is the right thing to do for SE's
Distrustful of any claims from SEO's
Gives up after wasting their money on one or two of these "services"

Thanks for doing your part, Terry!

I would add that it is no wonder that.

Search engines continue to modify thier algorythms regardless of what the best one would be.
Search engines have to maintain the ability to blacklist sites and IP's to prevent spammers like these guys from altering results.
Some innocent web sites are penalized for appearing to use these techniques.

[NewAgeWeb]

Someone from their company cold called me yesterday. From the get go, talking about the "Top 14 Search Engines" I had to stop him right there. What top 14, man I was curious. Sure, all the names he read off (once he found his script of the 10 lessor players) were real engines, but hardly very relevant.

Before long I mentioned some common SEO terms and he had no idea what I was talking about. He was new he told me, OK, that's fine. No big deal, but I wondered why they set him loose on the phone with so little training? (I was later told it was his first day.) Even someone that knew nothing about SEO (clearly their targets) might want to know how they do, what they claim they can do.

How about doorway pages and cloaking etc. Finally he wanted me to speak to his manager. OK, I'm game, I suppose. After the first guy saying "yes" 3 times to my asking if they use page cloaking, this guy said no. Ok, well, call it what you want, but if you have javascript turned on, then essentially, it IS a form of page cloaking. The visitor does NOT see the same thing that the search engines see, plain and simple. They use some form of javascript redirect he told me.

Finally he asked about my sites, (this is what I do for a living folks), and started questioning me about how many clients I have and how many top rankings they have. So I gave him one site (of course my most extreme example, but why hold back) that sells mostly books and I said that about 2,000 items had top 10 and often #1 rankings in Google.

He spit out numbers of how many clients they have etc. and "why didn't I have more?" Well, because I'm very busy already, I do things properly, I value my free time, and I do not want any employees, so it's just me. I get business from search engines and mostly from referrals. I have not placed an ad in oh, about 5 years? I don't need to do that... or cold call people.

Their site has a PR 0. They break the rules of the search engines and certainly would endanger the rankings of their clients with their methods. By the way, where did they get my phone number from? It wasn't randomly dialed folks, they hit Google and sought out suckers. Why they called me, I have no idea. Clearly, I already had a top ranking for that client.. and many others.

In the end, he said "you're not interested in our services." I said, no, but I told the first guy that already. A moment later, 'click' he hung up on me.

Hey nice talking to you too. I think he was worried I was going to "steal his ideas" or something? It's all about on page content and links. If you do it right you don't have to play games or worry too much about things changing with results from month to month.


And here is the answer to why their pages went "bye-bye" :hi: in Google recently:

June 25, 2004
"OnMouseOver JavaScript Page Redirects No Longer a Spam Problem for Google" See: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000596.html He he, the comments below the story even mention Traffic Power and the horror stories too.

I think legit SEO people like us will have a tidal wave of clients looking to hire us to do it right. And then help them contact Google, prove they were clueless (got suckered) and beg for forgiveness perhaps?

[RandyDotcom]

Right on NewAgeWeb ;

[ihelpyou]

Thanks for sharing NewAgeWeb! Nice post/story! :cheers:

[ihelpyou]

Here is today's newsletter from:
Jim Hedger
Senior SEO,
StepForth Placement Inc.

It's mainly about Traffic Power.

Jim is a member in here. VERY good article. We are mentioned in it as well. :)

http://news.stepforth.com/2004-news/Jun30-04.html

[qwerty]

That article covers things nicely. And I particularly like this line: Getting a huge portion of your client list banned from Google takes a great deal of dedication to poor practices.
That's so true. It's important to understand that this is not a misstep on TP's part. They knew what they were doing and chose to take these chances with their clients' businesses.

[Steve Sardell]

Doug-last year
Bring on the spammers and I'll 'out' every single one of you and could care less.

come on..... bring it baby bring it!

A toast to you Doug
:cheers: Because of our litigious society, in the past, the majority of fora and experts were unwilling to name the spammers.We who read this forum were made aware of who and what to avoid.

