I spent soem time today speaking with a gentleman from Traffic-power.com. Does anyone have any experience with this company or know if they are for real. What he ran through on his web site looks very impressive, but I guess I'm a sceptic. Anybody who can tell me anything would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Well, you should read this first, http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html . Then look at their site again. Replace words like "attraction pages" with "shadow pages" (Googles term for a type of doorway). Also, pay attention to the link situation.

Also, check their own situation out. It looks as if Google doesn't have them listed. There is only the listing in the directory, which stays even after a site is banned. There is a cache, which indicates they know they exist, they are just refusing to list them. I also looked at the links, Google doesn't show any for them, but here is an example I found on AV, http://www.decorativeoutdoorproducts.com/ It is just spam.

Thanks, Janet. I did in fact find them on a number of searches, although they don't come up tops when I search for "search engine optimization". I tried several search engines, and they list well. Their link pages seem to be both FFA's of all their many clients and also themed, which is good (except that there is no theme that covers my site). I am a little nervous about the whole doorway pages concept (They say it's not the same thing as a doorway). One of those pages did in fact come up high on a search I did (I think it was at Google) for them.

It looks like the upside is a much better ranking in most major engines, but the chicken in me is afraid of being blacklisted if the search engines decide this is messing with their ability to give good results to the public.

I'm enough of a newbie that I still have no idea what to do, but I am just experienced enough to know that a little bit of research won't necessarily answer my question.

You should be very nervous about doorway pages done solely for search engine optimisation. Who told you that FFA pages are fine? Many of these are horrible link farms.

If you are serious about search engine placement and the longevity of your web site realise here and now there are no super, quick, cheap fixes anymore. Perhaps at one time these simple spam tricks yielded results, but now they are very risky.

You either need to learn how to do things yourself or pay a professional to do your search engine optimising. You can then take apart their work to learn so that in the future you may do it yourself. Do not hire spammers.

Another company to watch out for in my opinion is (www).mainstreethosts(.com). I put their url like this so they don't get any value from this post. Good luck.

As far as I'm concerned, Traffic-Power.com provides a good search engine placement service. My traffic dramatically increased after I used them. They are also significantly cheaper than other SEO companies I researched.

Rubbish - they are big time spammers - my advice, if you are genuine, is be very careful.

Go to marketleap.com and find their inbound links, go to these pages and look at the code especially the - <img src="/transbg.gif" width=1 height=1 - bit.

way2wired, this is your first post, and I wonder if you are not affiliated with this "outfit". Regardless, I would stay far away from Traffic-Power.

How does one prove that you have been black listed due to these kind of tactics. We worked with a company that sent us a lot of spam from pornographic sites. Then MSN and google seemed to drop all our links Even though we were well indexed before we had any dealing with them. They were supposed to be a reprensentive of Inktomi Connect. We seem to have repaired a lot of the damage at this point, but I feel that this was very dishonest.

Hi o2beme, and welcome to SEF
Well, it takes some research and analysis of a site to determine why and how it has been penalised or black listed. Are you talking about the site in your profile? You're listed well in Google, you have a healthy amount of links and from here it can only get better.
Have you done any conscious optimisation of the site? Bad ranking in search engines doesn't necessarily mean you've been subject to a penalty. Maybe all you need is some fine tuning and work on more links from other sites.

Thanks for your response. No last year we were totally dropped from google and Msn at the same time we told the Inktomi connect vendor/person we did not want to do business with them. Our web logs show multiple like 7000 plus visitors from pornographic search sites for certain terms not appropriate for a not adult site. I won't pay them because I don't think that they should have done this and my MSN representative called and said there is problems with your site, and we were veritually not anywhere on the site. Since that time I have been reading everything I can on the use of search engines and have worked hard to get re-indexed, but have become a little afraid to jump in again with another vendor.

Great to hear that you managed to repair most of the damage. You are right, it's best to try and teach yourself and do it on your own even though it takes a little effort to learn.

Funny, just talked to a guy from traffic-power the otehr day. The concept they offer is obviously junk, but here's my favorite part.

Initial price - $3600 for 1 year service
dropped to $3000
dropped to $2400
dropped to $1200 for half year
dropped to $1000 for half year
offered double the work for $1000 for 6 month contract
dropped price to $600 as final offer

hmmmmm $3600 down to $600, plus double the work.... you make youre decisions from there.

I just got a call from those jokers (Traffic Power) and they were asking $4000 for one year of service with a guarantee of EIGHT (8) Top 10 listings. WOW, can you imagine that, a whole 8 top 10 listings

One thing the guy said was that search engines were REQUIRED by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to redo their ranking algorithms every 3-4 months in order to better "distribute" the wealth produced by top rankings.

I asked him to repeat the statement several times because I could believe what I had heard. He insisted it was true, but as I continued to challenge him on it, he hung up the phone...

I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Was there ANY validity to his remarks about the FTC?


[ Message was edited by: RudyG 05/02/2003 12:00 pm ]


[ Message was edited by: RudyG 05/02/2003 12:00 pm ]

The only thing I have ever heard about the FTC and search engines was awhile back they started they reccommended that search engines made it more clear which results were paid and which were not -- that was never made a requirement though (to my knowledge). Check out this article for the skinny on that.

