Now I’ve learned how Brittish SEO companies with questinable reputation market themselves. I just received the below e-mail from an employee at WebsearchPR in Brighton, UK. The first impression is that this SEO company needs to do something about their own Google PageRank. For me it would be the first sanity check to do before starting an email marketing (unsolicited) for link broking.
Also, Google only knows about one single page from the site. It’s just as bad when querying Yahoo! They cannot find one single incoming link for Websearch PR. I admit that the site seems to be new, (Netcraft displays a 100% risk), but shouldn’t one get just one tiny incoming link before contacting site owners about buying links?
Also, the Firefox plugin WOT shows a very bad trustrank, which is another sign that WebsearchPR probably isn’t the best company for this kind of service…
from “websearchpr.com”
reply-to “websearchpr.com”
date Sep 20, 2007 4:03 AM
subject Your Complimentary Website Popularity CheckHello,
I’ve just performed a complimentary link check for you to highlight how popular your website is around the web.
Here is the result:
www.drinkalizer.com is currently linked to by 572 websites. I have used Google to find these links because for most people this is the most important search engine.
A higher number of links pointing to your website means you can achieve far higher rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN – meaning that you attract more customers, make more profit, and benefit from an increasing return on investment.
To achieve the above, the full service we are offering you includes on-going link campaigns plus the peace of mind that your website is always correctly “tuned” to the search engines’ current algorithms (extremely important these days).
To make sure you get the results you need, your actual search engine results are backed by our 2 tier Top 10 Promise:
1. If we don’t achieve first page rankings for your selected search terms on Google, Yahoo, MSN we’ll refund your money!
2. If we don’t then keep you on first page rankings for your selected search terms on Google, Yahoo, MSN we’ll refund your money!
At every stage of your campaign you will be kept fully up to date, with regular reports detailing exactly how your search terms are performing across the search engines.
We are offering you our Top 10 Promise because we are confident in our methods, having achieved excellent results for many of our clients using extremely competitive search terms.
To find out what kind of results our clients have experienced, we are happy to provide you with their contact details so you can contact them directly.
You will also benefit from your own personal account manager whom you may contact at any time should you need any assistance or have any questions.
For full details either reply to this email at enquiries@websearchpr.com, phone 0845 055 9413, or visit our website at www.websearchpr.com.
Also – Newly Released – you can now benefit from entering the massive Chinese market on the Chinese search engines in the Chinese language. Contact us for full details.
Best Regards
Frank Johnson
Senior Promotional AssistantWebSearchPR.com
Friese-Greene House
15-17 Middle Street
Brighton
BN1 1AL
United KingdomTel: 0845 nnn nnnn
xxxx@websearchpr.com
www.websearchpr.com
I know I shouldn’t, but I just cannot help it. I just have to write a reply asking them if they shouldn’t attend to their own site before looking down on the 572 incoming links that Google reports. We are very happy with them, and even happier about the fact that Yahoo! reports 13,129 incoming links. That’s a pretty good result for a site that has been unattended for more than a year…
from Nikke Lindqvist
to “websearchpr. com” <xxxx@websearchpr.com>
date Sep 20, 2007 1:59 PM
subject Re: Your Complimentary Website Popularity Check
mailed-by gmail.comHello Frank,
Thanks for your complimentary link check. I’m very pleased with the
572 incoming links that Google reports, and even happier with the
13,129 incoming links that Yahoo Site Explorer reports.However, you might want to take a look at your own site’s position in
the search enging results pages. A GooglePR of 0, no incoming links
reported either on Google or Yahoo, only one page indexed in G and Y,
plus a risk rating of 10 from Netcraft…. It just doesn’t look good.
Maybe you should apply your own services before selling them to
others?I also couldn’t help to notice that you have a very poor trust ranking
with WOT, something you might want to look into while you are at it.Best regards,
Nikke Lindqvist http://www.lindqvist.com
I’ll get back with their reply if I ever get one.
This post is also available in Swedish as Länksäljarmail från WebsearchPR i Brighton
September 26, 2007 at 3:32 pm |
Hi there,
We (well, one of our clients) received the exact same email today. And, like you, we’re very tempted to reply personally to Frank, and point out the error of his ways.
But I think that there are going to be many people who actually fall for his false claims, and so it would be better for the general public to try and alert the appropriate authorities that he is spamming people.
Hopefully something will be done about him before he actually gets somebody’s money.
- Detox Media
September 26, 2007 at 8:27 pm |
Well, searching for his company name would maybe be one of the first actions, even for a potential customer, and then this blog, and my Swedish blog turns up. I hope that will help in putting people off.
September 27, 2007 at 8:39 am |
You would think that people would run a search for them first, but you’d be surprised how many business owners and managers have no idea how these things work (which isn’t surprising really) and actually believe spammers like this.