Doug you did a great service to the industry by sticking by your convictions. You were not afraid to name names and prevent many from falling prey to their tactics.

Now, that it has come to light, other fora are naming at least this one culprit. Hopefully, they will follow your lead, and in the future not be so protective of the scammer spammers.

[ihelpyou]

LOL yep.

Free speech rules for discussion forums. Besides, if a spammer wanted to sue, they would have to prove the discussion about them was "false". It would simply take a major engine to testify what they were doing was against the guidelines.

Other fora don't understand about discussion forums. The old Yahoo forums set a precedent about all of this a few years back. I've never had a problem with outing spammers and never will.

It does a couple of things; It warns unsuspecting people who view in here as 'members' and 'guests' about who to watch out for. It changes the business models of past spammers to become "Best Practice" SEO's.

Why should the industry 'protect' spammers anyway?

[g1smd]

Well, everyone knows about Traffic Power now, but there are dozens more firms doing equally bad things for their clients too.

Naming specific companies is one thing, but a long term aim must be to educate people as to what is ethical and what is not, and give clients more knowledge as to what to check out before they hire any webdesigner, SEO, or other web-marketing consultant or practitioner.

[ihelpyou]

Partially right. :)

We know that some of those clients 'knew' that what TP did was bad stuff but went ahead and hired them anyway. My goal has always been to rid the industry of spammers.

Firms like Toppile fall into that category and do about the same crap that TP does. Problem is, we have conferences out there that appease spammers and do not care one bit.

These forums do their best to 'teach' people about best practices, but just the fact the spammers are out there to prey on people is the biggest problem.

[g1smd]

Having seen some dirt on several companies out there; I get really surprised when I see those same companies being asked to speak at conferences.

Instead, they should be banned from even attending .... but that is for another thread.

[ihelpyou]

Spot on with that..... "banned" from attending. Exactly.

[cline]

One of my new PPC (and now new SEO) clients sent me copies of all the email reassurances they got from TP saying that their tactics were fully legit. Amazing lies!

I warned them a few days before they got banned that they were headed for trouble. tsk tsk.

[StepForth_Jim]

[IMHO ]
We are going to see a lot more of this type of issue in the near future. Google is bound to crack down as much as possible the "search engine wars" heat up. Google made its reputation on providing "clean" search results. Now that PageRank is so hopelessly skewed in favour of massive network-link campaigns, it is only a matter of time before we see another group of SEO clients get de-listed. Google needs to clean up its system to reassure advertisers it is a safe place to be. At the same time, there are a lot of site-owners out there this week who think Google's cleaning of the system is punishing them for being taken advantage of by TP. Guilt by association. Many don't understand that Google's actions were correct and that the "target" was the spammy seo on their websites, not their businesses. I wonder if Google has assigned an action-team to this issue. I hope they have because, if not, I think even more innocent webmasters will suffer due to indescriminate linking campaigns by TP and their clients. (Has anyone in this forum heard of websites recently punished due to a series of unfortunate links w/o being directly involved with TP?)

It is scary outing spammers. In the case of TP, their methods are obvious and I do not perceive a danger in writing about them. In other instances, I think Doug is taking a major risk but is performing a great service to the community in doing so. Members of this forum should continue to support him in this mission. It is in all of our best interests and will help generate good techno-karma.

Because of the article I wrote, my inbox is jammed with former Traffic Power clients asking for advice, opinions and assistance. While I can handle the assistance emails, opinions and advice may put me and my company in a dicy legal position. If possible, I think a "clearinghouse" here for people and companies burned by TP might be useful. There appears to be an awful lot of people out there who need to communicate their experience and seek professional/ethical advice on what they should do.

