Forum Moderators: open
Epromos has had three website
http://www.epromos.com
<snip>
Call all of them and you will see that they answer and operated all of these websites as Epromos and owned by the same person: Jason Robins. The question is will Google still allow a company to cheat since they pad Google's pockets?
This company has 10-20 websites and the receptionist even brags about it. Every one of these websites are answered as PromoPeddler. SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! but yet Google has them #1 & #6 under promotional items. Google do cheaters win in your directory? Well, obviously they do.
http://www.promopeddler.com
<snip>
and many, many more! They all answer to PromoPeddler and all are owned and operated by PromoPeddler.
It gets worse than that, Brett. You own [searchengineworld.com...] too don't you?
Will it be seen as a bannable offence if someone contacts both and finds the same person? Would it be even worse if you linked the two sites together?
I think not.
When you have a set of products that target different customers/demographics/location/etc., then its much more natural to separate them so you can better tailor your marketing for each niche. This is what businesses like GM do with their different motor divisions. In the case of promotional items, separating them into separate sites is completely artificial - someone interested in promotional coffee cups would probably be almost equally interested in pens or t-shirts.
So if you have multiple sites that target mostly separate customer groups, its not spam in my mind. If you have multiple sites that all target the same customers and lead to a common receptionist answering the phone.. I'd say it is definitely spam.
But obviously whether I think its spam doesn't matter.. what matters is google, dmoz, etc.
Some of them are targeted to people looking for a specific item. For example mugpeddler is set up for the people that want just mugs.
Have you ever walked through a tourist shopping area?
In Ensenada there are all sorts of specialty shops and there are also everything shops and just about every level in between. Some people like to shop that big everything stores and might pick up a blanket and an ironwood carving at the same place. Others will prefer to go to the blanket shop for their blanket so they can concentrate on just that one type of item.
Personally, if I was looking for promotional mugs, I would rather go to the site that specializes so that I can concentrate on just that one thing.
Interesting to me that yahoo dont rate them as highly
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 2:44 pm (utc) on April 17, 2004]
[edit reason] please leave out adult references. [/edit]
Good reference. The interesting thing to me is the difference in the tone of the two threads which are essentially about the same thing. Has the new google algo spawned a new paradigm for seo? Just food for thought.
Just wondering, are you currently banned?
I found a site where someone with at least a very similar name cares way too much about the term "promotional items". If this is your site, you have a lot more to worry about than what company is taking up a couple of slots on the first page.
The one I'm looking at is banned from google, and it looks like it was for good reason. If this is your site, you should at least start with writing some copy intended for people instead of spiders, and clean up your HTML. There isn't much you can do about your past linking practices now.
This is SPAM 101.
NEGATIVE - bigDAVE! I am not banned.
Sorry about that then. After I posted, I checked your old posts, and became even more sure that I was right. I sounds like you got yourself in some pretty big trouble with Google last year.
I am within the industry and that's why I know that these methods are spamming and cheating.
That is quite a non sequitor.
Being in the promotional items industry does not make you an expert on what a search engine considers cheating. and it is the search engine that defines spamming and cheating, not you.
In fact, from reading your previous posts, it is quite clear that you had no idea about what might or might not be considered spamming or cheating.
All of us promotional items distributors sell the exact same 900,000 plus items.
Do you actually stock all that stuff or is it drop shipped? If you don't maintain an inventory, you are not a distributor.
So, when they create these other sites - they set them up to sell a singal line (MAYBE not likely) but they sell everything. So, they are manipulating the serps. Call one of tomorrow if you don't believe maybe mugpeddler.com and see if they will sell you a pen. Of course they will. GET CLUE!
Oh, I have a clue, and I do understand exactly what they are doing.
Your original complaint was that it was duplicate content, which it is not. Each of those sites is unique. If those sites were to be subject to the duplicate content filter, because they sold the same million items, then it sounds like all but one of you "distributors" offer duplicate content.
You complained about their group of sites taking up 2 spaces in aone search result. I do that all the time. In fact, There are some searches where my site has 2 results with the second indented. And both of the public archives of our e-mail list have indented results. that gives us 6 spots out of the top 10. That does not make it SPAM.
Just for your information, my first spam report was on a huge advertiser with Google, and they were banned 3 days later and didn't come back till they had quit cloaking. Google does not cut them any slack because they pay money. if Google agrees with you that it is an issue, they will be gone. If they don't, they will stay. You have reported them, now forget about it and go work on your own site.