I think it’s the responsibility of people who know better to try and stop these spammers whenever they encounter them. They’ll never go away for good, but this is the first time we’ve received such an email, and so we will do what we can to stop them.
October 15, 2007 at 2:52 pm |
I received the exact same email, and sent them the exact same reply! I just searched for them again, and this time I found this site.
The amount of backlinks google publicly reports has gone way down, you get a better count in webmaster tools – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
As a comparison, olann.net has 622 backlinks in webmaster tools, but only 6 if you search for link:olann.net on google, and 654 on yahoo’s site explorer…
November 13, 2007 at 4:08 pm |
I just received one of these e-mails. I found this hilarious at best, and gave my own reply:
Anyway – the reason why they don’t have any more than 1 link in google is because of the noindex, nofollow meta tag. Why would a SEO company keen on gathering business block out search engines from their own website? This to me shows a classic misunderstanding of the meta tags!
Thought I’d stick my reply here though, just so you’re aware it’s still happening.
December 4, 2007 at 11:51 am |
I have just received a simmiler message from Hellen from WebSearchPR.
They still have no PR and when you search for WebSearchPR you get this page at number 1.
All the best
Sean
December 4, 2007 at 5:03 pm |
I endorse the above findings/reservations. I entered “WebsearchPR” as a Google search term and the first hit was this webpage (wordpress.com) !! Using their homepage keywords from the HTML source does not place them in the top 100.
December 11, 2007 at 12:03 pm |
I got this email too – promising me Id be on google’s front page for my key phrase – no-one can promise this…………
Found your blog and put the email in the delete box.
Is there anyone who can be trusted?
December 12, 2007 at 3:29 pm |
I just recieved one of these emails as well. It is December now and they are still doing this. I would imagine that means they have made some profits. I even recieved it from a lady named Tina Jobling the “Senior Promotional Assistant” for WebSearchPR.com. So, I closed the email, and googled websearchpr and found this page to be the first link. I love it. This is more than I expected or hoped for. The letter was pretty convincing but I was doubtful. I completely agree, they should be the first link on all the search engines before they go around advertising if they want to run a legit business. However as you have both pointed out, this scam works pretty well to con the unknowing business owners that don’t understand the internet. A sad story. Thanks for your opinions and setting up this page.
Regards,
-Dustin Graham
Garden Pond Center
December 20, 2007 at 10:09 am |
Thank you so much for your information about WebSearchPR.com. I have just had the same email promising me higher rankings if I just sign up to their services. When I googled their name, your site come up first!
Thanks again for helping me avoid this one, like all new sites, I am always trying to improve my ranking but will find other ways than employing this company.
Kate at http://www.thegetwellgiftboxcompany.co.uk
December 27, 2007 at 4:49 pm |
Thanks for this post. I got an email from WebSearchPR.com today and was pleased to find your post confirming my suspicions when I googled their address. It looks like they’ve grown their team a little, though, since mine came from Carol Johnson, another Senior Promotional Assistant and our friend Frank.
December 27, 2007 at 4:51 pm |
Thanks for this post. I got an email from WebSearchPR.com today and was pleased to find your post confirming my suspicions when I googled their address. It looks like they’ve grown their team a little, though, since mine came from Carol Johnson, another Senior Promotional Assistant and not our friend Frank.
January 10, 2008 at 1:31 am |
I actually received this (automated) reply from them!
Received: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:13:40 PM EST
From: teresa@websearchpr.com
To: _____@usa.net
Subject: Re: Re: Your Complimentary Website Popularity Check
Hi, due to the volume of emails I cannot personally answer them all.
If your email was an enquiry about our Top 10 Rankings with Money-Back Guarantee for any unplaced terms on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or about promoting your company online in China, please send your email to enquiries@websearchpr.com
If your email was regarding software outsourcing to China or custom software development/bespoke programming solutions such as database design, client-server and internet/intranet software application development (PHP, ASP, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, JAVA, HTML, XML, C++), please send your email to soft@websearchpr.com
If your email was a reply to a link exchange request please refer back to the original email where you will find an email address to respond to.
Thank you.
Best regards
Teresa
January 28, 2008 at 3:42 pm |
I have just (28Jan08) received the same email and carried out similar checks to you. The domain is now 6 months old and still PR0, no backlinks etc……. I think this is just a big con, mind you I would love to know how much they charge!!!!!!!! Well done for blogging about this, as it helps anyone who does even the basic google check on websearchpr.
March 1, 2008 at 9:39 pm |
Ha ha!
I can’t believe it, I done the exact same thing as you to see how crap their site was and seen you in the BL with the ‘foreign’ post.
I also replied, will see what gobaldy gook I receive back.