I also think an ETHICAL SEO CONFERENCE would be extremely useful. One of the biggest problems in our industry is a lack of clearly stated ETHICS and SEO GUIDELINES. Bruce Clay has tried to devise an ethics statement. Our company has posted a company ethics policy. I can see areas in both that might not be relevant or useful for other SEOs. An overarching ethics and guidelines statement might help weed out the super-spammers and help the greater webmaster community. Perhaps the kind folk over at the SEO Consultants Directory have the contacts and resources to help organize this sort of conference. (February in Florida would work well for me ). :D

[ihelpyou]

Hi Jim, Very good post!

btw, I have something in the works that will further put spammers "under". It has nothing to do with "naming" spammers but everything to do with search engine spam. Keep watch. :) Nothing like this is out there right now. It will be very unique.

[Kal]

Here's an interesting tale of traffic power woe (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=365207) I found on Google Answers. A poor webmaster suckered in by TP seeks advice from Google because his site has been dropped. Researcher determines TP is to blame and shows LOTS of damning evidence why. Also provides a useful email template to send to Google to ask forgiveness and site reinstating :)

Unfortunately there are some sweeping anti-seo comments amongst all the useful advice :eek:

Looks like the report (http://www.vegasbbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=58697) on TP in the Better Business Bureau (linked to by the client above) is now under review :

<snippet>The Bureau's report on this company is being updated and no customer relations report is available at this time.</snippet>

[qwerty]

Good stuff, Kal.

It's interesting that TP would try to blame it on someone hacking G's URL removal form. It's like Bart Simpson saying, "I didn't do it." How many of their clients would believe such a thing?

[ihelpyou]

Very good Kal!

I find it funny that the answers that guy received in Google answers say stuff like:

"It appears the Google filters are tightening. What worked before, don't work now. SEO's always try to go to the edge., etc, etc, etc"

Never once did he say that the traffic power techniques were spam, and "always" have been spam. Just because they "worked" does not mean it's not spam. Spam is spam by any definition. TP showed spiders one page and the browser another page. That's spam. Google answers is being kind of misleading.

You can't look at a technique and simply say the page that is ranking well must not be spam because it's ranking. LOL

[Dan0]

For all of its flaws, despite any nits we might pick with one detail or another, that "Google Answers" thread does show one thing. Google Answers is a great service.

[ihelpyou]

But how great is it when that person asks a question that could have been asked and answered for free right in here? He had to pay to ask that question.

We could have given him a more complete, knowledgeable and better answer in this place for free. :)

Understand that those "answerers" do 'not' work for Google, and don't have the expertise for that kind of question. It took him awhile to figure out that Traffic Power was the culprit, and then he never did say for sure, and showed no knowledge about what spam is or is not.

[pageoneresults]

2004-07-14 - Update from the BBB Reliability Report for Traffic-Power:
"As of July 2004, this company has had 18 complaints filed within the last three years or since its inception of business, whichever is less.

The Better Business Bureau urges any weary consumers to check http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html before signing up with any Search Engine Optimizer."Note: Of the 18 complaints now being reported by the BBB, 16 of those occurred in the last 30 days.

[Mel66]

I have a somewhat-TP-related question, or at least I think it's somewhat-TP-related. Our CEO got a cold call from a guy at Desert Wind Communications. He says they're an SEO firm, and is trying to sell us their services. They have at least 2 related web sites:
SEO-Tech (http://www.seo-tech.com)
AVWebvisions (http://www.avwebvisions.com)
The sites appear to be very similar if not exactly the same. Anyway, what makes me suspicious is that their offices are in Las Vegas - home of TP! And, it looks like a big part of their service is just creating useless links - a link farm? I discovered all the links when I Googled seo-tech and avwebvisions - and didn't find anything for Desert Wind Communications. You'd think they'd at least SEO their own site............

I know that any SEO worth their salt will not do cold calling, so I don't plan to do business with this outfit, but I'm just wondering if anyone has heard of them, if they're legit, and if they're really TP under a different name. My CEO thought the guy sounded knowledgeable so he's asking me to follow up with him. Any info would be appreciated!

If I've posted this in the wrong thread feel free to move it. ;)

[Dan0]

Join our Quality Google PR 5, 6+ Link Exchange Club
That's all you need to know about them. Move on.

[Mel66]

Thanks Dan - that's what I thought too. :)

[pageoneresults]

Here's the latest news for Traffic-Power prospects, clients and partners...

