First, A Thank You
Before I jump into this article I wish to sincerely thank Win
Singleton of Summit Web Design. It was his dedication to his
clients that brought this article to life. One of his valued
clients was particularly unhappy with their choice to try
RedZee’s™ services and it was Win’s extensive
research to support his client’s rights which provided me
with the substance of this article.
My First Impression of RedZee™
To begin I would like to state that my first impression of RedZee™ was
positive. For example, the layout of the search engine results
pages (SERPs) is quite pleasing to the eye. Each page begins
with a framed section called the RedZee™pedia; a clever
definition and encyclopedic breakdown of the phrase and separate
words searched. Immediately following this informative listing
is the familiar left-side organic results and right side sponsored
results. The left side shows screenshots of each organically
ranked site and provides quick access to a “Quick Look” windowed
preview of the site. In addition, and I really like this, the
Meta search engine provides a quick access link to online archives
of the associated site. These archives provide insight into
the past of what might be a prospective vendor; and the more
information we have when making vendor decisions the better!
Lastly but not least I was impressed with RedZee’s™ commitment
to kid-friendly searching. I can’t say that I conducted
a serious review of the success of this kid-friendly policy
but it seemed to work great by totally ignoring adult oriented
keyword searches – a novel idea.
What has put a significant damper on my perception of this search engine is their TOP3 pay-per-click program . To more accurately explain I am going to use the following live sample as I want this to be a very systematic and clear illustration of what has me concerned.
The Sample: A Current PPC Program for “Fairfax
County Real Estate”
A client of
Summit Web and StepForth’s
agreed to commence with RedZee’s™ TOP3 program;
unfortunately without either company’s prior counsel.
The client chose to agree to a fixed price of a $0.10 per-click
promotion whereby their website would be guaranteed to appear
randomly within the top 3 results on RedZee™.com for the
client’s chosen phrase(s). One of the phrases chosen by
the client was “Fairfax County real estate”.
Step 1: I checked RedZee™ under “Fairfax County real estate” and indeed the client’s website is appearing in the top 3. Sounds ok so far, right? Not quite. To my surprise despite listing these paid results within the organic listings RedZee™ was not clearly identifying them as paid; i.e. there was no “sponsored link” in grey or anywhere around the paid top 3 rankings. This is a practice that I had thought was long gone in the world of reputable pay-per-click services.
Step 2: At the instruction of Win at Summit Web, I was told I needed to take a screenshot of Google’s results for “Fairfax County real estate” for future comparison. Intrigued, I followed his instructions and then upon his next direction I proceeded to install the RedZee™ toolbar on my machine. After installation I again navigated to Google.com and tried the same search. Much to my alarm, within a shade of a second, Google’s organic results were altered to include RedZee’s™ paid TOP3 rankings at the very top. Again, not only were these results pushing down legitimate organic rankings from Google but RedZee’s™ results were again not clearly distinguishing themselves as paid or anything other than Google’s actual results.
View Original Google Screenshot (unaltered by RedZee)
View Google Results Screenshot (altered by RedZee)
How does this manipulation happen? The RedZee™ toolbar includes adware that once installed quietly supplements Google’s results on your machine when any search phrase is typed in that RedZee™ is currently receiving bids for.
Step 3: I proceeded to test other search engines using the RedZee™ toolbar and discovered that the same manipulation occurs within Yahoo and MSN results.
View MSN Results Screenshot :: View Yahoo! Results Screenshot
Step 4: Still a bit shocked at the gall of this promotion tactic Win and I spoke about his client’s results within this TOP3 campaign; perhaps it was actually benefiting the client? According to him the ROI has been dismal to say the least. In fact he stated that although there has been a great deal of traffic sent to his client’s site the visitors didn’t go farther than the home page. We both found this alarming considering this is a real estate website where the listings are located past the home page. In addition the client’s visitor depth results on Google campaigns have been drastically more productive with (in most cases) less traffic.
More Research Needed
The title of this section says it all; I needed to know if this
was a story that had gotten ‘out there’ or if
others were facing the same issues. With Win’s help
and my own research I discovered that RedZee’s™ TOP3
promotion technique, although somewhat known, appears to be
flying under the public awareness radar. To Rand Fishkin’s
credit we were able to find a discussion post from 2005 on
his informative SEOmoz Blog called “Investigating
the RedZee™ Search Engine.” We also found a large
thread that delves into the details of RedZee’s™ tactics
on a Digitalpoint
forum thread.