As far as them being required by FTC to redo their algo's, that just sounds like a giant load of BS to me... I am sure that would be a widly known tidbit of info... unless Traffic Power has some great connections to the FTC and knows something we don't , forgive me if I think there is no chance in that being the case.

o2beme,

If the site you want to have worked on is the same as in your profile..here's what you do...

Currently, you have a PR4 for the index page with 2 backlinks showing up using Google's link: function..and those inbound links are from a local resource to your area...(lancastercounty web site) ... they also have a PR4 and have 31 inbound links..(typically, Google will not show inbound links PR3 or less, but that doesn't mean they don't have some value)

So concentrate on acquiring inbound links from sites that will complement the products you offer. Do some research on sites that are in your industry sector or a different sector that crosses over to yours...put up a nice "links resource" page with a definite link off your index page...then contact all the Web sites on your links page (try the webmaster first) and ask for a reciprical link back into your site...you should see a decent conversion rate using this strategy...

This will help to create some "interest" in your site and give the site more authority as Google finds these valuable inbound links during their venerable "deep crawl" (216.239..).....

Then you can work your individual content rich product pages against the freshbot crawls (64.68...) and bring those into more prominence for capturing traffic into your nice site..

Always beware of companies that use aggressive cold calling or spamming tricks to get you on the phone with one of their "hot" closers....they are typically not interested in the longevity or well-being of any industry (especially the delicate, flower like quality with gentle flowing moss growing at it's feet SEO industry)...



Good luck.

What's a PR$, PR3, etc.?

Rudy, a warm and fuzzy welcome to SEF!

Well, Rudy, that would be Page Rank. Named after a guy named Page, I kid you not. Basically it is a calculation that Google uses to determine your site's "worth" and relevancy to a particular subject mattter.

There are a number of factors that come into play, but mostly it is about links from other relevant sites that point to your's. So if you are limousine business and your site has a bunch of links from travel and industry related sites pointing to your's, then you will be considered highly relevant to someone doing a search for limousine service.

Google assigns numbers from 1-10 in asending order of "importance," with ten being the highest. The object is to optimize your site's content and coding so that the search engine spiders can navigate your site's pages and find a good number of juicy key words/phrases to latch on to when someone sends them a query and they go looking for the answer. The more relevant links and the better your content/coding is optimized, the higher your PR. And the higher your PR (though not always) the better you will place in the Search Engine Results Pages SERPs. Note: see how acronyms are in blue, if you hover your mouse over them you will have the glossary for these terms pop up. HTH

[ Message was edited by: Hux 05/03/2003 12:03 am ]

Welcome RudyG
You can see PR by downloading Google's toolbar. It's the green/white thingy near the middle of the toolbar. Rest your mouse on it and the rank will be displayed.
There are more information and discussions about the toolbar in the Google forum.

[ Message was edited by: Susanne 05/03/2003 02:07 am ]

Thanks for that helpful response. I was wondering if paid links like Yahoo help with this. Someone suggested I find a relavent sponsored link in Yahoo and that would help raise my pr. Is this true?? The lancaster link is from someone who had my domain name before and dropped it and I picked it up as it is the name of my retail store. Will that hurt me?

I have to agree that I have never heard of it being manditory for the Search Engines to update algo's every three months. I have however heard through the grapevine that Google is drestically changing their algo's in retrospect of the link farms (a.k.a. link pools, themed link pools, reciprical link pools, etc) so that if there is more than 10 to 15 links on any one page that it is not going to be listed.

Maybe something like that will knock these money rip offs like Traffic Power off the Search Engines! Unfortunately, it is companies like this that miss it up for everyone else who is trying to get placement the correct way. In a nut shell if you are going to do SEO then do it the right way or research more clearly as to what exactly the company does to get you that placement and look through these "link pools" each and every link, to see where it goes. You may find some surprising results as to what your site is actually getting link too!

so that if there is more than 10 to 15 links on any one page that it is not going to be listed.

Can't say I've heard that. I can't possibly see how it would be true.

Are they planning to delist nearly every site in existance? (Add up navigational links alone and you're likely to be over that.)

Google has published guidelines that state it's a good idea to keep the number of links per page to 100 or less.

It is just hear-say. And if I am not mistaken it is for URL linking only, no navigations links at all. It will be interesting if it is true.

show me one site that has been banned from google in the last two weeks.

I recommend just hanging up on them. I listened to the pitch the first time someone called and now I get two calls a week from them or a reseller of theirs. One rep even called me stupid because I said no. My email to their general sales email address bounced. Great company, not!

Even though most of the posts here are pretty old, it's great to have had the chance to read what some of the people here think and their experiences with this company.

I had someone from the company call me regarding one of my "throwaway" sites (a drink recipe site) and we started talking about some of my bigger sites. I'm at a phase where I do pretty well on my own (i.e. I'm listed 4, 8, 10, etc., but would definitely consider investing in having someone help build that up even further (obviously to top 4), so I was very interested in hearing what they had to say.

I am only at the first stage of getting sold to (a $5,000 base price which I can now get for $3500, but only if I sign up on Monday - sounds like I'm buying a timeshare) and was trying to do some homework over the w/e regarding this. I am glad to read what you guys wrote and will definitely keep it in mind.

Just want to warn anyone thinking of using traffic-power.com. We signed up with these jokers 2 months ago, never had a top 10 ranking, and now our site has been blacklisted by google.

