Another post in preparation of Hostgator.com’s Black Friday Special

Hostgator.com Black Friday Spam

Hostgator.com has found it’s black Friday special on my blog for the third year now.

As I get back into the swing of things after the end of a rather intense work load, I find reason to write and that is the spam that comes from Hostgator.com affiliates.

Just in case this time someone at Hostgator.com reads my blog, just to be clear I am not blaming you for spam. However if you don’t address it, with more than a unofficial looking short email while still collecting new customers from this form of very annoying affiliates you might as well do the spamming.

Instead of pointing out who has spammed me this time I am going to instead put together recommendations. But first let’s look at the promotional email that hostgator.com put out last year:

“Be ready to see a huge amount of activity and unbelievable sales numbers that will only come around once a year!

Here’s what we want you to do:

Post about the promotion on your blog
Post on Twitter and Facebook
Post about it on forums (follow all forum rules and don’t spam)
Tell your E-mail lists (Again, no Spam!)
Refer friends and family
Push all of your hosting related traffic to HostGator and EARN BIG!
Tell everyone you know!”

From there I am going to formulate what should have been done.

  1. An official Hostgator.com looking email.Seriously the last one I saw asides for being lite on content and poorly formatted was weak. Especially when the prior emailed encouraged use of forums, Twitter, Facebook,  email lists, friends, and family.
  2. Tell your affiliates their consequences and what defines spam. Let us put two and two together, you refer someone and they only pay a penny for service, and you get the full $50 – $125 refer fee.  In short it looks like Hostgator.com how to spam, without actually defining what spam is. From the traditional perspective spam is an email only thing. But the truth of the matter is spam has come to envelope any form on undesired communication via the Internet.  From what looks like people trying to say how grand and wonderful my site is, while trying to get site with a url to something about Viagra in very long link. To the people sending me messages via chat to sign up with some date service or some other crap.
  3. Remind them of your Affiliate Agreement.
  4. If you are going to advise them to use of forums, Twitter, Facebook,  email lists, friends, and family. Advise them on a proper protocol as opposed to annoying people.

Hopefully this time around I am busy with online stores and their Black Friday deals as opposed to going to through my in box, YouTube channels, forums, blogs, and whatever else.

SEO Experts – Top 10 Tips To Tell If They Know What They Are Doing

SEO experts seem to be a dime a dozen these days.  But not everyone claiming to be a SEO experts knows what they are doing. I think the best standard is that they have to know more than I do.  I am by no stretch of the imagination an SEO Expert (I am a self-proclaimed SEO noob). Everything I know about SEO is reflected on this site. Not to mention I have literally been poked with a stick to know what I know (I would have preferred to play video games).

So before I go into a whole spill about not being an SEO expert and having ADD, and that I find SEO boring; I know enough to spot a crappy SEO Expert.

The reason for this post was because of so called SEO Experts Mindshark.ca.  In July 2010 prior to them starting up they decided to harvest my email from this site for the purposes of spamming. One of their first spammings was about my competitors having an edge.  Granted if someone else came along and actually did what I do better than me, I would happily stand a side. But it does not appear anyone wants to write reviews about hosting review sites.  Because these so called SEO Experts decided to claim I opted in I decided to complain to Netfirms and wrote two posts, one of which was to prove they were not the SEO Experts that they claimed to be.

I re-reviewed them last month. Which triggered a furry of emails asking me who to go with. While I know some really good people in the business, you may not want to pay what they ask for (probable because no one returned my email after mentioning they were not cheap). I can tell you how I spotted the problems with Mindshark.ca; those details can help in making an informed decision when shopping for a SEO Expert.

Top Ten Tips for seeing if your SEO Expert is Valid

1. Alexa.com tells you how well SEO Experts rank

If you read enough of this blog there is no surprise that Alexa is at the top of the list. Out of any SEO detail I find Alexa.com interesting. Which maybe has to do with the fact that Alexa.com belongs to Amazon.com, or maybe it has to do with history graphs. Yes, amazingly historical graph charts can keep my attention.  If any SEO Expert tries to tell you that Alexa.com is not a valid measure of a site’s traffic, promptly mark their emails as spam.

I have used Alexa in many cases to prove that hosts may have just started or to show how popular they may be. It can work just as well for looking at SEO Experts and their sites. In fact Alexa.com can tell you a lot about rather if someone is actually a SEO expert. They should be able to do for themselves what they claim they will do for you.

In case you don’t understand how Alexa works, low numbers good, high numbers bad. For more details see: http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more

Examples of some sites I visit:

Facebook.com – 1
Google.com – 2
Yahoo.com – 4
Twitter.com – 8
Amazon.com – 10
Netflix.com – 96
Hostgator.com – 240
Tigerdirect.com – 1,497
Penny-arcade.com – 5,223
Centralops.net – 18,996
Romanticallyapocalyptic.com – 74,178

After 21 days how did hosting-reviews-exposed.com do compared to so called SEO Experts Mindshark.ca?