Traffic Power News and Updates (http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/news/)

[ihelpyou]

http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/news/promotion-system.asp

GAWD. That's worse than what they were doing!!!

Isn't this almost criminal? How and why are we letting them get away with all of this? Can't someone do something?

Are their clients really buying into the bogus crap?

My, oh my. Now they simply use a Traffic Power domain and then redirect to the client's website? Are you kidding me?

They have to be stopped.

I will be on a mission to find ALL TP domains that are redirecting so as to also get those domains banned by Google. This is crap. It's criminal.

[StepForth_Jim]

I am not really sure what to say about TPs reactive moves except "Wow, that is very dangerous stuff". I'll bet they find a way to charge their poor clients for these "repairs" too.

The only thing about TPs new tactis that is even remotely amusing is the way they try to blame a "Google Terrorist" who was trying to extort $ by threatening to use software to fake AdSense click-through rates. I guess they must figure that anyone ill-informed enough to continue with or contract their services is also ill-informed enough to buy other outright lies.

The techinques that got their clients banned were a lesson in what NOT to do in SEO. I think their reaction is a lesson in what NOT to do in client relations.

[NewAgeWeb]

Well as they always say, "lies, lies and damn lies." Of course the added beauty of using a seperate domain that TP owns is that when/if the client wakes up and stops using TP, they can redirect that traffic to another clueless client.

Then again, it should also make it easier for Google etc. to find these domains I hope. If Doug has his way, and I have a feeling he will, he will no doubt track them down! Then once again we can say Good-Bye to TP pages.
:hi:

It blows my mind that people don't Google TP and figure out that their claims are indeed "too good to be true." How do they ever get their clients? I guess all we can do is track down their domains and help Google shut them down... again!

[ihelpyou]

http://www.google.com/search?&q=allinurl:.com_friends.html

pageoneresults is reporting that the search results above could ALL be owned by Traffic Power.

Can anyone go through these 9000 domains and figure out if they are? :D

[NewAgeWeb]

Yea, I checked them all... yea right.

I checked a few sites, pulled up their whois records and found nothing that would indicate that TP owns those names. (But I guess that is their latest strategy, so if not now, we'll see it soon I'm sure.) The ones I checked had all been around for a long time, different owners and different hosts. Then I realized that many of the pages showing up were not the offenders, but just that they had a link on that page to the bad sites.

I pulled up one site and rolled the mouse over, but found nothing... but there was too much blank space on the bottom... so I opened up the source and there were links to a bunch of pages... which had keyword spam and links to a bunch of sites. Here is one of those pages http://www.401gifts.com/401gifts.com_friends.html

Gee, just click a link and then move your mouse off of the browser window... OK, now move it back and see if the page changes. On many, it did. On some, the URL was not found - no doubt those are probably people that wisely deleted the pages from their servers! All in all, many of the pages I looked at were spam, and probably TP.

[Dan0]

Doug, the "allinurl" search looks broken right now. This search using "inurl" yields 3000 results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=inurl%3A.com_friends.html&btnG=Search

[pageoneresults]

Doug, the "allinurl" search looks broken right now.You know, I've been wondering about that. I think Google has a manual filter in place for Traffic Power specific searches. The allinurl: works for just about everything else.

I'm almost certain that is the case. I've been observing the SERPs since 2004-06-25 and much has happened between that day and today. At one point, there were only 2 results showing for the allinurl: search.

[NewAgeWeb]

http://www.google.com/search?&q=allinurl:.com_friends.html is working fine now at least... I got 8,980 results.

Also, using the @ command, which I guess is essentially the same thing, I got 8,990 results. As I understand it, this brings up all the of the pages with sub PR 3 and pages that have the text of a URL, but might not be hyperlinked. http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&q=%40.com_friends.html&btnG=Search

[g1smd]

Your http://www.google.com/search?&q=allinurl:.com_friends.html search gives just under 4000 results, but this http://www.google.com/search?&q=allinurl:.com_friends.html&num=100&filter=0 search gives nearly 9000 results at the present time.