They claim we are no longer in googles index because google changed their algorithms. Obviously this is not true. I firmly believe we have been black listed due to our association with them.

BEWARE!!!

jennid, if you only signed up with them 2 months ago that seems like a rather short time to get anything done let alone be blacklisted.

Not saying it's not possible, anything is possible, but it's not likely in that short amount of time.

JimWorld doesn't use anything like that and we've had some pretty wild fluctuations in our ranking - going from #1 to #15 in a matter of hours on one term.

It's better not to jump to conclusions without reviewing all possibilities.

I wasn't expecting any top 10 results in 2 months, but 2 months after we installed their html pages on our site, our site was delisted from google. They used doorway pages and link farms to promote our site - I am sure this is why we were removed from the google directory.

You're sure jennid? I wouldn't be sure about anything in regards to Google unless they told you themselves.

One time I was sure I was banned. A month or so later.. I was back. I guess my site was just down at the wrong time or something.

You're getting good advice here jennid. While it's possible that their methods have caused your dissapearance, it's not 100% certain.

Sometimes timing is just funky. I had a client completely dissapear from Google last fall during the Florida update. I'd only signed them two months earlier and hadn't really even had a chance to get much new content online. T'was sheer coincidence. Took them two months to show up in the index again.

I'd do a bit more investigating and give it a month or so to see what happens. If you're not comfortable with the company's tactics, then, by all means, work with another SEO, but I'd give them the benefit of the doubt for at least another month to see what's going on.

Also, if you think the pages that have recently been uploaded to your website go against Google's stated guidelines - simply remove them.

Thanks. I have removed all of their htlm doorway pages and link pages from our site and emailed help@google.com with a reinclusion request. Now I am just waiting to see what happens. I appreciate your feedback - if you have any other ideas for me please let me know.

Thank you!

I am new here today and I'm afraid I already signed up with Traffic Power a week ago. Has anyone been successful in getting their money back. I've already had experience with completely non relevant keywords they have suggested.

There is actually one good thing about these guys -- they must have one hell of a sales force!

They are wearing me out.

Has anyone been successful in getting their money back.

Yes, be persistent and let them know you are going to expose them if they don't refund your money.

Traffic-Power is what gives this industry a major black eye. I know this personally as I've had to deal with the fallout of a client who has come my way after using traffic-power. Fortunately the client came to me about 30 days after TP "optimized" their site.

I got a voice mail one day from the client who stated that I was referred to them from another client of mine. They left their URI on my voice mail. First thing I did was browse to the URI and ouch! Clear gifs at the bottom of the page that led to a variety of gateway pages on site and off site.

I believe there were approximately 80 gateway pages uploaded to the clients site. These were machine generated garbage pages that made no sense whatsoever. Assembled copy that weaved the clients terms into porn and drug related terms. Links to other TP clients and their own little network of garbage. Links to illegal activities, products and services.

It was so bad that I advised the client to take legal action as their 35 year old brand was at stake. If you could see some of the Google snippets that were appearing on these gateway pages that TP developed, you would have been shocked, especially based on the clients business model. Here is a local college who now had porn and drugs showing up for searches related to their business.

Yes, the client was able to get a refund after I generated a report as backup for what TP did. I told the client to drop my name and directory as a reference. I want so bad to get these people out of the game. They are producing absolute garbage and at the same time are putting all of their clients at risk.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe they have a copy of Salsa and that is whats generating the pages. If any of you are familiar with Salsa, then you know the routine.

Stay very far away from companies like this, please!

Hi, I'm new here and I don't know what gateway/doorway pages are. Please can you explain?

Adding my two cents here. Got the hard sell from these guys this AM. They browse with you so you can see the wonderful sites and the "Fabulous" results. They have you go to Google and look at search terms.

They were impressive in the way they used sales techniques which activated my BS detector. They were so impressive with objection handling and attempted closes that more red flags popped up than you'd see in a Chinese Communist Party parade.

After probing me hard as to why I just would not sign up NOW I told them I never buy off a single phone call and needed to do research and would check forums (I was viewing this forum at the time)and news reports and look at other alternatives before I made a decision.

The very next question: "Who was my biggest competitor?" -as if we were going to now go look at them and see how well they showed up in the listings. I'm typing it in and immediately the guy says is "well it looks like you just aren't the right kind of person for our service, bye. I've called my competitors (we are actually more in "coopetion"and warned them.

So I guess the bottom line is that if you are smarter than the average rube they don't want you.

Though I think that Traffic Power is using dangerous SEO techniques, I also know that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get blacklisted strictly by having link pages/farms linking to your site. Now, you may not get credit for those links if the Google algo deems that those pages or websites are violating their linking standards, so the issue would still remain of getting what you paid for, but you will not get blacklisted by having them link to you.

Think for a second. If you could get banned simply by having them link to you, then why wouldn't you set up some other site filled with link farms and purposely link to all of your competitors so that they can all get banned. Like I said, you will not get blacklisted simply by having the Traffic Power link pages linking to you.

HOWEVER, DO NOT let them place any doorway pages or do ANYTHING to your own site. If you let them place these pages and cloak your website's pages, then you CAN be banned from the search engines because it will be YOU who is in violation. If you do decide to do business with this company, let them take the risk. Just make sure you get what you paid for.

