Google Calling?

By Carl Weiss

Recently our company was approached by one of our clients who held in his hand a printout of a form letter he had been spammed with that read as follows,

Hi, I recently visited your website, “www.abc123xyz.com”, during a routine survey of sites which may be capable of higher search engine performance through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Efficient SEO brings an increase in online sales or leads. I hope this information may be of use to you, if not then I apologies for any inconvenience caused. So, here's a summary of my findings on your site:

- Your Google Page rank is 0/10

- You have 0/10 back-links

- Your website has 0/15 pages indexed

I'm going somewhere with all this... I wanted to do my homework and research your website because I want to show you that I have applied some research to your website before contacting you with my proposal. We are in the business of offering 3 benefits for your website:

1) Diagnosing and fixing all issues with your website

2) Ranking your site to the top of the search results

3) Significantly increasing your online revenue levels.

Let me know if you would like to further information by email or we could schedule a call.

I look forward to your feedback

We pointed out to the client that not only was the email a form letter, it failed to point out the following:

1. The site rank is irrelevant! Only keyword ranking is important for search!

2. The message did not mention any specific keyword searches.

3. The spam contained no reference as to where the firm that send the message was located.

4. The email did not detail any method or methods they intended to employ in order to rectify the situation.

5. They also did not include any reference to the client's blogs, social posts or videos, which today accounts for 75% of the search engine ranking.

6. Most egregious of all was the fact that this particular website was ranked in the top ten listing on Google Page One for no fewer than seven keywords. In other words, they are already on page one of Google .

The crux of the matter was that whoever sent the spam that caused our client to go into a panic attack did not do their homework. They were simply Phishing for a response, any response from which to gain a toehold in order to try to get the prospect to fork over a credit card number. And far from being surprised at these tactics, I myself am routinely bombarded with email and phone calls from sales reps purportedly from Google who want to make me aware that my site is not on page one. Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

Google does not have a sales force.

What most people are unaware of is the fact that Google is not behind any of these messages and/or calls simply due to the fact that they have no outbound sales force. What they do is work with digital media agencies like ours. In fact they have a certification system for agencies wishing to offer Adwords pay-per-click advertising to their clients. But as far as organic ranking to which Google makes not one slim dime, the company does not offer assistance at any price, other than YouTube videos designed to let you know what Google wants in terms of content, back links and the like. The fact of the matter is that Google guards how it ranks website and keywords for organic results. They do this to keep companies from being able to dominate organic search. Therefore any sales rep claiming to be from Google is at best a bald-faced liar and at worst an online criminal looking to do you harm.