Hosting-reviews-exposed.com – 125,586 formally 129,240, a loss of 3,654. Nice but I am sure other people could do better.

Alexa.com says this about Hosting-review-exposed.com.

There are 125,585 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Hosting-reviews-exposed.com. 

Mindshark.ca – 768,973 formally 637,187, a gain of 131,786. In terms of being SEO Experts this is really bad.  That number should be going down.

Another warning sign is when you see this “Historical data not available for sites ranked > ~ 100,00”, if you see that with any so called SEO Expert run, don’t walk. For some reason Alexa.com is showing historical data for Hosting-reviews-exposed.com I can only assume because their system predicts this site will go below 100,000.

However Alexa.com is not fool proof, there are ways so called SEO Experts can fool the system. I suggest avoiding any service that artificially enhances your Alexa score as this can have a negative effect on your site later on.

There are places you can go online to pay to ping a site to fake traffic numbers, most can get you below 100,000 on Alexa.com. However that does not guarantee there are no tell-tale signs. Clearly that is the case with this site that rigs Alexa scores.

Another thing to look for is what countries that are highest in traffic.  For example, so called SEO experts Mindshark.ca claims “Home to the latest and greatest Internet Marketing Strategies in North America,”

No Surprise but Mindshark.ca, self-proclaimed SEO Experts are not even big in their own country Canada.

Which if there is any place you want to have traffic in, it would be your own country. Especially when their propaganda lists Toronto, London, and Sydney along with New York and Delhi.

Another tell-tale sign is if the extreme ups and downs in traffic history.

The above chart is from one of those Alexa score boosting companies, clearly their attempts to manipulate the system have back fired. I think at worst the highest a SEO Expert’s site should be is at 100,000 or lower.

2. Centralops.net and Archive.net – When a SEO Expert’s history matters

So you get claims that someone has been using an SEO expert for years, maybe even a decade or more. Perhaps this SEO expert uses their BBB record as proof that they were around that long. Problem is the BBB does not verify when a company got into business.

Domains whois information on the other hand is next to impossible to fake.

However creation dates don’t tell the whole story. Maybe like me they had the domain for years before using, or they purchased it as a “aged domain”. Which is why I recommend looking at archive.net (thewaybackmachine).  This site will tell you what a site looked like from creation to today. Few changes indicated little was done with the site. A domain providers  start up page for years at a time indicated they were not active. One site that is a perfect example is Zyma.com it was formally a construction site out of Spain, and late 2010 they became a British hosting company.

3. What the Better Business Bureau can tell you about SEO Experts

I know I just told you not to trust the start date.  Anyone that knows me might think it a bit odd that I would use the BBB as a reference. But there is a valid reason.  One thing to note is it took years before mindshark.ca was actually registered with the BBB, and they contacted me not long after we launched. Perhaps it is not the case for everyone.

But that is not what I think should be focused on. The real issue I have with this SEO Expert’s BBB record they claim they have 200 plus resellers, 300 plus SEO firms that outsource to them, and 4,000 plus clients.

This strikes me as odd:

Why might I find a record that has zero complaints odd? Because it is too good to be true. There is always going to be a customer that cannot be pleased, especially when you offer “Affordable SEO services”, i.e. cheap. Not to mention no company is perfect.  Never mind this SEO expert claims to be in business since 2006, the last three years have zero complaints.

No one can please every customer they have, even if they cherry pick who is going to be a customer.

4. SEO Experts with Google Page Rank less than 5 need not apply.

I recommend using this site to see what your SEO experts page rank is.

http://www.prchecker.info/

From what I am told a page rank of 5 is the lowest you want to go with someone that claims to be a SEO expert.

As for what Google Page rank is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

5. Search Engine results, what Yahoo.com, Bing.com, and Google tells you about SEO Experts.

At worst any self-proclaimed SEO expert should have the main page populated keeping off any negative feedback about their company for any search for just their name.

Example what searching for “mindshark.ca” shows on Bing.com, Yahoo.com, and Google.com: To date I have at least two posts on the first page of their search engine results.

6. How social are SEO Experts – Social Media Facebook / Twitter

About 4 years ago I learned a trick for getting Twitter followers. That is to follow someone who follows whoever follows them. There is software that can do this for you. It is super easy to spot.  Example someone has 17,000 followers, and they are following 17,000 people.  For my twitter account for this site @hostingscams, I have 1,700 followers, yet I follow about 20 people.  I don’t follow everyone that follows me simply because there is no way I could keep track of every tweet. Plus not every twitter account is following me for the sheer sake of seeing who I am doing a blog post on.  I get at least 3 – 8 a day that stop following me after 24 hours.

Clearly Mindshark.ca is using this method.

Twitter followers can also be purchased. You might want to check the followers to see how many people they actually follow.

Facebook is a harder thing to figure out. I know that likes can also be purchased.

My own page has 675 followers at this time. While appreciate the likes I tend to doubt my Facebook pages represents normal active websites and their social media. But there are some clear details I see when looking at the visitors for self-proclaimed SEO Experts Mindshark.ca.