Tell them that you will be running backlink checks on your site to see if their links have been registered in Google. OptiLink software is another way to analyze whether you are getting what was advertised. They will never guarantee search engine placement because no SEO company can, but I would MAKE them at least guarantee a certain number of indexed, themed, links per keyword within a 90 day period.

They will likely offer you 40 keywords. And $4000 is about the price they like to hover around. If you paid $1 per link (which is HIGH for some text on a page), that would mean that you would need 100 links per keyword going to your site (4000 total). I would negotiate $500 up front and $0.50 per link registered with Google. If they can get 5000 registered themed links they would get $2,500.

If they balk at the idea, I’d say: “How many registered themed links am I getting? Even if you guys got me 4000 links, how can you justify me paying $1 per link? You can’t guarantee me that I’ll even be on the first page for ANY of these keywords, and therefore you can’t guarantee me ANY additional traffic. For that price, I can do a PPC campaign and be positive that I will get 10,000+ qualified people to my site.”

If they are as good as they say they are, this scenario should be no problem. Hell, if the pages were legit and the price was $0.10 per registered link, I’d pay that EACH MONTH for the links that were registered.

ALSO, remember that before you get caught up in all of the smoke and mirrors of their clients and where they are ranked. How can they prove that they were the ones that got that client that ranking? For instance, several of my sites were already ranked on the first page of Google for many of the key terms I was looking for. You can bet that they would take credit for every single ranking.

Anyway, you may deal with them as you wish. I hope this info provides some help. Bring up these issues in the negotiations. Chances are, the sales guy will probably bring in his "supervisor" to come in and answer the technical questions. It’s the basic car dealer approach.

I had a guy call me and I kept him on the phone for 2 hours... just to see if he could close me into a deal. Their proposal went from $6K for one year of service to $500 for 6 months of service and double the amount of "doorway" or "attraction" or "smoke and mirrors" pages - whatever they call them today.

Total joke. Total junk. I did offer the guy a job with us as a telemarketer

Since my site was banned, I have heard from others who have had their sites blacklisted from Google after hiring Traffic Power.

If you hired Traffic Power and consequently had your site blacklisted I would like to hear from you. (If you are reading this and haven't hired them yet, PLEASE beware!!!)

wow.. i was just on the phone with them.... and showed them this page hahaha the guy starts yelling at me.... and i am the client....(it was pretty funny) .... then he proceeds to argue with me that they are not creating doorway pages they are creating "mouse over pages" hahahahaha......

THEN!!! he directs me to this page to "END THIS RIDICULOUS ARGUMENT" and get the doorway mentailty out of my head:

http://www.traffic-power.com/sep-screenshot.html

i dunno.... but that look like a doorway page to me.

Too funny...

Anyway....they are making some good cash.. and they do have some pretty solid rankings.... but its all fabricated.... and of course they can't guarnatee ranking.... even though their 'unique software' monitors and understand exactlywhat the google search engine wants.

I swear... that is what they said to me.... after i told him i had been doing this for 5 years.... they still talked to me like a was some kid off the meat truck.

Google will figure out what they are doing and trash the whole lot overnight sometime.

Now that's funny. When they approached my client he asked me to give them a call. They showed me a couple of examples, I questioned the rep... before the end of the call I had a "manager" berating me on the phone.

You're right about the cash though. I'm still tracking one of there "mouse-over pages" and it's still #1. They've added a bit of text(when I first looked it was literally 1-200 text links with keywords in the anchor text) and an animated gif "loading page" in case people miss the mouse-over.

I guess with that being one of my first experiences in "SEO" it causes me to be a little more sceptical about "penalties", "banning" etc. Hell if they're still rolling, we oughta be able to do almost anything.

Thanks dpeddle.

P.S. I saved a text file of the original if anyone's interested. I won't post it as it would be a tremenous waste of space.

Unfortunately I got taken in by Traffic-Power. It seemed to work great for one site (capsandvisors.com), so I signed up for another (texas-medical.com).
It appears that both sites have been dropped by Google.
What do I do now? I'm in the hole for over $4,000, so I don't want to cut them out presumptiously, but at the same time, I don't want things to get worse.
If I delete all their Attraction pages, will I be able to get back on Google?
(sure wish I found this forum 6 months ago)

garris, how about a link to one of the doorway pages. From what I've seen... doorway pages, particularly if they meet the minimum standards for "normalcy" are rarely the reason for a site getting banned or dropped.

Oops, I meant attractor

Garris - Traffic Power and the changes they made to your sites are definitely the reason you were dropped from google. You are not alone. I have heard from many others who were working with TP and have had URL's banned from google and yahoo in the last few months. Some of these companies are on TP's reference list!

My site alone is down in revenue a few thousand dollars a day due to being pulled from google and yahoo. (You should check yahoo too - many of us were pulled from both). We are compiling a list of affected indivduals and investigating further action. If you'd like to be kept up to date on our efforts, please send me an email.

For reinclusion into google, take all of the traffic power "junk" off of your site, then send an email to help@google.com. Unfortunately it takes several weeks or even months before you will be reincluded. Some of us were in for a week and pulled back out again, even though our sites were cleaned up.

Hang in there!

don;t you mean 'mouse over' pages scott HAHAHA....

