Is this a Scam?

[mhodgdon]

I was contacted by the people at <snip> they were trying to sell me Natural Language Navigation technology on msn 8 Browser. Their business model, prices, and pitch were identical to the igetnet company that I read so much about scamming sites for bogus keywords that they paid big dollars for and got nothing. They say they have an Exclusive contract with MSN but will not provide a contact person at MSN to confirm this. Has anyone dealt with these guys?

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 9:26 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2003]
[edit reason] No Specifics Please [/edit]

[Ally_Cat]

I haven't dealt with them, but I think the system is run on one of those browser plug-ins that drive people completely insane. You'll only get traffic from them from searchers that have their plug-in.

Hope this helps!

[grant]

I have been called by them as well.

It's a strange situation -- they have statistics on the number of searches done for each search term (not really searches, obviously, but keywords in the address box), and some of those statistics are impressive if true.

However, the sales guy I talked to couldn't answer some basic questions, which isn't completely surprising, as it's probably tough to find telemarketers who can answer questions from informed and suspicious SEOs. But if anyone is going to part with a few grand every year, they should feel as though they got all the information to make the right decision.

[martinibuster]

[webmasterworld.com ]

Many discussions about this.

[mhodgdon]

Hello Grant,
I did finally get to the bottom of the stats they quoted. They are googles searches, and "projected numbers". I further did here back from the folks at Microsoft. They said:

"This company is in no way affiliated with the Microsoft Corporation. If you can provide any contact information to this company, we will investigate on our end in efforts to stop this company from trying to associate with Microsoft."

It seems very clear, best case scenario they are liars. Although it is pretty safe to assume that they are no longer making the false Microsoft claim I would be very weary of a company that has employed these tactics to sell advertising.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 9:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2003]
[edit reason] Specifics Removed [/edit]

[WebGuerrilla]

As martinibuster pointed out, there have been numerous posts in the past about companies selling natural language navigation systems.

Please read through some of the past posts. The names of the current crop of companies selling this technology is irrelavant. All you really need to know is that RealNames failed at it, and they actually did have a deal with Microsoft.

That being the case, you would probably be much better off if you spent the money on a bunch of lottery tickets.