TOPSEO’s: An “Independent Authority?”
I wrote about TOPSEO’s earlier this month. Since I’m new to TKG, I asked around to see if we would’ve gotten involved with this organization years ago and the consensus was “no.” So I spent some time on the site to determine how our content could have made it onto the site. Just by looking at our profile and seeing the character encoding errors, it is likely that the content was scraped from other sources. We’re pretty thorough professionals here at The Karcher Group. If someone from within our company submitted company information and a case study, I would expect them to have noticed the wacky character errors before having it published. There is little doubt that we would have let this pass, especially if this was a paid listing.
Take a look at our company profile listing:
Notice the yellow highlighted character encoding issues.
It looks as if they scraped the content from ClevelandSEO.com (a reputable local organization that we affiliate ourselves with).
Earth to TKG – Contacting Ourselves
I attempted to send a lead to TKG from our TOPSEO’s company profile. I clicked a button that clearly stated: Contact The Karcher Group:
Note how the text reads.
After clicking the link, a modal window popped up with a contact form. Once again, the heading read “Contact the Karcher Group.”
Personal details blurred out, but notice the heading once again.
I entered my personal email address, my personal phone number, and a message that read:
I’d like someone from the Karcher Group to call me ASAP. I need help with a $500k project with LeBron James. Thanks!
After submitting the form, I was taken to a confirmation screen that once again acknowledged that the email was sent to The Karcher Group:
My original intent for this whole test was to see how TOPSEO’s would go about contacting TKG. Would they send the company an email through our sales email address? Would they try to call us? Would I get a response to my personal email address? I was a little surprised with what happened next…
I received an email from a local web marketing company, SageRock. The email reads as follows:
Hello,
My name is Sage Lewis. I’m the president of SageRock… a leading Web Marketing agency located in Akron Ohio. We’ve been doing high end Web marketing since 1999.
I’m involved with TopSeos.com. That’s how I got your message.
Is it possible that I might be able to help you?
Thank you,
Sage Lewishttp://www.sagerock.com
Conclusions
From a client perspective, it would be frustrating to think you’re contacting one company when they reiterate it over and over again, only to receive a response from another company. Users should be able to trust TOPSEO’s because they call themselves an “Independent Authority on Search Vendors.” But when they pass your details on to another company, how can you trust them to be “independent?”
Read more Online Visibility
April 13th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
[...] 13th – Top SEOs an Independent Authority? by Mike [...]
April 13th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
I wish to thank you for taking your valuable time and performing this exercise, it needed to be done. We’ve removed SageRock from the SEO Consultants Directory, we had no idea that they were involved with TOPSEOs at this level. I’m going to guess that is part of the lead generation package and poor Sage got caught up in the middle of it all. Too bad! There will be lots of collateral damage forthcoming I’m sure.
April 13th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Ok, this is just feckin sad. I too am waiting to hear what they, and Sage have to say about it all. Never had any faith in SEOPros, but didn’t think Sage would be involved in such BS….sigh… Nice work gang.
April 13th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
[...] TOPSEO’s – An "Independent Authority?", theseoblog.org [...]
April 13th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
http://twitter.com/sagerock/status/11933432700
Looks like he took that advice to heart…
April 13th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I can only hope (and assume) that the leads show up blind to Sage and he doesn’t know that they are being “repurposed” from leads that were generated based on someone else’s profile.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I would have to say this falls under the shadiest rock in the woods.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:34 am
Too bad, my company is topseos basic (free) member and sometimes we received this mail, which tempted us to upgrade our membership:
“Hi, Your profile was visited on topseos.com by someone who is interested in making contact with you. To view the details of this contact please:
1. Sign up for the leads program. Please click here to learn more about the leads program.
OR 2. Upgrade your membership. Please click here to learn more about the various membership levels and benefits.”
Now i have some doubts about these emails, what do you think about them? do you have ever “bought” the contact from topseos? It was a real contact?
Please share your experiences, thanks!
April 14th, 2010 at 8:47 am
“I can only hope (and assume) that the leads show up blind to Sage.”
Take a close look at the email again. It has The Karcher Group written ALL over it. How could Sage have missed that? It is in the Subject Line and, the Body of the email. I’d really like to think that Sage was oblivious to what is going on but based on the contents of that email, it doesn’t appear to be that way.
Interesting how the emails reads… “I’m involved with TopSeos.com. I wonder how much longer everyone over there is going to play dead?