Well.... garris.... not sure what you signed on with.... but obviously you are not getting the service you were expecting.... you got smoke and mirrors.....

this company has a bad reputation around many circles... so if you really wanted to...(especially if you paid via credit card) ... you could demand a refund..... if your business has a decent record behind it.... the credit card company won't think twice about it.

As for the pages..... i look at it this way..... you are no longer listed.... something is wrong..... and all bets point to the crap traffic power has given you..... why risk it..... copy the pages to your local computer for safe keeping (if they actually gave them to you)..... delete them.... and see what happens with google (first worry about being listed...then worry about ranking) .

Also ... this may sound like a bad idea to many here.... but I would email webmaster@google.com .... explaining your problem...focus on the fact your site is not indexed after being in the index for 'x' period of time and you can't figure out why you are gone from the index.... (play dumb) ...

you will get some typical autoresponder response back for sure..... THEN.... reply to that email again (it usually has an ticketnumber).... and keep replying til you get a personal response... usually takes 2-4 emails...... when you do get a response... in most cases they will tell you if you have been banned.....

For all i know you could be keywrod stuffing, etc etc.... but from what you have said in your post... it seems pretty cut and dry..... drop traffic power... request a refund (couldn't hurt) from them...then from the credit card company......and drop their pages

My first post here . . .

Just got off the phone with a T-P sales shark (third conversation in less than a week). I have a policy of not spending that kind of money the same day I hear about a "deal" and I haven't missed anything yet.

My 2 cents: if intense sales pressure has to be applied then something is wrong with the product. Good products basically sell themselves. Sales reps for good products are merely needed to carefully identify areas the product can address and politely answer my questions.

T-P's sales pitch was neither polite nor respectful. My existing website search positions were ridiculed (while not great, they're not too bad either). I was put down and JimWorld posts on this topic were put down. Some sales pitch! Great way to win friends and influence people.

Beware! If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

Oh, and he denied they were mouseover pages (and I was ignorant for thinking they were). Life is fun!

Well, this is my first post on this forum. Just signed up with Traffic Power 2 weeks ago and now I feel like a fool. I requested a refund and told them the comments I've heard and read and I also questioned why don't they have a PR themselves. I contacted my credit card company and hope these people don't get away with this "robbery". Any suggestions? I'm a newbie and need help help help!
Thanks

Anyone ever hear of a SEO called Ezrankings.com? Any comments?

justmyluck, Welcome to the forums.

I've never heard of Ezrankings, but then again there's alot I haven't heard of. Regarding TrafficPower... I'm assuming you've taken the time to wade through the other post on them. Your options there will likely be a function of the agreement you have with them. I know that Dpeddle had a couple of suggestions near the end of that post for unhappy clients. You may want to PM him directly.

Personally, my distaste for their practices is just that. The pages I've been tracking are still ranked highly with no penalties using techniques that are advised against by the search engines.

I'm one of those naive fools who got sucked in by Traffic-Power.
I tried one of my sites, and had immediate results. Since it seemed to work so well, I gave them another, and then BANG! I lost my Google inclusion for both websites.
Only after wondering what happened did I find this forum... and after I sank a hefty down payment.
I am considering transferring their "attraction pages" to one of my dummy sites while I clean up my primary site just to see what happens. That, and cancel the debit card I used so I dont have to pay anymore monthly fees to Traffic-Power. They're not going to refund any money because, as they have said, "they've already done the work".
$3,000 is a big hicky to have to swallow and I'm wondering if I can play both ends against the middle. Any ideas? Am I being sneaky?

damn, I can't believe this you guys/gals. How are there so many people here that have worked with TP and there are so many SEO firms out there and ya'll picked some shady fellas(and expensive)

These guys have been pitching their sale to my company for over 2 months now. Finally on Thursday I was called up by a sales rep that had all the right words for a company struggling to get noticed. I did the usual with them, whent on google (what about yahoo?), typed in a bunch of keywords and saw #1 and #2 listings. The sales rep flattered my business and told me what a great match my site would be for their service. I started thinking about the possibility of partnering up with these guys, they've got a solid pitch.

The pitch took a different tone once I informed the sales rep that whats really keeping me from this is finances. My business is a start up and my budget simply can not afford such an expense at this time ($4000). The sales rep told me we can work something out let me have you talk to the sales manager. Looking back on things the sales manager was down right pushy.

He told me the best thing to do would be to put the transaction on a credit card and then just pay it off monthly. I told him theres no way Im putting this on my business credit card. He didn't seem to understand what would keep me from doing this. I'm a new business, banks dont really extend a huge line of credit to start ups. Thats when the great deals started coming my way. I'll bring the price down to $3200, you can pay half up front and the remaining balance on a 10 month payment plan. I started thinking about this, dam the business needs some exposure!! I told him I needed some time to think about this. He then whent on to tell me how they've got such a solid reputation with the Better Business Bureau, out of over 10,000 clients only a handful ever complained. He whent into detail how they've got the search engines figured out, they've got a great bit of software and a crew of finely trained technicians that figure every search engine angle out for your benefit.