[pageoneresults]

2004-07-21 - Latest News and Updates

www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb143044.htm

Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) July 21, 2004 -- Traffic-Power.com, provider of internet marketing solutions, has recently acquired the largest available "opt in" consumer email list in the U.S, in order to provide Traffic-Power clients with access to the booming email marketing industry. The list consists of over 120 million "opt-in" e-mail addresses with local select information to allow for demographic target marketing. This acquisition makes Traffic-Power’s E-mail marketing affiliate, Mail-Power.com, among the principal direct to consumer email providers in the US.

In addition to the consumer list, Traffic-Power also owns one of the largest business to business email lists in the U.S. These lists are available through Mail-Power, a Traffic-Power.com affiliated company. Mail-Power's E-mail marketing establishes direct, end-to-end communication between the client and their target audience, and gives them the ability to create relevant and targeted communication with their customers. This results in higher response rates, and more profitable relationships and ROI. Mail-Power's E-mail operations are among the largest in the industry with over three hundred representatives.

[ihelpyou]

Now why would this PRweb even think about publishing something like this?

Amazing. Great, now we can all get more spam email sent to all of us instead of getting spammed through the phone by Traffic-Power.

[ihelpyou]

This is PRweb's disclaimer:

ABOUT PR WEB™ & these News Releases
If you have any questions regarding information in these press releases please contact the company listed in the press release. Please do not contact PRWeb. We will be unable to assist you with your inquiry. PRWeb disclaims any content contained in these release. Our complete disclaimer appears here.
You know something? PRweb is VERY Unprofessional. You all can kiss my arse. Okay?

Where is your phone number on your website?

Found it.

I filled this out:
https://secure.dataovation.com/prweb/support/index.php

Make your feelings known.

[WebDude]

PRweb is simply a place to post press releases. They don't claim to be professionals in the industry that the press release is for.

How in the world are they supposed to know that Traffic-Power is a rip off?

I've used PR Web for years and have no problems with them. It’s a great inexpensive way to get press releases out there.

As with anything in this world, if people believe everything they read, then the deserve what they get.

I have never received a spam email from PR Web, so what are you talking about?

If somebody did get an email, then they must of signed up to get them.

[ihelpyou]

No, no, no.

I'm talking about Traffic-Power and spam emails. Don't you and your clients get spam phone calls from them?

I disagree. It's not right for ANY website to promote scammers.

[ihelpyou]

Okay then, .. check this:

PR Web™ will not distribute any press release that, at its sole discretion, it deems to be inappropriate for this service. Such press releases include releases written for the purpose of causing harm or damage to a third party, improperly formatted releases, press releases posted by distributors of network marketing organizations or press releases that look and read like advertisements.
"in it's sole discretion"

They "CAN" disallow press releases if they wanted to do so.

Find it here:
http://www.prweb.com/about.php

[searchenginemarketing4u]

Oh joy! This is terrible news! :(

[Blue]

.... in order to provide Traffic-Power clients with access to the booming email marketing industry. I think they must have meant the "booming email spamming industry".

[WebDude]

OK,

Now I understand about the email. Yes myself and clients do get their crap calls and emails.

I've educated all my clients and none of them will ever fall for that crap.

Again about the Press Release. While many on this board live and breath SEO, many others don't even know what it is. So in our eyes we see a spammer but with somebody who is not in the industry, they just see another Press Release. It's not their job to police the Internet of SEO spammers.

It would be curious to see if someone pointed them in the direction of the BBB report and numerous boards with complaints about TP, what their response would be.

Would they take it down or leave it up?

If you filled out that feedback, maybe we'll see!

[ihelpyou]

Yes, very true.

But just the facts of the press release. Anyone who believes a list of millions of email addresses is actually "opt-in", is living in dreamland. PRweb has got to be smart enough to know that TP is up to NO GOOD with buying this email list.

Those types of sites who sell these lists are criminals. I can't understand why we allow this email lists to be bought and sold at will.

