Can you pay for top position at Google SERP's

[kmick]

Just received a phone call about the service for pay for SERP and guarantee top 3 position. I know it just sounds like another scam. I was about to cut the link soon I heard she said that. She asked me quickly would I like to have a demonstration, well, its free, why not. I was thinking that I'm wasting my time while the saleswoman busying the process. 3 minutes later, they actually DID put one of my site on the #3 of my chosen keyword. Not sponsored link.

It can't be true, I know you will say that, including myself, if I didn't see it by my own eyes.
So I have a quick check with other 2 computers, in case the one I use has virus, no, same results.
How this possible? Any suggestions?

[tedster]

No, you can't pay for organic search ranking at Google. Rest assured there IS a trick involved here.

[wheel]

That's pretty cool. Blatantly false, but pretty cool. I'd like to know how they did that (they almost certainly only did it for you).

From everything I've seen, you can't make a change, have Google crawl it, then index it, then put it out to the datacenters all in three minutes. So even if they can rank you, I suspect it just physically takes a lot longer than three minutes for the results to appear in your datacenter.

Still, it's a pretty neat trick.

[Lorel]

Must be some kind of redirect or they know how to manipulate Google's SERPS. I'd run like the wind.

Better yet-- report them to Google.

[trillianjedi]

If your PC has not been compromised in some way, my best guess would be that you were already at number 3 for that keyword.

[Bewenched]

They are selling you pay per click ... your result will show along with paid ads on google, not in the natural results. i get calls from those guys about once per week.

[LifeinAsia]

Yes, you can PAY. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you will RECEIVE.

[outland88]

Send me the company details. We're dealing.

[wheel]

kmick - are you aware that the top three results in many google searches are also sponsored links? They're not just down the right hand side?

[anallawalla]

If the top three results have a coloured background and a label saying they are sponsored results, then they are not organic. They don't always show up.

kmick, did this company give you any cool toolbars to load?

[AnkitMaheshwari]

kmick, did this company asked you to search for the keyword from your end directly, or they gave you a link to click on that directly point to the results?

[tez899]

It sounds like pay day - I've had plenty of similar phone calls to a private number and the only way they found it was through our website, viewable from the SERPs. Period.

[Simsi]

I tried this out recently. The saleswoman was from a company with the word "Google" in it's name - supposedly an "official reseller". She said it would guarantee a listing somewhere on the page for each search on my targetted keyphrase, including sponsored and organic spots. I paid up as it wasn't much just to try it out and at worst I thought I'd get some PPC. Several phone-calls later with their "IT Dept" I was told that it didn't cover organic listings, only PPC. So basically it's a managed PPC campaign which may suit some, but was mis-sold to me.

After 3 weeks faffing around nothing happened so I got a refund which to be fair they processed quickly.

[tez899]

Simsi consider yourself lucky. I feel sorry for those who don't have any knowledge of the business and get robbed of thousands each year for a few extra hits a day. Oh please heh.

[Gumball Monkey]

Can't do this with Google, but you could do this with Yahoo - I haven't used Yahoo for a while now, but the product name is 'Paid Inclusion'.

[tez899]

This doesn't exist with any major search engine these days. 'Add a site' is similar to 'paid inclusion' lol.

[referencement2seo]

The idea that you could pay for a position on a dynamic engine is silly.

[tedster]

Even the Yahoo Paid Inclusion program only guarantees that your page is in the index. It doesn't guarantee any particular ranking position. I wanted to correct any wrong impression, but let's not take the thread off-topic. This forum is here to discuss Google Search, not Yahoo.

[potentialgeek]

Yahoo's paid inclusion program is part of its search engine business failure. (Why didn't Google come up with this idea? 8->)

p/g