I still told him I'll need some time to think about this. He told me no problem I'll give you to the end of the week. This week? Thats one day, the week ends on Friday this call took place on Thursday. He says what do you need more time for, check out the BBB, check out some of our clients, how long could that take? This is when this guy pointed out to me that right now hes in an office surrounded by 4 of his sales reps and they're all watching him close this deal. Only he can give me this great 20% price break, and this deal expires on Friday. He re-itterated how great this would benefit my business and how great of a deal this really is since he rarely even gets on the phone, as hes THE SALES MANAGER.

Now the deal was turning into a sale, I really didn't want to pass up this great deal. I was going with it, he started punching in my information into his invoice. Only he could do this because only he had the discount code needed to give me this great deal. Once he took all my information down he wanted my credit card info. He told me he couldn't process the paperwork unless he had my CC info. I told him I didn't have my wallet on on me, and theres no way to get to it at this time. He instructed one of his sales reps to copy all my information down on a piece of paper so he could redo the invoice tomorrow. We then set up a time to close the deal on Friday at 1:00pm Eastern Time.

Right on the dot I got a call at one o'clock. The first words I said when I received the call were "I'm backing out of the deal". ???!!! Thats usually what happens when someone can't find their wallet he said. This is when the guy started actually getting angry. He said, "so you dont wanna make money on the web, huh". Then he asked me for my reasoning, why would I back out of such a great service at such a great price.

#1 I typed in traffic power, traffic-power, and trafficpower on google and your nowhere to be found.
#2 Your page rank according to the google tool bar is a big fat zero
#3 I dont like doorway pages and neither do the search engines in the long run
#4 The idea of my site directory being saturated with a hundred or more spam infested files does not do much for me
#5 The more i thought of that sales manager the more I wanted to slam a steel toe boot up his a$#

Later that day I got another call from a sales rep trying the whole pitch over again. This guy actually claimed to not have an idea of my conversation earlier in the day. I'm sure many more calls will come my way, and I actually kind of look forward to them especially now that Im actually learning a bit about SEO.

Any recommendations of some SEO companies that are trusted? The business is really starving for some exposure but I'd much rather work with a solid company. Maybe this company has truly helped out some sites in the short term, but down the road these same companies might run in to quite a jam down the road.

dregna

"Any recommendations of some SEO companies that are trusted? The business is really starving for some exposure but I'd much rather work with a solid company."

You're surrounded by them here in the forums. Take some time to identify posters that know what they are talking about and that have a tone and personality that you feel comfortable with, and then drop them a PM to see if they are taking new business. I can think of dozens of posters here that would do an excellent job for you.

I own several sites, some business others just fun. I've been doing my own SEO work for a few years now myself (and two webmasters who work for me). Lately I've been hearing a lot of clatter about google updates and so on, a lot of people out there claiming to have been blacklisted etc etc by this or that SEO company. From my experience, Google isn't really obsessed with blacklisting websites for white or grey hat SEO (doorway pages are greyhat at best). More serious infractions by SEO blackhats would be under the 'cloaking' category which is quite complex and involves server side technology. For a good example of what Google actually lets go by these days check out some of the blatant spam created by the likes of gogenerator like this example http://www.gogenerator.com/car/215/car-dealer-fort-used-worth.html . Cripes! they fed google back their own SERPS!!! LOL
For a few more good laughs, go check out some brilliant 'black hat' SEO at http://www.blackhatseo.com
have fun kids! :D

[ Message was edited by: tex_dude 04/26/2004 10:34 pm ]

I'm supposed to be making $200/mo payments for each of the 2 sites I have with Traffic Power. Both got dropped by Google and Yahoo. All my other sites are still listed,so the connection has to be obvious.
I cancelled the debit card I used and am waiting to see how loud they are gonna scream.
I'd like to threaten them with a Class Action lawsuit for lying to me about the legitamacy of their techniques -- even if its just for the chilling effect.
I'm not a lawyer and have no idea if that is a credible threat. Anyone have any ideas about that?

I feel SO lucky to have found this forum . My friend Bill at www.ecommerceconfidential.com (he has some cool reviews and a related newsletter on internet products at his site), turned me on to JimWorld when I told him I was in contact with T-P and was wondering if he had heard of them.

Thank you so much for all of your posts!

The whole T-P thing seemed too good to be true, but I was open to the idea after losing some of my main Google placements in March 2004. T-P offered me 20 keywords for 2K. No budging on price (which surprised me given the salesy nature of the guys). I had the first guy, then the more "technical" guy thing, too. Anyway, they were nice enough and respectful, so they almost had me. Gosh, am I glad that I asked for help.

Now I won't even bother to continue researching.


Last but not least, I just wanted to say that one of my sites was listed #1 on like 5 of my search terms (one term for over 2 years). And, I was completely dropped from Google on those terms early March, as I mentioned above. I knew this might happen someday. Google folks are really helpful and did reassure me that I was not blacklisted. I had not done anything, but I thought the worst!

Nevertheless, I was not alone. Thereafter, there was a write up about the latest shifts at Google in my favorite SEO newsletter from www.highrankings.com. Jill is totally on the up and up - ethical. Using her ideas is how I got my high rankings in the first place. I have now decided that I am going to sit tight and rely on my GoogleAds for awhile (which, BTW, T-P said Google wanted to kick me out so I would buy ads - I paid a whopping $25 last month! ).

garris, I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt.

If you really feel you must threaten them to get results, I would avoid the term class action suit. Rather, if you want to tell a litle white lie, tell them that on advice of your lawyer, you're telling them verbally of your intent to cancel your contract with them, and that you will be following it up with a letter of intent to nullify your contract.