Just because I can call mugpeddler on the phone and order anything does NOT make their online websites spam. What does being able to do something unadvertised over the phone have to do with their website and Google? I could also call the receptionist to find out if I can buy girl scout cookies from anyone there. That does not mean that their website that never mentions girl scout cookies is spamming the SERPs for girl scout cookies.
"Yeah. Massively interlinked domains will most definitely get you banned. Again, it's spotted as an attempt to distort the results of the search engine. The general rule is that we're looking at popularity on the web via in-links. The links are viewed as votes for other pages. And part of voting is that you can't vote for yourself."
It sounds like Spam to me. I'd probably do it as well, but hey, lets all at least call a spade a spade.
[epromos-com.store.yahoo.net...]
[eprmos.com...]
Just curious?
Right, duplicate sites?
Really, the problem here is that webmasters and SEOs do not understand what the search engine's priorities are. And that is why most spam reports go into the circular file.
If *you* decide that something is spam, doesn't mean that it is what the SE would consider spam.
Clearly, Google has changed it's policies or Google allows for cheaters with big pockets to cheat. I don't they have changed they policies. I don't think they want companies to make multiple websites in order to achieve better rankings which both PromoPeddler and ePromos has done and done for a long time now. So, that leaves one thing, either Google is getting paid and likes the money or Google has not yet seen this spam and once they do they will do the right thing and bann them both. We will see what Google is about: greed or better serp's for the searchers (supposedly that is what they say do).
But it is listed as a yahoo store for a legitimate reason. It should be filtered from the results, not banned.
It is not duplicated as a Yahoo store to gain PageRank. This passes the test of "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?". Yahoo stores produce their own traffic even without SE results, so they most certainly would do this even if there was no SE.
What is this:
[epromos-com.store.yahoo.net...] (#10 under custom promotional items)
[eprmos.com...] (#1 or #2 under promotional items)
Just curious, what is the purpose here?
Right, duplicate sites and to achieve rankings for different terms?
SPAM, brother! Plain and simple - SPAM!
Hey JB, it's not fair to complain about someone else without outing yourself, too.
So let's have the full monty with your website.
[idealpromotional.com...]
Now, what purpose did PromoPeddler set this site up for? They already have the PromoPeddler and NewIdeaPromos website that sell anything and everything under the sun.
Right, you guessed it. All three sites sell the samething. They created ANOTHER website to take up another ranking within the SERP's to gain traffic, clients and orders. Plus, they did it to create more links for themselves. This site see it links to PromoPeddler and MugPeddler.
Looks like Jason works his tail off; you might go out of business awaiting the outcome of your spam report. You've got your work cut out for you and a great model.
First off, think about all the wonderful links you are giving all those sites from this thread. That is mighty kind of you. lol
Something you might consider doing is watching Ron Popeil's infomercials on his rotisserie oven, and think about google spam reports as being something like that - "set it and forget it".
You have complained to google. You've done your part in the war on SPAM. Now walk away and put your attention into your own website.
Remember, none of the search engines owe you or anyone else a ranking or traffic.
Though now that I think of it, complaining here might have done one thing to help knock that evil spammer out of the top SERPs. Some of the rest of us might just decide to put up some pages selling "promotional items" for the fun of it to see how tough those top positions really are. We may just knock him down a few notches.
GOOGLEGUY we need your opinion and advise, PLEASE!
I want to thank you for pointing out those sites.
I had no idea that the "promotional products" market was so lucrative.
Please feel free to drop my URLs into a Webmasterworld thread as a public spam report attempt in about 3 months.
You just got yourself another competitor (or rather a new "group" of competitors).
I really do wish that GoogleGuy would give his opinion. If he says it is safe and that these are fine ways to promote on Google then, I will GLADLY apoligize and then, go buy ten of hundreds of URLS and start promoting the sameway.
Regarding, you creating pages to see how difficult it is within this industry. I would be more than happy to hear what you think it would take to do that? I'm all ears?
You are complaining about a company that has only two(!?!?!) results for a SERP.
I have seen searches where the top 120 results were owned by the same company (give or take 4 or 5 results).
There are tons of competitive niches, and this is not a spammy site.
If you really want to see some spam I can send you a list of search terms. ;)
