Spam SEO Company Traffic-Power, aka 1p.com, First Place, Internet Advertising Pros Options

[Scottie]

If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

I am sorry for the people who didn't know better, I really am. But I do hope Google bans them all for good.

If you can take advantage for a while, then get caught and ask to be reinstated, why not hire the next quick-fix company as well? As long as that technique works, you stay with it. If that one gets you banned, you can call up Google and get put back again... and find the next new trick..

At the very least, this will make website owners ask more questions up front and be wary of who they allow to make changes to their site.

[projectphp]

At the very least, this will make website owners ask more questions up front and be wary of who they allow to make changes to their site.

I get accussed of doing this sort of thing, playing hard ball for greater good, all the time. So much so that I gave it the nickname "Harsh Lovin'". I think, when it comes to spam, harsh lovin' should be what is applied to all sites. Otherwise, what scottie talks about above is simply the natural consequence: a no consequences world of spam, caught, repent. That is no one's best interest.

[qwerty]

There are also consumer protection or "watchdog" groups like The Better Business Bureau (bbb.org), complaints.com, and FraudBureau.com that have searchable complaint databases available. This doesn't always throw up a red flag, though.

This is interesting. The BBB doesn't have anything bad to say about TP: http://www.vegasbbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=58697
I expect that will change in the near future.

I'm not familiar with the other sites Bobette recommends, but I couldn't get to complaints.com, and I got a server error when I tried a search at FraudBureau.

[Alan Perkins]

It seems like the only way that they'll stop doing what they're doing. It's really not illegal, so it's not like you can put them in jail.

IMO it is illegal.

To be specific:

1) Making false and/or unsubstantiable claims about your product or service
2) Deceptively advertising in the search results

are jointly and severally illegal.

[Randy]

1. Yes, it does look like another round of banning TP sites from what I'm seeing. I knew of a dozen or so sites TP had pulled their tricks on that were still in Google's index last time I checked a couple of months ago. As of now all of the ones I knew about are gone.

2. No clue if that means Google is starting to look at the onMouseover function in the BODY tag or simply following the hidden links in the code. Could be either.

By viewing one recently dumped site I would tend to think it may be automated. Mainly because this site uses an off-domain shopping cart that has not been banned even though the main site has been. The off-domain cart can't be tweaked to include TP's code trickery.

If it were a hand ban I would expect the shopping cart to be banned as well since prominent links on almost every page of the banned site point to the cart. It's not, so this would lead me to believe an automated penalty was in place.

On the other hand if it were automated I wouldn't expect those sites on the 10L page to still have decent placement, and they do. That would lead me to believe that it's a hand penalty.

3. As harsh as it may sound to the "unwitting" site owners (hey, anybody can claim anything after the fact!) I tend to agree that Google should look back in their cache, sort out how long the tricks were being played and make the ban at least an equal length of time.

Gain an unfair advantage for 8 months, banned for at least 8 months. Gain an unfair advantage for 2 years, banned for at least 2 years. Seems only right in my book.

4. People are strange. And will believe almost anything no matter how often they're warned. Since I stopped doing SEO for others to concentrate on my own sites I've had several former clients contact me for advice. Some have specifically mentioned being contacted by TP. I'm umm...how to say this delicately... much more blunt than Jill is on this particular subject about calling a spade a spade. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

Even then, some of them still contracted with TP for a quick fix. In the last 72 hours I have received email from almost all of them crying and whining about getting banned.

My answer? Stop bawling. They knew it was going to happen eventually. I'd warned them long, long ago. Time to pay the piper for trying to cheat the system, even if that means putting some of them out of business forever.

[Jill]

Even then, some of them still contracted with TP for a quick fix. In the last 72 hours I have received email from almost all of them crying and whining about getting banned.

:yay:

[mikeb]

As of this morning, my site that I'd written about in an earlier post is back in the Google database!!!

I have no clue why other than I have removed every piece of code from that lying TP that I had in there.
Not only that, my PR is back to 5, and all my listings from what I can tell are back to their original placement.

As much as I cried tears of anguish 3 days ago, I cried tears of happiness this morning.

However, I'm wondering if anyone here can tell me how this can be??? The first thing I did was go to the few other sites that I knew were in the same boat (including the TP site) and NONE of them are back in. Why me? Could it be that Google was not done with their dance/update and since I got the code out they reindexed me and that was all the spider wanted to see?