Tell them that you have prepared documentation to send to your credit card company to get your monay back, but you'll accept a refund by the end of the business day today. The reason for this is, they don't want to get a charge back. If this happens too often, the credit card company will cancel their account, and they won't be able to accept that particular credit card again.

Garris you should really email me. I have a list of sites that were pulled from google due to Traffic Power. So far we are up to 16. A few of us are trying to organize something - not sure what yet, but I have spoken with someone at the Nevada District Attorneys Office.

I was told I'd receive a refund - and that my posts on this site are being turned over to their attorney. I haven't received a refund but have disputed the charges with my cc company.

jennid: "Traffic Power and the changes they made to your sites are definitely the reason you were dropped from google."

"I have a list of sites that were pulled from google due to Traffic Power."

How do you know for sure? Did Google inform you of such?

Here is the google response:

"Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign
accurate PageRank. Certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may
result in permanent removal from our index."

That'll do it.

Besides the google response, most of us have more than one domain, and in each and every case, the only domain that is pulled from google is the domain that was traffic powered.

For those of you reading this post that are not sure of the severity of what I am talking about, let me make some facts clear. I am not talking about pages going from #3 to #10,003. The sites affected have been manually removed from google - we have NO rankings. And we are all finding it very difficult to become relisted. Some of us were back in for a week or so, and then pulled back out the following week. Most all sites are suffering a large loss of revenue and we all curse the moment we hired these guys. The biggest financial loss isn't the money paid to Traffic Power, it's the resulting loss of revenue from having our sites pulled.

If you're interested in finding more sites that have Traffic Power, search Google for the following: "Thank you for your quick response...it says a lot about who you are as a merchant." Make sure to use quotes around the search query. So much for those "unique content" pages, right?

seorox: Welcome to the forums. Looks as if they've been pretty busy. Good observation.

Seorox - I ran that search last week and came up with over 18,000 pages. Now there are just above 6,000. Interesting....Thanks.

Hi. Just a comment. I guess Google sets all the rules now. Interesting to see how all of us do whatever Google says. Isn't it time this monopoly ends? It's comparable to MSoft - you do what they say or you can't play with your computer?

putontop_com: That's one way to look at it, I guess the other would be that they're providing a free service to market our products. We don't have to use it. I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

This thread refers to tactics that are a little over the top and easy to implement. If the effects not mitigated than every weekend warrior will be employing similar to get every Joe's hardware (nothing personal Joe) to the top when people are looking for regional distributors of hammers.

jennid, I will send you an email (if I can figure out how <grin> )
Google responded to me to let me know that my site was indexed.
Now here's what's strange: the day before I punched in my website's URL and it was a no show. Then they email me back and I am in again.
My guess is that their polite reply was because of my abject apology and humble repentance -- almost as if it was an unspoken grace that got me back in.

Hey, whaddya gonna do?

My fight with TrafficPower has not yet begun, but it will as soon as they find out that the debit card I used has been cancelled. That's when I will need to join forces with you.

As for Google being the 10,000 lb gorilla, that's how life goes ... until the next 10,000 lb gorilla comes to knock them off. Us? We're just pawns of the game. They make the rules. If ya wanna play, ya gotta play by their rules.

Garris - just an FYI - my site and others were back in the index for about a week last month and then were pulled back out again. We have no idea why. I really hope you are back in google permanently.

I've just tuned in after a long hiatus and was intrigued at how long this thread has run. I fortunately avoided hooking up with Traffic-Power some time ago, when I found their so-called 'advertising' pages were just cloaked doorways and discovered numerous devious tactics in our course of discussions. In retrospect just looking at the caliber of their staff and staff photos should have been a red flag for me.

Anyway, at a search engine conference recently I cornered a Google executive and described in detail what these people were doing... and in the process was surprised that he hadn't heard about them. He told me they would investigate it thoroughly but don't know what action(s) they might take to help those duped by Traffic Power and had their sites banned. Pathetic thing is that they still get away with it since they're still able to show what appear to be amazing placement results... that is until the site ultimately gets banned.

we should build a site for fun... downwithtrafficpower.com or something....

All of us treat it as a pet project to rank for the term "Traffic Power" . That way when their 'potential' clients type in traffic power into the search engines... they will get the truth.

Put up some experiences....forums, etc..... and more importantly .....for us.... we could use it as a community project to show our aspiring seos how to build a site from scratch for ranking . Everyone wins.

This thread is #7 on Google.. I think anyone doing any research at all will probably run across it. Caveat Emptor.

Too funny! I'll bet if the thread had a few well intentioned links (purely for the benefit of our visitors of coarse) with good anchor text....

If you are familiar with the World Organization of Webmasters; below is a link from them and thier site about Traffic Power:
www.joinwow.org/pressroom/03.24.03.asp

I m not speaking on their behalf, but I m just wondering how could a big company like Traffic Power continue to do this and get all their customers site banned in the past few years and not learn? Isn't that going to make them bankrupt soon? I don't think their management has no sense at all about this.

fsbb: Welcome to the forums. Regarding how people get away with it... It's the same reason that you get four calls during dinner from people offering a free cruise (unless you're USA and have registered for the no-call list). It's a numbers game and it pays.

