May 29, 2013 | Graham

Australian companies using unethical SEO practices



I’ve had enough of our site being targeted by unethical SEO spammers who leave comment link spam in the comments on our forum. It breaches our forum rules, and it takes time to clean-up, which is a real cost.

This isn’t just some junk generated by robots and scripts. You have to register to be on our forum, so a human has to be involved. In fact, many of these spammers register and then lie low for weeks before they post their spam, just so they look more ridgy didge than your average spammer. This is “high quality” spam.

So who are these clients?

Well I’ve decided to keep a list, and I intend to draw the attention of organisations like Google to it. They need to penalise the companies that do this sort of thing.

We ask spammers to pay a fee for us having to clean up their graffiti. So far, surprise, surprise, none of them have paid up, even when they’ve made an undertaking to.

So, here is the list from just the last week.

  • Pivot Institute (The spammer, who uses a Google email address, so has little credibility, promised to pay the invoice. The principal of the organisation, Elisa Uyen, scolded me for even raising the issue! )
  • A E Soliman and Associates (Sent them an email, but to date no response)
  • MyImportLabel

If you paid someone in offline life to go around and graffiti people’s walls with your brand, you would be liable to the cost of taking it down. I think the same thing is true of online forums, but no doubt, should it go to court, there will be an argument as to whether the spammer was authorised, and if he was, to what extent the principal ought to be responsible.

We need legislation to make it clear that the principal is responsible, and that they cannot rely on the spammer being an independent agent to avoid their responsibility.

Here is the email trail from ‘Asjad Afzal’, on the basis of this, one of life’s crooks that you would hope never to have to meet in face to face life.

Email trail:

Well, this is the link to our credit card facility http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/membership/index.asp?step=2.

 

Graham

 


From: asjadafzal666@gmail.com [mailto:asjadafzal666@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Asjad Afzal
Sent: Monday, 13 May 2013 7:33 PM
To: Graham Young; Elisa Uyen
Subject: Re: Issue regarding Links on your forum

 

Hey Dear,

 

Let make it finish. We are just exxegerating for nothing. Please send me payment link, I will pay and it will be over. No harsh feelings.

 

Regards

 

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Graham Young <graham.young@onlineopinion.com.au> wrote:

Dear Asjad,

 

This is certainly no way to behave. What is the name of the company that I am invoicing?

 

Graham Young

 


From: asjadafzal666@gmail.com [mailto:asjadafzal666@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Asjad Afzal
Sent: Monday, 13 May 2013 3:28 PM


To: Graham Young
Subject: Re: Issue regarding Links on your forum

 

Please send me bill so that I can come back to you harder.

 

You have almost costed us our client, you will pay for it.

 

What we will do

  • I forget to tell that I am member of Google Official Channel as well. I know how to complain websites on ground that they are black-mailing other webmasters. My payment will be used as evidence. We have almost 10,000 IPs through VPS and other proxy networks. So, I will send complain about your site from 10, 000 IPs. very easy through software.
  • So, Google will consider such huge amount of complains and throw penalty to your website. You are not ranking a lot still almost all of your traffic will be gone

You have messed with wrong team this time. 

 

Please send me bill asap.

 

Regards

 

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 3:32 AM, Graham Young <graham.young@onlineopinion.com.au> wrote:

Asjad,

 

If someone spams your site they are not reputable, and one should not put much store in what they present as “facts”.

 

It may be true that your client is “ranking for more than 3 dozen of competitive keywords of his niche”, whatever that might mean in standard English, but the bad publicity she is likely to attract for using a spammer to do that probably won’t help her conversion rate.

 

The invoice for cleaning-up your spam on our site is our minimum charge of $65. Where should I send it? Or will you just pay me directly using our credit card facility?

