PeakRankings

[Advisor]

What do you guys think of this:

http://www.peakrating.com/content/pvsc.html

This company approached Heather and me regarding their software, obviously hoping that we might promote them a bit in Rank Write. When I saw what it was all about, I emailed them back because I wanted ask them if they were sure they wanted me to review their product. Since our stance is fairly firm against cloaking and the like, I wanted them to realize that we may not talk favorably about their product. They took what I said under advisement and wrote the information in the above link.

How would you all respond to it? I'm particularly interested in hearing Alan's response!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Listen to the SPIN:
In ending I ask you to allow for a perspective from those of us on the outside of the inner world of search engine experts, SE advisors, SEO gurus etc. (yes they are well intentioned business people and of integrity). Imagine a SEO guru, an SEO newsletter author or an editor with a periodic column on this subject. Now these individuals are quite experienced in the art & science of SE optimization & positioning. They have revenue-generating businesses for their client's websites where they service the accounts to rank high on SEs. The platform they possess, i.e., their newsletters or online presence, advises readers against the use of what they choose to term, "hiding/cloaking".
What all these types say for an excuse. Trying to tell us that what we do is short-term? Don't think so! What they are doing is VERY short term.
At least their public stance and opinion is negative towards it. This attitude is maintained as these experts, for personal income, get a client to rank high FOR A PERIOD OF TIME only to later have the same client come back to them and once again require the same service. To one on the outside, this expert's advisory platform & associated service combination could be interpreted as a self-serving or self-fulfilling business.

[ihelpyou]

I simply do not understand. Anything to make a buck. They are trying to say that it is perfectly fine to serve a spider one thing and serve the search engine visitor another thing. When will they ever learn?

[Alan Perkins]

You're wasting your time with these guys. They are not going to drop their business model because you don't like it. There are many, many things wrong with their arguments, and I don't really want to go into it all over again for their sake. (Doug, you need a yawn emoticon). Let's just pick on one key phrase they put in a paragraph on its own, so they obviously think it is important:

Personalization is displaying oneself in the best manner possible to "markets of 1". Search engines qualify.

A search engine is not a market of 1. Is is not even a market. If you want to look at it in commercial terms, the closest analogy is that it is an agent to a market of many (its users). So it does not qualify. Simple.

The White Paper goes into some detail about how to handle personalization (which, I agree, is a good thing). It basically says deliver the same content to the search engine as you would to a typical user of that search engine. i.e. if a typical user showed up with a HTTP request very like that of the search engine (no cookies, no registration history) they should get what the search engine got.

If these guys are the engineers they say they are, ask them to draw the sum gain diagram of human endeavour thanks to their efforts. It's a complete waste of time for a search engine to come up with an algorithm, only to have a cloaked site deliver content tuned to that algorithm, when no human will see that content. Why should "most relevant" be "best at reverse engineering and deception"? Why should a SE bother developing an algorithm at all? Why not become PPC? That, I fear, is the ultimate resolution to the problem. PPC for all competitive terms. When on-the-page becomes so unreliable that (as a search engine) you may as well not bother, you have to move off-the-page. The PPC algo is so far off-the-page it's off-the-Web, which makes it very difficult to subjugate!

[Advisor]

It's a complete waste of time for a search engine to come up with an algorithm, only to have a cloaked site deliver content tuned to that algorithm, when no human will see that content. Why should "most relevant" be "best at reverse engineering and deception"? Great point!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Yes. Very good point Alan!

This software is simply saying that the algos mean nothing and the search engines have no clue as to what they are doing. Saying that every site should "cloak". Why have search engines then? We could simply have "paid" pages with lists of links, and whoever spends the most gets to the top.

[JuniorHarris]

>The PPC algo is so far off-the-page it's off-the-Web, which makes it very difficult to subjugate!


I'll go along with that!~;)

[Blue]

It's simple.

They're looking for reviews. They know their product uses an unethical technique. They know that they are going to receive negative reviews from ethical SEO's. They need a way to combat this. They "pad" their negative reviews, beforehand, with this article so that they can later have a defense against the negative reviews.

Pure spinmiester technique!

[Advisor]

My thoughts, exactly, Blue! And I guess I tipped them off by giving them a warning!

But I don't think I would waste my time discussing such a product anyway because as we all know any publicity is good publicity. Even if I bash it and bash cloaking, there will be plenty of people interested in cloaking and this product. I would prefer not to be the one to bring it to their attention!

Jill

[Kal]

Originally posted by Blue
They're looking for reviews. They know their product uses an unethical technique. They know that they are going to receive negative reviews from ethical SEO's. They need a way to combat this.

Totally! The fact that they have gone to such lengths to defend themselves "before" reviews are handed down shows that they expect to be branded as unethical and are sceptical of the viability of their own product.

If THEY themselves are sceptical then potential customers should steer well clear. I think they've done a great job of putting themselves out of business already!