While I had the trust of the rep I asked him how he got in touch with business owners. He said that they target PPC customers whose natural rankings suck (an eager market, already paying and haven't employed a competant SEO). You get enough clients, try to stay ahead of the game (Google seems to "fix things" programatically as opposed to individually)... They don't do anything to the "real site" so there's no real investment. I'm guessing, or maybe hoping, they have more than a couple of site networks for IBL's. Everything could be very fluid.

Maybe it's time for me to register for the no-call list.

Wow! It has been a while since I have been here. I did not realize that TP was still up to no good. Not that I ever thought they would have gotten better.

So I will start with all of the skeptical feelings that are rolling around in this forum. You all have every right to feel this way about this company. They are shadey to say the least! My breakdown is as follows:

Lets start with their method of "Optimization"

Optimization:
Yes, they have 80 doorway pages with mouse overs on them. The spiders read but the people never get to read it unless you keep your cursor off the page. If you review the source coding of some of the places that TP brings you to; you will see a series of links at the very bottom of the home page. Please be sure to note the MANY URL's that it refers to also because these are the link pools. I don't really care what they what to call them, the way I see it if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a DUCK! Now the fun part is yet to come. Go to every single site listed in there until you come to "SUPRISE" another link pool URL.

This company owns well into 50 to 80 URL's packed with these link pools to all of their clients. The problem does not lay specifically in the doorway pages that they load onto your home page it lays with the MULTIPLE links that are wagoned with your site! This is why people get knocked off the Search Engines. There are porn sites, all of your competitors and a load of other sites that you WILL NOT WANT TO LINK BACK TO YOU listed on all the these URL's that ALL link back to you.

The doorway pages
Look at each and everyone of these and READ them. There are keywords in there that have nothing to do with what you are providing as a service or product. As a matter a fact there are words in there that lead you straight to placement in the porn sections! Hummmmm what a good thing to add to your professional site! You would have never had known unless you go and type in these words to see if they have placement in the more questionable sections of the Internet.

Now let us move on to their keywords:
You will NEVER get placement off keywords that are most common, for example if you ask them to promote a keyword like "daycare center" they will not be able to. They will send you some rediculious email telling you that it is not a good word to use followed by some BS excuse as to why. They reason "some" companies actually get placement is because they are using words that most people would probably not use to find you anyhow. Using the keyword above they will probably send you a suggestion like: "daycare center little people". I am exaggerating of course but it is similar to what they will send. Hey I can get you placement with those words too!

On to their referrals:
The referrals that they show you on the Internet when they call to "pitch" their sale are companies that are being paid to testify to the "greatness" of TP. They are getting free pay-per-clicks and massive marketing to make that specific company look good BUT it also has their promotion on it to fool you.

The BBB:
Yeah there is proof that they are "listed" with the better business bureau but you have to call the BBB in the area that they are located and request the breakdown of their complaints. They are there but they are NOT listed on the BBB site. YOU HAVE TO ASK FOR IT!

Their pricing:
They will start at large amounts of money and if you keep saying no they will bring it all the way down to 1200.00 for the year.

The SEE Pages
If you refuse to let them have FTP information they will create what they called a SEE page to me on the phone. This theory is most interesting. This is how it works from my point of view. You have them purchase a URL that they put the promotion on. Hummm??? Do you own this site?? NO, They do! There lies your catch. Say it does get placement? Then what? Then you have to pay every year to keep that placement or they will not register that domain name again or they will keep it for them selves and you will lose all that money you put into it! Oh and by the way THEY WILL NOT SELL IT TO YOU! Smart move!

Charging Back:
If you are some of the unlucky souls out there that did not realize that after 6 months you cannot charge back. That if you used a debit card you will have an even harder time! AND PLEASE TELL ME WHY PEOPLE ARE SIGNING CONTRACTS THAT SAY "NO REFUNDS" this makes no sense to me. You no nothing about this company and you are going to dish out 4000.00 to them and sign a contract that says too bad, if you don't get positioning then we just promot you until you do but you can't have your money back! PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS, READ WHAT YOU SIGN!

Now if you want to charge back you have to do the following:
1. Send a certified letter to the company requesting that they please credit your card, that the services that you have rendered from them has not been fulfilled and it is creating damage and negative effects to you company and its income. Demand a response "IN WRITTING" immediately and give them a time frame in which to respond to you.(TAKE NO PHONE CALLS FROM THEM, YOU HAVE REQUESTED IT IN WRITING AND THAT IS THE WAY YOU WANT IT)
2. If they have not responded AND YOU ARE WILLING then you go online to http://www.co.clark.nv.us/justicecourt_lv/smallclaim.htm to file a small claims court suit, if the amount was under 5000.00. Print the paperwork to file within this court and mail it with the 35.00 fee to file it. Now you only want to do this if you are willing to show up if TP wants to pursue it, (you will know because they in return have to file a response) you have to fly to Vegas. But when you place the suit then you can add the flying expenses into it. Also, be sure to include all of your documentation and explain the situation clearly. Enclose a print out of the "Google Guideline" (and all other search engines guidelines you can find) and all of the additional pages that they built for you. Also include a print out of all of the URL's you have found and be sure to look up their owners via WHOIS. Taking them to court is a fine line when it comes to the Internet