 

Graham Young

 


From: asjadafzal666@gmail.com [mailto:asjadafzal666@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Asjad Afzal
Sent: Monday, 6 May 2013 10:53 PM
To: Graham Young
Subject: Re: Issue regarding Links on your forum

 

H

ey Graham,

 

For your kind information, we are working with more than 100 websites only in Australia (Please see me email address for your kind information:-)). We have collaboration with companies in UK, USA as well. 

 

We are very professional and try to follow the rules of websites we follow. We have developed 100’s of websites, forums, blogs and stores and know how much time it takes to remove links:-).

 

We have already excused for inconvenience. 

 

For your kind information again, our client is ranking for more than 3 dozen of competitive keywords of his niche:-)

  • diploma in training and assessment
  • diploma in training
  • certificate iv training and assessment

 

Apologies again.

 

Regards

 

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Graham Young <graham.young@onlineopinion.com.au> wrote:

Dear Asjad,

 

My name is Graham, not “Hey”.

 

You spammed my forum, in contravention of the rules. You can read them at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/rules.asp. Please pay particular note to point 5.

 

Your client ought to be aware that people who run a business through a Gmail account are rarely professional.

 

Yes, I have deleted your profile. What would you suggest I do? Give you tacit permission to continue to spam the site? You might also care to read point 6 of our rules.

 

Can you give me details of who I should bill for the waste of my time in removing your spam?

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Graham Young

 


From: Asjad Afzal [mailto:asjadafzal666@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, 6 May 2013 9:08 PM
To: graham.young@onlineopinion.com.au
Subject: Issue regarding Links on your forum

 

Hey,

You emailed to our client about spamming links on your forum. We try to follow the policies of blogs, forums, directories or any website before placing links. We tried to delete links straight away but you have already banned/deleted our profile. We apologise for inconvenience and request you not to contact our client again. 

If you still want to prolong this, plz communicate with us.

Regards

From: Graham Young [mailto:graham.young@onlineopinion.com.au]
Sent: 06/05/2013 5:33 PM
To: Elisa Uyen
Subject: Enquiry Request

 

From: Graham Young

Subject: Enquiry Request

Phone: 0411104801

Message Body:Someone apparently acting on your behalf has spammed our forum with links to your site. I’ll be sending you an invoice for the time and trouble involved in cleaning it up.


This mail is sent via contact form on http://www.pivot.edu.au

 

 

 

Web | http://seowebconsultant.net/   Email | asjad@seowebconsultant.net

 

Skype | seowebconsultants             Support |support@seowebconsultant.net

 

 



 

 

Web | http://seowebconsultant.net/   Email | asjad@seowebconsultant.net

 

Skype | seowebconsultants             Support | support@seowebconsultant.net



 

 

Web | http://seowebconsultant.net/   Email | asjad@seowebconsultant.net

 

Skype | seowebconsultants             Support | support@seowebconsultant.net



 

 

Web | http://seowebconsultant.net/   Email | asjad@seowebconsultant.net

 

Skype | seowebconsultants             Support | support@seowebconsultant.net

 



Posted by Graham at 11:25 pm | Comments (2) |
Filed under: Uncategorized

2 Comments

  1. Graham, the people who paint their graffiti on other people’s private property have no respect for private property, or what it costs to clean up!
    They are the scum of the earth and comparing them with the most basic of fundamental orifices, would not do them justice, and or, an extreme disservice to said orifice.
    Perhaps you could send these people several dozen copies of my tax reform proposal; and explain that there’s a million dollars up for grabs, if they can spot 10 differences.
    That might occupy their tiny little mind for several centuries.
    But only if they can find the one they all seem to be sharing between them.
    Cheers mate, and don’t let the bar stewards get you down.
    Alan B. Goulding

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — May 30, 2013 @ 10:03 am

  2. Graham, is their spam giving them results? Unless a comment has a meaningful connection to the topic why would anyone look at their spam?

    The small % of those looking at this distraction probably is not worth the grief.

    Comment by Ross — June 1, 2013 @ 6:02 pm

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