Comments on: One More Complaint Against TOPSEOs – Are they a shakedown operation or legitimate service?

By: Topseos.com Awards For Best SEO Company Not Transparent Enough | Hobo

Topseos.com Awards For Best SEO Company Not Transparent Enough | Hobo — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:48:49 +0000

[...] The industry seem to have turned their attention to TopSeos - “identified as an independent authority on vendors” (by themselves apparently) and it makes for a good read. It seems the legitimate SEO community, for the most part, finds what TOPSEOs does to be distasteful at best, a shakedown service at worst. [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:59:32 +0000

I recently had a conversation with some people there (Andrew and Jeev). The first 2 minutes were “we’ll rank you on our site” based on an “agreed financial model” I asked him about independent research, and basically it’s verifying references you provide them. He then told me “the better the financial model we agree to” with them, “the higher we will rank.” It is definitely not legitimate and surprised it continues to exist. He was very abrasive when I started poking holes in his practice and told him that based on these 2 minutes, we’re not interested. He then pouted and said “forget about it” and hung up!

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:11:21 +0000

Read the terms and conditions; and/or try to sign up. It is a minimum $1k per month fee with a minimum 6 month commitment. The more you spend on advertising on TopSEO the higher you can rank. It is a total scam designed for deceipt – so why would they post that? Obviously they want to be considered the “official authority” but can’t be bothered to put the work in to make it legitimate.

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:53:36 +0000

I am not one to typically advocate a lawsuit; but these “lists” has caused many companies a great deal of pain due to their fraudulent representation. They are not lists created from independent reviews and ctrieria; they are lists created to include only those companies that paid to be considered and/or listed. To publically disseminate these lists as anything but that is fraud and is damaging to both the businesses seeking service providers and the service providers themselves. Our company, for example has received calls from clients all week asking why we are not on the list. We have also had conversations with potential clients that stated “we are going to go with a company that made the top 10 list we saw from TopSEO.” Do an impartial, legitimate list that gives all companies equal opportunity and I have no problem. Promote the list as “top rankings of companies that paid us to reviewed” and I have no problem. But to push these lists as “Top xxxx Companies in the US” is absolute fraud. It would be like Google headlining their PPC rankings as “Best Companies on the Internet” instead of “Sponsored Links.”

By: Bob Gladstein

Bob Gladstein — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:57:37 +0000

I’m not a lawyer either, but as I understand it, the government isn’t involved in prosecuting a class action suit. It’s a civil suit, and the only way it differs from one party suing another, is that one legal team prosecutes the case for a large group of people.

So instead of it just being me suing Company X, it’s me and many other people all suing Company X because we all suffered the same sort of mistreatment.

Personally, I’m kind of doubtful that those of us who have chosen not to advertise with Top SEOs have a valid case against them. On the other hand, people who were bamboozled into hiring a crappy SEO company because Top SEOs falsely advertised that they had met some important criteria might have a case.

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:57:12 +0000

Mitchell,

I’ve personally never participated in a class action except when I was notified that Microsoft owed me gobs of money for having overpaid for a boatload of their products a few years back. So I don’t know what’s involved or what the legal basis would be here. I’d expect only the Fed or individual State Attorney Generals in the U.S., and magistrates in the other countries TopSEOs operates in could bring legal action against them. But I’m not an attorney. So I’m stumped.

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:46:18 +0000

I think its time a class action laswsuit was organized. This is a total scam that hurts companies unwilling to be held hostage, and stupid enough to pay $1k a month to be listed in a fraudulent “best of” list. I will spend the $ if I can get enough people who will participate. That is something I will spend my money on.

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:39:36 +0000

Nick,

That’s brilliant! It totally makes sense.

By: Nick D

Nick D — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:15:48 +0000

After much pondering I believe have unravelled TopSEO’s secrative ranking process, and am amazed at its stark simplicity.

Every month they just export their bank statement to excel, and sort by descending in the cr column, lol thats it. TopSEO rankings out of the way for another month.

By: » The New Bloggers Phony Blog Comment Overview | Search Marketing Wisdom

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:21:07 +0000

[...] – that was posted to one of my TopSEO’s articles. The one where I question whether TopSEO’s is a shakedown operation or not. The comment “author” was listed as “Bradford Camenisch”. So [...]