I have a few websites and anyone with a website will tell you they want to rank highly in search results. I can tell you that there is also a dark side to being popular. A dark side that makes it bitter sweet.
The dark side is that popular websites don’t just generate client calls, they generate solicitations. That is right solicitors are turning to the internet to find targets for their calls.
One of my websites (not the Authority Directory) causes me to get continually bombarded with telephone solicitations. I market this website in several ways one of which is pay per click ads.
Now you’re going to tell me that I should take my phone number off the site. Sure I could do that and I also could go out of business. It is a service oriented business and potential clients need that number to call me. I should be somehow protected, after all every phone number I have is on the federal and state no call lists for solicitations.
Up until today I always thought that these solicitors would do a search and click on the organic results to get to my site, find my phone number and call me. How naive I was.
I got a call today from one of these solicitors. I generally get anywhere from one to three a day that call me and want to sell me guaranteed position in Google, Yahoo and MSN search results.
This call put a whole new perspective on these solicitations. I always tell solicitors that I will talk to them but if they are selling anything other than Girl Scout cookies I am not buying.
Then during her pitch she mentions how she is looking at my site right now. They are always looking at my site right now. If you ever answer the phone to someone looking at your great site right now get ready because they are going to try to sell you that first spot on Google in just a minute.
She also mentions how she saw my Google adwords ad during a search and her placement would be less expensive at a fixed cost $5100 per month. So she continues on her sales pitch and is telling me how she can get me top position for some obscure search term. I let her know that for the terms I am interested in, I am already on the first page organically.
After telling her three more times politely that I do not buy anything from solicitors I finally manage to get off the phone. That is of course when it hit me.
These solicitors are not finding my site from organic results they are finding them from pay per click ads. She saw my adwords ad and clicked on it to get my phone number. What better way to find a business that is willing to pay for search result placement than by calling those that are already demonstrating they are willing to pay for placement via pay per click?
That solicitor not only took up time that is valuable to me, but she cost me money when she clicked on that pay per click ad to get to my site in order to get my contact information. When I realized that, well I was not too happy about it is all I will say.
Telephone solicitors have evolved into something worse than before. They used to grab a phone book and start calling. At least that did not take up my advertising budget, but now they are using pay per clicks to find targets, clicking on the ads to find phone numbers and then calling those numbers.
That single phone call not only cost me my time, but her clicking that ad cost me $4 in advertising. Then multiply that by 1 to 3 a day.
Just how much this is costing consumers and generating in revenue for Google I can only guess. If I am getting a couple calls a day from this tactic it has to be an unimaginable amount of money.
I have already contacted my Senator and let him know about this. If they can pass a law about a no call list maybe they can pass a law for a no click list.
Edit:
The owner of the company - Ideal Positions - replied with the following:
“Thank you for bringing this infraction to our attention. After your communication to us we immediately pulled in everyone from our sales force and reiterated our intolerance for clicking on sponsored ads, or originating offers to those already known to be in sponsored positions. Any such future acts will result in immediate termination.”
And went on to explain that it was the error of one person and not company practice.
Since then I have also received an apology from the person who originally contacted me with the solicitation.
Though I am not sure about it being one individual and not a widespread practice, the apology of the solicitor did seem sincere. Because of that I have removed the contact information for the that person and the company.
I would encourage you to ask any solicitors how they got your contact information if you participate in any kind of pay per click programs. They may be costing you not only your time, but adding extra expenses into your advertising expenses.
March 1st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Yes I understand your concern about the losers that cost you money. My self, as soon as I figure out that it is some loser that is just costing me time and money, click, the last statement to that person should hear don’t ever call this number again.
If they call again, hang up, dial *69, or some areas have different recall number codes. Once you have the number, call the proper people to report phone harrasment. That will clear that problem right up. Or as you have stated, post thier number or url on some trash e-mail site.
As far as any government involvement, if they are to do any thing for you, it is only going to cost you in the end. The gov. wants to have total control of every thing. Are you going to give it to them? Just wait and see!
Thanks for your time, JO
March 12th, 2008 at 3:00 am
I am an employee of ideal positions. Last week we were pulled off of our phones and yelled at by the vice president of the company. He was upset over a blog comment another employee posted saying that they thought the business was shady. After this meeting, i think the other employee has the right idea. We have a do not call list, but its not mandatory that we pay attention to it. I was told that calling business telephone numbers to sell at them is not in any way punishable. “tell them its business to business.” One of the managers told me about a real estater agent we called so much we had to give him free service to keep him from suing us.
Bottom line: I’ll be quitting soon. There is no prize for being the 1,000,000th solicitor to call the re/max office in myrtle beach and i don’t want to be here when the game is up and thousands of real estate agents come wanting their money back.
