Guaranteed 1-2 or 3 Rankings?

Do search engines give out rankings for pay to seo companies?

[mulesmurf]

The following was posted on a SEO web site under the section "How we do it".

Is this a scam, or is this how the search engines operate?

The search engines have agreed to provide companies such as ours the opportunity to position your website in a top 3 rank position, in return for sponsorship fees (similar to other directories like the "Yellow Pages".

Our business is aggregating the positioning of websites and monitoring your position to ensure that you remain in the top three.
When you click on the order page, we will ask a series of questions about your company and it's product or service. Then our professionals will research the most frequently-used search terms and/or geographic identifiers to place your website in either first, second, or third position on all of the major search engines, (and top ten with MSN) with a variety of search phrases.
This is turn moves you ahead of your competitors and gives your website the best and highest opportunity to be seen and GET RESULTS!
ORDER NOW!

Could this be a legit offer?

Thanks

Mulesmurf

[edited by: agerhart at 7:49 pm (utc) on June 21, 2002]

[agerhart]

It depends what search engine they are targeting. Sure, you can guarantee a top 3 listing at Yahoo, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and a number of other search engines. All you have to do is pay Overture. If they are claiming to do this in Google, then it is a scam.

[NFFC]

>Could this be a legit offer?

Sure it is, as agerhart said pay per click can do that.

[JayC]

and it's product

Personally, I'd hesitate to give a lot of money to, or to have high expectations of the quality of work of, someone who pays such little attention to detail on their own site.

But yeah, those search engines "give out rankings for pay" to anyone... it's not the case that these grammatical bozos have any special relationship that anyone else doesn't have.

[skibum]

The only agreements they might have are with Overture and other PPCs as far as guaranteed top 3 listings. With a credit card anyone can setup one of those relationships with Overture and the others.

[Filipe]

See if you can get in touch with some of their other clients. If the returns on their service is good (consistently) then why not? I always question their legitimacy when they offer guarantees - but if it works, it works.

[chameleon]

mulesmurf,

Most likely, this is a scam.

*** However ***

Something else you should consider is the word "Guarantee". The question is "or else what?"

It could be that they have a lot of faith in their abilities, and will refund your money if they can't get you a top 3 position. In that sense, they "Guarantee" their service. It doesn't mean that you will absolutely be ranked #1, just that you aren't going to have to pay if they can't deliver.

That is a common practice in business. They play on the fact that most people equate "Guarantee" with "it will absolutely happen", not with "risk free".

Bryan

[edited by: agerhart at 3:53 pm (utc) on July 9, 2002]
[edit reason] Sorry, no signature URLs [/edit]