[computingfuture]

Originally posted by french dread
Lol...if something can hurt rankings of their customers it is not what they say...:rolleyes:


So thats why we all submit our oppositions sites to the spam engines.

Ohh, wait a minuite no we dont.

[JohnC]

Anyone who believes a list of millions of email addresses is actually "opt-in", is living in dreamland. Actually, it is quite conceivable for a company that specializes in collecting consumer information to gather an opt-in list that large and then sell it to a third party. These companies have been collecting this type of data for decades and are quickly adapting to the new online environment. I get marketing mags, with ads from these companies and many claim to have over 200 million consumers in their databases. Heck, one company advertising only email address from Oracle Magazine subscribers claimed 228,162 addresses. I know you are going to say, but those people did not opt-in for Traffic Power. Well if they opted in and agreed (probably in the fine print) that their information could be distributed, then they count. Unfortunately.

PRweb has got to be smart enough to know that TP is up to NO GOOD with buying this email list. We know TP is up to no good. But PRweb gets tons of submissions and I am not sure it is up to them to try an police the players in every industry they publish releases for. I think trying to implement something like that would not be very cost effective.

[computingfuture]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
[B]http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/news/promotion-system.asp




hey, thats almost what http://www.get-marketed.com/ is doing.

[caseywhitcher]

I don't think it matters how much information is out there about "some" disreputable SEO companies. considering if you've had a website for more than 3 months they've already cold called you 4 times by 4 different reps after you told them to take you off their calling list every time..

so either you signed up... or you realize what sleeze they are.

They are going after frustrated stary eyed new site owners.. and obviously it's working for them..

shame.

[Tygo.com]

PR Web is a Free service and all they do is get the word out.

[ihelpyou]

yeah, can I puke again ??

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb145227.htm

http://www.bulletproofasset.com/

That's a client of TP supposedly. Check out that terrible site. Do we really believe that site converts anything at all? LOL Gawd is that awful.

Traffic Power is disgusting.

[Mel66]

You are right Doug - it is terrible in all respects. I love when supposed "brick and mortar" companies don't even list their physical address on their "about us" page! I did find it on their "contact us" page, and it was a crackup b/c even though the whole site brags about how they are this great Nevada company, the physical address listed in "contact us" is in Florida! What a scam.

[Mel66]

And furthermore, the company I mentioned earlier in this thread that cold-called us has got to be related to TP somehow. They're obviously a link farm, they use that meta-content-refresh command that's a no-no, and their cold-call techniques smack of TP. At least 3 different reps from there have called us, each one insisting they talked to our CEO. The call I got was from a female who said our CEO "told her to call me" to sign up for their "SEO" services. Well our CEO has only had one conversation with them - and it was with a GUY named Dan! Geez.

If anyone gets calls from Desert Wind Communications, Seo-tech, or AV Webvisions - run, run, run!

[ihelpyou]

I'm almost sure the Traffic Power is scrambling, and may have multiple aliases now. They are doing their best with PRweb. Prweb are idiots. I know for a fact that at least 3 people have emailed PRweb about TP now. They have yet to do anything at all. They have all the proof they need, etc.

[pageoneresults]

They are doing their best with PRweb. Prweb are idiots. I know for a fact that at least 3 people have emailed PRweb about TP now.The Consortia also have had an open support ticket. This is the last response we received before they closed the support ticket...Many thanks for your help. I am discussing our course of action with Management.

[Tygo.com]

They are not even worth the time to think about!

[pageoneresults]

Traffic-Power.com out of Las Vegas, Nevada is now operating under another name of First Place or 1P.com. This has been confirmed by verifying Whois information and IP address.

Traffic-Power.com and 1P First Place (http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/1p/)

[ihelpyou]

http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2004/09/09/news/news03traffic.txt

Pretty good article. Jim Hedger from Step Forth is quoted in it as well. :up:

TP is total scum. Laws "need" to be passed.

[pageoneresults]

Traffic-Power BBB Reliability Report Update as of 2004-09-16

"As of August 2004, this company has had 35 complaints filed within the last three years or since its inception of business, whichever is less.