I emailed them yesterday but obviously that could not be the reason. As excited and GRATEFUL as I am, I'm mystified.

Lastly, if you do a search for "bodybuilding supplements" on G, you'll see my as #1 but below my listing is STILL the listing for one of the (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif) TP pages.
The same holds true for other pages that were "optimized". The bad TP pages are still on Google. For example a search for "designer protein" you'll see me at #2. This is a TP page.
I've removed all of these from my server. So it's like they did an update but they're still there? If you look at the G cache you'll see that I've removed the .gif file but the text is there. This has me concerned that all of this might be temporary.

Can anyone offer any insight?

And before I forget, I want to thank EVERYONE here for their kind words even if they were scolding me (which I deserved). It will be a long time before I trust ANYONE regarding my site but I will definitely be a frequent visitor here.

Thanks,
Mike

[Jill]

Don't get your hopes up, Mike. It could be that they're just cycling between databases and algorithms.

If it were your clean pages showing up, that would be a good sign. If it's spam pages, not so good.

Added thought...

Or maybe they just fixed that database patch...

I'm going to merge this into the other thread.

[mikeb]

Don't get your hopes up, Mike. It could be that they're just cycling between databases and algorithms.

If it were your clean pages showing up, that would be a good sign. If it's spam pages, not so good.

Added thought...

Or maybe they just fixed that database patch...

I'm going to merge this into the other thread.

That's my concern Jill, that it's temporary. My wife is ecstatic but being the cautious one, I have concerns.
Yet I'm still wondering why my site and not others like me?

Mike

[mikeb]

I had another question on this. Whether or not I am back in Google's index, I remembered that one of the things TP does is actually create another domain which uses the whole mouseover, js, links etc. They have a domain which I guess I can't mention here but it's basically a page that uses my logo and some of the items I feature. Of course, once you mouse over, it takes you to my site.

Is there any way I can change this? It is NOT my domain it's TP's. Or barring that, would I be penalized further if a banned site linked to me?

[qwerty]

If we're going on the assumption for the time being that what we're witnessing right now is a hiccup, and you're still banned, then I think that as long as your domain doesn't contain any of the offending code and you're not linking out to any of these others, it doesn't matter who or what is linking to you. That always been a reliable rule -- you can't be blamed for someone linking to you.

Of course, in this particular case, that depends on you cooperating with Google in giving them all the information they need for your reinclusion.

[mikeb]

If we're going on the assumption for the time being that what we're witnessing right now is a hiccup, and you're still banned, then I think that as long as your domain doesn't contain any of the offending code and you're not linking out to any of these others, it doesn't matter who or what is linking to you. That always been a reliable rule -- you can't be blamed for someone linking to you.

Of course, in this particular case, that depends on you cooperating with Google in giving them all the information they need for your reinclusion.

Bob,
I wrote to Google yesterday but have heard nothing back yet but if I do I would do whatever I could to nail TP.

Mike

[Jill]

Mike, I would request TP immediately remove that offending domain. Do it while you're asking for you money back and when you deliver your law suit to them...lol...

But seriously, firmly request that they remove it and tell them that you will no longer be using their spammy services.

[Lorelle]

I just heard from a former client who declined to follow my SEO advice last year and signed up with TP. He's saying he wants out now, and I want to be sure I'm advising him correctly.

What I told him was to delete all the hidden links from his home page. They each go to a spam page set up on somewhat related sites. At the bottom of each of those pages are sets of 20 links to each of the link partners TP set up. Each of those 20 links goes to a mouseover redirect spam page.

So I'm also telling my former client that he needs to set up a 301 redirect from each of those spam pages TP created so that he can reroute traffic to a good page.

Would you guys concur?

Oh, and I checked out the style sheet TP put on his site to hide the links on his home page. The class (.kerschner) specifies fonts as 1 pixel high with visibility: hidden.

At the very very bottom of my former client's site there's another hidden link I can't figure out. It shows in the source as <p align="center" class="lefevre">[client'sdomain].com</p>. When I look at the specs for the lefevre class, it says the font is 1 pixel and background-image: url(http://spider.[spamdomain-not-TP].com/cgi-bin/spider_report/wherefrom.cgi/[client'sdomain]).

I think legitimate SEOs are about to get very busy cleaning up TP's messes!

[mikeb]

Now that i'm back on Google (although I agree it's probably temporary), should I do a redirect 301 for all the offending pages? I don't want to make matters worse but also don't want these dead links on google.
Thanks,
Mike