April 14th, 2010 at 8:56 am
TKG has a good relationship with Sage, so we don’t feel SageRock is purposely taking potential leads away from TKG. This is most likely just the way that TOPSEO’s lead program works.
April 14th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Hi all,
This is a bit of a tricky situation. Before I tell my side of the story on this I need to talk with Jeev at TopSEOs.com.
Let me say this at this point, I have always respected the close relationship I have with Karcher and other web marketing agencies in the Northeast Ohio area.
We all have worked closely together and that is something that I feel makes our Web marketing community so strong.
I’ll write more soon.
Sage
April 14th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
eeewwwwwww! something smells here, lads!
Jim
April 14th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
OK. I’ve just gotten off the phone with Jeev at TopSEOs.com.
Here is how this all went down according to Jeev.
When a lead comes into the site and a company is not part of the lead program, that company gets a notification that a lead had come in for them. If they want the lead they are asked to join the lead program.
Jeev said that this is what occurred for The Karcher Group, in this case.
He got no response from The Karcher Group. At that point he looked for a company that is part of the lead program that will have the best chance of closing the lead.
He then sent the lead to me because I had done work with the Cavaliers. He felt that I would have the best chance of closing it because it was a Labron James lead.
I then got a direct email from Jeev asking me to follow up on the lead.
This is what I did. And the email that is here is the one I sent.
I didn’t pretend to be Karcher. I didn’t say anything negative about The Karcher Group.. I just followed up on the lead that was personally sent to me. I was extremely clear that I was from SageRock.
I had recently made an arrangement with TopSEOs.com to pay them a finders fee on any lead they send me that turns into work.
That’s as open as I know how to be about this situation.
If I can give you any other information please let me know.
Thank you for the opportunity for me to tell my side of the story.
Sage
April 14th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Thanks Sage for filling us in, I’m glad you were open to sharing your side of things! We definitely didn’t think you were trying to represent TKG nor did we think there was anything negative said and I hope we didn’t represent that in the post. We appreciate the friendly relationship we have and wasn’t intentionally trying to throw you into this scenario, we just wanted to share the facts.
Its good to get a better feel for how this came about and I really appreciate you sharing.
My frustration with TOPSEO’s is from a user perspective. There’s an expectation set that the user is contacting a specific firm and there are several instances throughout the process where its reinforced that the user is getting in touch with this firm. The users information is then shared with a company they didn’t intend to contact and if the specific firm they were trying to contact isn’t part of the lead generation program, they will never hear from them — leaving the impression that the firm they intended to contact was not responsive to the request.
I’d feel more comfortable if TOPSEOs was honest about who the user was going to be contacting and that there’s a possibility their information will be shared with a different firm. From a usability perspective, I would almost suggest updating the functionality so that a user is unable to contact a company that isn’t part of the lead generation program. I think this could avoid some frustration with SEO firms and possible confusion with users.
April 14th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Hi Jennifer,
Thank you for writing this. It makes me breath a bit easier.
Our good relationship is very important to me. I believe us supporting each other makes our region a powerhouse for the nation to look to for strong Web marketing work.
I’ve emailed Geoff directly on this to make sure all is good on his end too.
I completely agree with your TopSeos.com recommendations.
I actually believe these recommendations and others I have seen could make it an even stronger site.
Often times there is good that can come out of discussions like these.
If there is anything I can do further here to make this even more “right” please let me know.
Take care,
Sage
April 14th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I actually spoke with Jeev this morning myself, because I wanted to get his side of the story regarding the whole industry discussion that’s been going on lately regarding TOPSEOs.
I can confirm that what Sage relayed here regarding this specific issue is what Jeev expressed to me earlier this morning. He informed me that an email was sent to TKG offering for them to gain access to the lead and that it would involve signing up – paying for the lead generation service.
Jeev even gave me the email address they sent it to, and Mike has since confirmed this.
It also turns out that the actual profile may, in fact, have been submitted by someone who had, for a period of time, been an intern at TKG – more info on that to follow.
I also questioned Jeev regarding the whole site visitor perception aspect when filling out the contact form. He acknowledged that he may consider changing things to provide clarification to visitors as far as mis-understandings go.
I’m still putting in the footwork to do a bit more verifying of facts before I do a complete write-up on the article.
