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Here’s a little story for all my tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist friends out there who have reason not to trust Google. (In the interests of full disclosure, I do not trust Google for a variety of reasons (which is an entirely separate blog post). That being said, my opinion is admittedly biased with respect to Google.

But recently, I’ve been tracking a very suspicious phishing campaign (of sorts) that appears to be an attempt to ferret out paid link buyers. I know it might sound a little crazy, and I may just be totally nuts (wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of that) but hear me out on this one.

I recently received several spam emails from several, self-proclaimed “SEO Marketers” looking to sell text links and blog post reviews. The first one that I received appeared totally innocuous:

Hi,

Are you interested in buying text links or blog reviews. I manually contact potential advertisers like you and offer web advertising services. I have many websites and blogs I can offer you. Let me know if you are interested so we can discuss the details.

I have over 100 blogs/websites where i can offer you text links or blogpost reviews.

Price Rates:

For blogpost reviews:

20 blogs - $250
30 blogs - $350
40 blogs - $450
50 blogs - $550
100 blogs - $750

For sitewide links:

20 blogs - $450 for 1 year
30 blogs - $550 for 1 year
40 blogs - $650 for 1 year
50 blog - $750 for 1 year
100 blogs - $950 for 1 year special promo

Note: All reviews will be unique and permanent.

Regards,

Wxxxxe Jxxxe

SEO, Internet Marketer
wxxxxxxxxxxj@gmail.com

I saw the email, scanned it and deleted it. I really didn’t think anything of it. (I have anonymized the names in each of these emails because it is not my intention to “out” anybody specifically for the practice of selling links. But I don’t think these are coming from individuals looking to sell their SEO services. Stay tuned …)

The very same day, I received yet another email that looked like this:

Hi, Are you interested in buying blogpost reviews or sitewide text links? I have many network of blogs and sites we can offer you. If you are interested we can write blogpost reviews of your site or we can place a sitewide text links to our well promoted blogs.Let us know if you are interested.

note: Reply with subject “xxxxxxx” if you want to be removed from our mailing lists.

Regards,
Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com

After getting this email, my BS meter started ringing.

I dug the first email out of the Trash and did a side by side comparison and noticed some pretty odd similarities.

The first thing that I noticed was that certain sections of the copy in each email were nearly identical (Big Clue #1) and both emails came from gmail.com addresses (BIG Clue #2)

The thought that came into my head after reading the second email that maybe Google had organized and implemented their own phishing campaign to ferret out paid link buyers. (I’m just saying maybe, ok?) This looked so suspicious that I decided to launch my own little Dateline investigation (cue Mission Impossible theme song now…)

For purposes of this discussion, we will call the sender of the first email “Wanda”. I’ve included the email thread for my entire conversation below with Wanda after receiving the initial inquiry. I started out by inquiring if I could get a URL to “check out” her business:

ME: Do you have a website that I can check out for your business?

WANDA: No i just directly contact potential advertisers. We all know what happen to very obvious services like payperpost, lots of their advertisers are penallized by search engines especially Google.

ME: Do you have an example or something I could look at? I’m not going to pay for something without being able to look at what I’m buying.

WANDA: Yes im sorry. Here are the blogs and you can see some sample blogpost reviews on each site

Wanda sent me a list of close to 100 blogs in her “network”. (Again, I’m not going to out Wanda by posting a list of her blogs here. If by chance, Wanda is a legitimate “SEO Marketer”, I will leave the list of blogs out of this).

I noticed a few things about her blogs. The content was largely duplicated across her little network. Oddly enough, I could not find 1 single email address to contact the blog owner on ANY of the blogs. Not even one. The contact page was virtually identical on each of these sites, which is not necessarily suspect, but I couldn’t find a single email address, physical address, telephone number, mailing address or ANY contact information whatsoever on any of these blogs. That’s just plain weird.  Way too weird.

Now, I know that typically off line information is not included in a “Contact” page for blogs of this ilk, but to not find one single email address, phone number or any contact information AT ALL on any of these blogs?

So I sent off another email to my friend Wanda:

ME: Just taking a look at some of these blogs, it looks like the content is basically just duplicated across all the blogs … we can’t really get any use out of putting ads or the same review on duplicated content. So just the text links probably won’t work for us in these posts. The blog reviews might work but it depends on how they’re constructed. Are the blogs written by your writers? What is the pricing if we write the reviews? Can we control the copy and the links that go in the review? If not, can we provide specific copy and URL’s to go in the blog?

WANDA: Blogposts will be written by my writers. all reviews will be unique. You can also provide your own blogposts if you want. Yes you control the copy and the links that go in the review. How many blogs you plan on buying?

ME: I’m mainly concerned with the links in the blogpost. I’d like to provide a selection of URL’s to put in the post…is that possible?

WANDA: Yes that would be fine.

ME: I’d like 10-20 to start out as a test.

WANDA: For 20 blogs post, $250 - we write [the posts], $200 - you write [the posts]. You can send your payment to my paypal email: xxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com

ME: How many words in the post? Can we select the topic? How do you decide what the writer writes about for the post? Can we provide that?

WANDA: 150 - 200 words if we write. the topics will be based on the keywords you provide with links. 2 anchor text links for each review. Here’s a sample review:

ME: Can I select the blogs?

WANDA: Yes sure.

That was the last time that I heard from “Wanda”. Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything from Wanda. But it’s pretty obvious to me that there are some underlying shady tactics going on here.

But where is it coming from? Is it organized? Or is it just a coincidence that several “SEO Marketers” used the same exact copy in their marketing message? All using Gmail email addresses? Did I mention that this whole thing is weird?

There are so many things wrong with this scenario on so many levels. Wanda’s little network of blogs is the classic example of the very thing that any internet marketer should steer clear of like it’s the bubonic plague. Regardless of whether or not this is or isn’t some nefarious attempt by Google to root out paid links on the buyer’s side, this is woefully transparent to me. But if it is Google, it’s a really, really weak effort.

Some of you might think that I should take off the tin foil hat. You may be right. And all of you Google conspiracy theorists out there are probably nodding. But I got several additional emails that were eerily similar:

Hi,

Are you interested in buying text links or blog reviews. I manually contact potential advertisers like you and offer web advertising services. I have many websites and blogs I can offer you. Let me know if you are interested so we can discuss the details.

I have over 100 blogs/websites where i can offer you text links or blogpost reviews.

Price Rates:
For blogpost reviews:
20 blogs - $250
30 blogs - $350
40 blogs - $450
50 blog - $550
100 blogs - $750 << special promo

For sitewide links:
20 blogs - $350 for 1 year
30 blogs - $450 for 1 year
40 blogs - $550 for 1 year
50 blog - $650 for 1 year
100 blogs - $850 for 1 year << special promo

If you have any questions about blog reviews or sitewide links please don’t hesitate to email me.

Note: All reviews will be unique and permanent.

Regards,
Hxxx Dxxx
SEO, Internet Marketer
Email: hxxx.dxxx@gmail.com

Almost the exact same copy, same title and from yet another gmail.com address …. hmmm.

I received yet another email just like these with a different name, but the same title of “SEO, Internet Marketer” and also with a gmail.com email address.

Am I nuts or does this reek to high heaven? I need someone to please talk me off the ledge about this…

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