The next step was to see if RedZee™ had a parent or subsidiary company that may have been making similar headlines. This research paid off. In their privacy statement a “business partner” called “Link Positions” which is a subsidiary of Internet Shopping Enterprises (RedZee™’s parent company). Researching Link Positions revealed additional information that was more along the lines of what I was searching for. In this 2005 Search Engine Watch forum post Link Position’s suspicious sales pitch is discussed along with the exact adware tactic that RedZee™ is using.
Finally, Win pointed out an even more interesting BlogSpot posting called “Advertising Scam ‘Search Engine Data Merging’”. This post by Professional Web Services Inc. was exceedingly revealing as the writer describes exactly how this ‘scam’ as he calls it is sold and profited from. I highly recommend that everyone who is not aware of these techniques read this article because it truly shows the intricacy and premeditation involved with promoting this strategy.
Ross Dunn’s Final Word
I am recommending that all of my clientele and readers think
long and hard before they proceed with a RedZee™ TOP3
promotion service. I definitely do not consider it a worthwhile
investment at this time.
Why Am I Against the TOP3 Service
First, I find it ethically corrupt that any search engine would
misrepresent what are supposed to be organic search results
with paid results. Secondly, in my opinion the alteration
of search engine results on a competing search engine is beyond
reprehensible. Not only does this “data merging” misrepresent
the confidence of supposedly sacred organic results on search
engines like Google but it appears to be done without the
foreknowledge of the installer of the toolbar. To be certain
of this I reviewed the privacy policy and terms of use policy
on RedZee™ and with my untrained eye I discovered nothing
that would lead me to believe that the person installing the
toolbar has any idea that 3rd party search engines results
would be modified. The only loophole that did appear in my
review of their policies was found within a portion of RedZee’s™ privacy
policy shown below
(last paragraph in section called ‘Search Engine’):
Certain search results may be "sponsored" results, which consist of websites who have paid for placement in the search results. These listings are provided by our business partner, Link Positions, which is a subsidiary of ISE. These premium results may contain tracking URLs provided by Link Positions to identify clicks from the search results page. Again, information gathered by these means will not personally identify you. Any information collected by Link Positions will be subject to Link Positions's privacy policy, and Link Positions and ISE may share information that either company gathers in connection with the use of ISE's search engine. (Author’s bolding.)
What I noted in the above copy was that there was no link to Link Position’s privacy policy anywhere within RedZee’s™ policy. I am no lawyer but not providing access to Link Position’s privacy policy may effectively make this agreement fair game for manipulating results (among other things). In addition I performed some quick research and had no luck finding Link Position’s website, never mind their privacy policy.
All-in-all I definitely feel a bit sheepish because I have
to admit that I had no idea result hi-jacking was taking place
on such a wide scale. I guess this is partly because as a search
engine optimization and placement company these salesmen know
better than to call… at least I would like to think that.
In addition, I am frankly curious if anyone knows of other lower-tier
search engines that use similar techniques. Please let me know
if you do because I would like to bring them to the attention
of my clientele and other readers: email ross@stepforth.com
Care to Reply RedZee™?
I invite RedZee™ to respond to this article on the record.
I am hopeful that a search engine with such a promising overall
appearance will either choose to abandon the use of such technology
or at least make it better known to their users that they are
agreeing to the manipulation of other search engines’ results
by installing the toolbar. In addition I would love to hear
how they argue the ethics of such tactics. Unfortunately I
have heard through several discussions that the arguments
posed to
other inquiring minds have so far have been less than impressive.
Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.
|
Ross Dunn is the CEO of StepForth Web Marketing Inc., a web marketing company founded in 1997 and based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. StepForth provides cutting-edge search engine optimization services that provide highly successful, targeted results for its clientele. Ross Dunn is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS) with a background in web design and business management. His broad Internet experience in combination with a talented staff has made StepForth a name synonymous with top results.
Search marketing information for small business owners.
Fetching the best small business news.
A friendly place to share small business ideas and knowledge.
Small business support through education, resources and community
The directory of the best small business sites and tools.
Copyright © 1998 - 2018 Search Engine Guide All Rights Reserved. Privacy
FreeFind Site Search Engine - FreeFind adds a "search this site" feature to your website, making your site easier to use. FreeFind also gives you reports showing what your visitors are searching for, enabling you to improve your site. FreeFind's advanced site search engine and automatic site map technology can be added to your website for free.
Buy UPC Codes
Get your products listed online!