April 14th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
“When a lead comes into the site and a company is not part of the lead program, that company gets a notification that a lead had come in for them. If they want the lead they are asked to join the lead program.”
I don’t know about you but isn’t there a name for this type of practice?
April 14th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Sage, thank you too for contributing your side of the story. Unfortunately I think there are still many questions left unanswered at this point.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:01 am
TKG has yet to confirm anything with TOPSEOs (we called & left a message for Jeev); however, from their account of who created The Karcher Group profile, it appears that it was most likely a TKG summer intern from 4 years ago that created the profile, we’re assuming errors and all!
In addition, we did receive the email from TOPSEOs letting us know that someone was interested in connecting with us, but first we had to enroll in the lead generation program. We trust that Sage’s account of these events are accurate; however, we’re a little confused on the timeline, as we received the email notification from TOPSEOs at 4:58pm on Monday, April 12th and then 9 minutes later received the follow-up email from Sage. I believe that TOPSEOs contacted Sage about the lead; however, it doesn’t seem like we had much time to respond…
April 16th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Who ever is right or wrong decisions like this usually stem from increasing someones bottom line. Most likely that is the case here as well. I think if Sage was at fault he would never even step into this hot zone right now.
April 18th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
The issue here isn’t really with the TKG profile at TOPSEOs, which may or may not have been set up by an intern in the past. The potentially fraudulent aspect of the controversy surrounding this particular business practice relates to the “Contact so & so…” links that appear atop the scraped articles that appear in their so-called “Knowledge Zone”.
You see, in a matter of a couple of minutes late last night I found two articles in the TOPSEOs article section that appear to have been scraped directly from EzineArticles.com. Those articles were authored by Kim Krause Berg and Kalena Jordan respectively (http://www.topseos.com/articles/kimberly-krause-berg/do-not-drop-your-web-site-off-the-search-engine-cliff/4226/ and http://www.topseos.com/articles/kimberly-krause-berg/do-not-drop-your-web-site-off-the-search-engine-cliff/4226/).
While Kalena’s “Search Engine College” is reported as having a basic membership – which she may or may not even know exists, I wasn’t able to find a listing for any of brands related to Kim at all. Hmm. Curious. You’d think someone who is a contributor to the TOPSEOs “Knowledge Zone” would certainly at least have a basic TOPSEOs membership, eh?
All that said, the scraped articles published in the TOPSEOs “Knowledge Zone” from both Kim and Kalena – which, by the way, purposefully mislead visitors into believing they are actually affiliated with and contributors to TOPSEOs – there are “Contact” links similar to the one referenced in the post above.
I filled out the form on Kim’s stolen article to see how that lead would be processed, since her brands don’t appear to be listed anywhere within the TOPSEOs Company Directory. Would she receive the lead? Would be she contacted in reference to that lead at all? Or would that lead be siphoned to one of the TOPSEOs lead generation clients?
I’ve gotten no response from my form submission. Last I talked to Kim, she hadn’t been contacted by TOPSEOs regarding the lead. I will be interested to see how this all plays out…
April 18th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Sorry…just realized I pasted the link to Kim’s scraped post twice. Here’s the one to Kalena’s” http://www.topseos.com/articles/kalena-jordan/social-media-the-instant-brand-killer/3116/
April 28th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Not sure calling articles pulled from a site who’s sole purpose is the redistribution of submitted content “stolen” is quite accurate.
If Kim and Kalena submitted them, they can be used by anyone. However, TOPSEOs is clearly violating ezinearticle’s TOS with the way they are using them, so they still qualify as a steaming pile.
September 1st, 2011 at 5:36 pm
For certain it’s pay to play, I guarantee you. Not all companies have $30,000 a month to pay to be Number 1 in every category. Must be nice though. Top SEO’s is a huge scam simply because they come off being independent when they’re a pay to play, and client see this thinking it’s something legit when it’s not. They funnel leads to the top company even though clients thought the contacted someone else. Suprise, even if you’re paying to be number 3 or 4, number 1 is getting your leads regardless. They’re keeping them happy no matter what. Do a Google search for TOP SEO’s and a site link comes right up for their “top company.” Amazing that the top company for the last few years wasn’t even open much of one of those years they got the award. It’s sad that a good company can’t legitimately be listed because of this scam Top SEO’s. Top SEO Bad Reviews should be all over the net, and maybe smart clients will catch on. Sadly, too many mention it without knowing the truth.