~Resume writer
March 12th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Ideal Employee - Since it seems obvious most can identify the company just from describing the tactics I will approve the comment with the company name in there. Just for the record I received yet another call from this company yesterday wishing to sell me placement for another keyphrase. This time it was only $250 per month so pricing must somehow be done based on the keyphrase. I do think it rediculous that a company would not monitor the no call list when doing solicitations. I know that in real estate the no call list has caused a complete overhaul as to how telecom is used for marketing in recognition of the no call lists.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
After working with this company for an extended period of time in multiple capacities I have seen many unethical business tactics such as violations of both contracts with google and yahoo, the storing credit card and identity information on clients that have not used service in 2 years or more, charging $100+ for terms that get no traffic at all or cost them under a dollar and the client is allowed to pay these prices even though they are aware of it. Also for a short period of time early in the company’s making we were instructed to tell clients that this call was directly from yahoo.com., as a matter of fact we got in trouble with Yahoo themselves for having the website http://www.yahooprogram.com so we changed it to the current address. Until about December 2007 this company told clients that due to there contract with yahoo and google they had to charge a 120$ set-up fee every time the client wanted a new search term placement even if they had just purchased one the day before, when in truth no such thing existed, this money went to paying the bonus of the salesperson and the percentage the manager got. In all reality all this company consists of is a sales force of about 35, an administrative staff of 15 and 4 techs that run a large pay per click campaign on Yahoo and Google. Also to respond to the other Ideal employee I know what you meant when you said “There is no prize for being the 1,000,000th solicitor to call the re/max office in myrtle beach” and to it i say… already have my resume(-:
March 14th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Ideal Employee number 2 this brings some new light onto the whole situation. I remember in the past getting calls where the positioning company which identified itself as Yahoo only after talking with the person did they acknowledge they are affiliated with yahoo and not really yahoo. Your point about it being a pay per click is well taken and I agree whole heartedly with it. Anyone that can set up a Yahoo/Google/Msn adwords account can get the same effects at a much lower cost. At least until ideal positions starts clicking on the ads so they can call and harrass you.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:20 am
I agree strongly with the points. I know is i got a phone calls from somebody wanting to sell me something all the time; And then i found out they were costing me money to i would be very very annoyed. Not only is it harrassment its costing you money too. Not good at all.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I was called by a guy named chris and decided to give their service a 30 day trial. We agreed on the phone to try the keyword phrase for 30 days and i paid for it. I never signed a contract because it was done over the phone.
I did not continue after 30 days because the service did not deliver the results chris said it would.
Guess what. They continued to take money out of my account to the tune of $2,000 and they would have gotten more if i did not get a call from my bank.
When i called Ideal positions i was told that the agreement over the phone was a recurring charge. I explained that chris and i decided it would be a 30 day trial. I told patrick that we have no contract and was told that the phone agreement was the contract and when i gave my payment info i authorized them to rob me every month!
Beware internet marketers, these guys are crooks. I am currently proceeding with legal action but wanted to warn others to beware of Ideal positions in Arcata CA.
Does anyone know who at google i can contact to expose this scam???
November 18th, 2009 at 5:22 am
I get hassled by SEO people all the time. You just need to ask them a few pointed questions and then they soon go away.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:46 am
@ #8 - It is important to distinguish between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Placement (SEP). When I interviewed with Ideal Positions not too long ago, I specifically asked them if they provided SEO, and the interviewing manager was quick to say that they provide Placement via sponsored links. He then went on to bally-hoo SEO, heavily implying that SEO doesn’t get results.
The thing is, SEO aims to change the actual results position of an organic search for keywords on and/or related to a given website. SEO can take time, but can increase overall traffic and referral to a website, and doesn’t rely on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Cost-Per-Click (CPC) approach, such as adwords programs.
The interviewing manager went on to claim that Ideal Positions has a dedicated support staff at Google and Yahoo, which according to research, I cannot find any information that confirms or denies this supposition. He also claimed that the contract is ONLY for the first 30 days, and after that it is on a month-to-month basis at the discretion of the customer who has been cold-called. Ideal Positions supposedly finds websites to cold-call by checking in the back pages of a search result for a given keyword or phrase. The organic search result positioning may change for a company that uses their “service,” but at the cost of thousands of dollars more than a consultation with an SEO specialist. They rely on Google Analytics to track the sites they are providing sponsored links for, and will give the customer access to it upon request. However, the metrics are not discussed with the sales staff, but controlled by the mysterious “techs” in Arcata, CA, and funneled to the managers via excel spreadsheets.
After much research (Just check ripoffreport.com, the BBB, and google’s own reviews to the “ideal positions arcata” search phrase) I have firmly made up my mind that if I am offered a job with this fraudulent company, I will be turning it down with extreme predjudice.