I’m sitting here with my family on Easter morning, attempting to enjoy them to the fullest.
Problem is, I can’t get this situation out of my head. It’s driving me nuts…
I figured the best way to get it out of my head is to air out my thoughts.
Recently, a competitor released an automated traffic robot. With them being my competition, I watched it to see what they were doing. I’m on over 100 marketing email lists and saw a ton of promotion for this product.
They definitely did some smart things with their product from what they claimed on the sales page.
Being that they are my competition, I’m not going to do the whole “Name and Shame” thing. If you glance through your email box, you’ll be able to figure out who I’m referring to. Please don’t blast them in my comments section either.
It was on their sales page that I saw something so shady that it made me want to puke.
They had a graphic of Google results for the name of a product. The page showed the name of the product in the search box and a fair amount of competition for the term and they dominated nearly the whole page.
The problem came when I glanced at how many results there were for the term and found that what they searched in Google was not the term that they left in the search box. Here is an example:
They had “product name” in the search box, but the real search was for “product name scam”.
It’s the most obviously misleading example of faking proof that I’ve ever seen.
What they did was dominate the entire page for the term “product name scam”. Then, they did a search in Google so they could screen capture their results. What they did wrong was erase the word “scam” from the search box before taking the screen capture.
I couldn’t believe the balls. Anyone could see it for themselves if they just took the time to look closely at the graphic.
Disgusting.
This brings me to something I’ve been doing for my products since I’ve left StomperNet. I have tons of proof I could show for different things I’ve done lately, but a lot of it is for Reputation Management stuff, which I cannot show due to the nature of what I’m doing.
I’ve got plenty of search listings I’ve snagged lately. My favorite was being able to rank #1 for SEO Software and Traffic Software for 3 days. I got a TON of traffic for that and know exactly how to do it again whenever I want…
Yet, it’s misleading to put up a graphic of the 2008 visitors I got to the page during the 2nd day. So, I refuse to do it.
I use proof like search listings, because that’s what my software is all about: Being able to get traffic from Google.
My ethics are costing me money…
Yet, I’m able to sleep at night and be happy with my business as I rebuild it. I’m proud of myself and after discussing this with my wife, loved the way her eyes shined at me.
I’d trade more money for that any day.
What do you think?
Share this post and help your friends