Note: Of the 35 complaints now being reported in the BBB Reliability Report, 33 of those complaints appeared in the 2004 July/August/September report updates.

For Comparison

2004-06-25 - The Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada has processed two or more customer complaints on Traffic-Power.com within the last three years or since its inception of business, whichever is less.

That's 33 confirmed complaints in less than 90 days. The BBB will not post data that is unconfirmed. My understanding is that there are many more complaints pending that will slowly be processed and results posted here BBB Reliability Report for Traffic-Power (http://www.vegasbbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=58697).

[ihelpyou]

Also: Let's warn people they are going under a new name as well:

1p.com

So if anyone gets a phone call from 1p, please run quickly. Also please tell that company they blow.

[g1smd]

How do we get BBB to also make a note of that in their report, or do they start a new company off with a clean sheet?

[ihelpyou]

That's a good question. I doubt that TP told the BBB they changed names. The BBB should be informed of that.

[pageoneresults]

According to the information posted in the BBB Reliability Report, Traffic-Power is no longer a member of the BBB. I doubt they will want to participate in BBB membership from this point forward.

[JohnC]

WooHoo… Just got my first cold call from the "New TP" - "1P".

I played dumb for a bit to see if they were putting a new spin on things. The guy was obviously spewing canned copy.

His first line of attack was to take me to Google and have me type in “laptop computers” and claimed that listing #6 (www.discountlaptops.com) was one of his clients. Check out the stats for that domain http://extremetracking.com/open?login=mattr2, these people have been in Google for years. I’d hate to see them booted because TP changed its name to 1P.

He almost immediately took me to a "secret page" on their site www.1P.com/7N, which displayed their "proprietary software generated placement report". He also took me to an AWSTATS page on one of their doorway sites and told me “they created” AWSTATS for their customers. This was a service to give their customers detailed information about their traffic.

http://claycounty-realestate.com/ is the example of the "doorway" website they are creating now.

I finally asked the guy if he had been working there long and was he aware the company he is working for recently changed it’s name and that its old incarnation was responsible for thousands of sites being booted off of Google. Then I told him about SourceForge and that AWSTATS was an open source log analyzer that was in use all over the web and that his company defiantly did not “Create” it. I also informed him that the cool “proprietary software” they used to check site rankings was probably against most every search engines terms of service.

He claimed to have never heard of TP and as soon as I told him he should look for a more reputable company to work for and that I was not interested, in true TP form… he hung up on me… LOL

[ihelpyou]

Very good John!

It's the same o'l crap from them.

This should be easy for Google to detect these doorway domains.

That 7N page now redirects back to the front page of 1p.

[smfg]

These people made my life an absolute living hell after 3 & 1/2 months our site still isn't back to the positioning it had before we signed up with TP.

We even went as far as asking Google Answers what to do. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=365207

All I can say is that Google did remove our ban within a couple of weeks but like I said the prior positioning never returned so the damage was done. I just pray that it isn't permanent............

Melissa Springer

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Melissa! :hi:

Sorry to hear you are another who got taken by TP,.. now known as 1p.com

They still have the basic spam techniques, only disguised in a different way. It's only a matter of time before their new spammy ways will be detected again with more websites being hurt.

[ihelpyou]

bumped and moved.

[LikeMike]

Thanks for posting. These folks are in the dark. It's amazing to me that this stuff goes on and on and companies like this still stay in business.

I guess they don't understand one fundamental thing about SEO and that is you might have to know something about algorithems.

Wow!:cheers:

[g1smd]

This post certainly has caused a lot of conversation, all over the web:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/

[nnkkayak]

I am a victim of servicewrap as well.

Should I pull all that garbage they tell you to put on your website off, or what are the best steps to distance your sites from these fakes.

Before I knew anything I also bought 10,000 hits from engineseeker.com with claims that there hits were done totally legit. I am worried about those purchased hits damaging my site.

Currently my site (3-4 months old) is listed in google, but google shows it has no links to it.

Thanks