What I see as problematic is the age bracket 18 -24 year olds. The other problem is the rate of visitors is rare. So rare that the best week was 1 visitor.  Even with 675 likes I appear to have more engagement with the people that liked my site, despite my lack of daily activity.

7. How did you find this SEO expert, or did they find you?

One of the things I have noticed with Mindshark.ca is that they literally phished for details. They got my email by going to my contact form, replying to them justified adding me to their mailing list. Never mind their initial mail out did not have my name. Others had their email and phone numbers harvested through sites that were meant to connect with professionals. They meant to connect with other people that would provide them work, not the other way around.

First Contact from a SEO Expert firm should not start off with a one size fits all mail out. I can understand a firm contacting a website, and providing details one what they see with their site, and what potential the site has with hard numbers.

Did the SEO Expert contact you?  Did they have permission to put you on their mailing list? If they put you on their mailing list avoid them.  Never do business with anyone that spams you.

I wish I could tell you how to find a SEO expert but the best I can do is tell you to try forums and advertising.  The people I deal with generally word of mouth from designers like myself.

8. SEO Experts Testimonials

One thing that stuck out to me with mindshark.ca was the testimonials. A site claiming to offer SEO services should have websites in their testimonials.  There were none.

Should a site(s) appear in the testimonials points 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 should be used to see how well they performed.

9. SEO Experts awards

If there is anything to be learned from the hosting review industry, its awards are not always earned.  They are often bought.

Look for:

  • Awards that are vague on details.
  • Awards that look like they were written by the SEO experts.
  • Awards site that has a link for advertise with us, when there is no visible advertising on the site.
  • Awards sites that have no visible source of income.
  • SEO Experts Awards that do not link directly back to the independent “unaffiliated” party
  • Awards that are more so an affiliation than an award (example they use a merchant so that merchant gives them a page to promote from).
  • Things that are listed as awards that let anyone put their site up.
  • They received an award from a site that has a top 10 list of SEO Experts, and the one you are looking at has an affiliate program.
  • Award sites with the same whois and/or network details as the SEO Expert
  • Award sites that fail at points 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6.

While I am no expert on SEO Expert awards, I can only assume that what was very visible in the Hosting Review industry would apply very well to the SEO Review industry.

10. The SEO Expert warns you about other SEO experts, sends you testiomonials and awards. Yet the SEO Expert fails to send you ideas.

One thing I noticed from the emails I got that Mindshark.ca was sending out was warning about:

“These signs have been compiled after close examination of the common features of many Unethical and Inexperienced SEO firms which exist.”

Clearly what this is for is to keep you from looking at other SEO Experts; it is designed to cause doubt. The awards and testimonials I have already covered how to look at. But clearly they are being sent to impress.

What you should be getting from any SEO expert is a plan of action. If you are in a field that is competitive they should be able to tell you what your competitors strong points and weak points are.

Finding SEO experts is no easy task

Things to remember:

  • There is no such thing as a quick fix
  • Its not a one time deal
  • What worked 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or 1 year ago may no longer work today.
  • They should have targets like traffic, keywords, and demographics.

When it comes to any service be they SEO Experts or whatever else, buyer beware.

Webhostingstuff.com, not every host that was a top host survives.

Webhostingstuff.com has been the focal point of this blog at several points in the last few years. They claimed to be a place for fair and honest hosting reviews. However Webhostingstuff.com has been a shinnying example of everything that is wrong with the hosting review industry. But I have reached the point that I feel like I am beating a dead horse, if not a dying horse. Unless somehow webhostingstuff.com manages to reinvent itself in a way that revives it this is the last post to pick apart their methods.

So far the only change webhostingstuff.com has been capable of is remaking the so called top 25 list into something that is cumbersome. It no longer starts on the main page of webhostingstuff.com.  You have to actually look for it among a list of items for “best hosts”.  Than you only get to see 5 of the some 23 – 29 Best Hosts. Anyone wanting to see the next 5 Best Hosts would have to scroll down past “Show me more Hot Deals …” link.  Where there were 10 hosts to past.  To find “Next  >>>”, and without clicking next I would have no way of knowing that that is how I get more “Best Hosting”.  Which is why since April 2010 my posts on webhostingstuff.com have been far less.  Anyone past the firth position was not going to get their money worth.

On top of that, right now I cannot access their site.  Because one too many inquires triggers an IP block. Never mind that real people in need of hosting may be researching multiple hosting companies to find the right one.

Then there was the original fair and honest ranking webhostingstuff.com page had this:

To build a fair and honest ranking system, ranking is always performed automatically by the system – free of human interference.

Not far into the whole spill about honesty, they lay down the justification for the advertising they offer. Advertising that I have yet to see.

Human editors are also needed to maintain the high level of integrity of our trusted reviews. Webmasters and system administrators are needed for the smooth running of this large site.

No surprise but that wording is no longer there.

I was going to do several posts on hosts that closed up shop or switched gears. But that seemed long, tedious, and boring (remember I have ADD). But I am going to boil it down into one post. After which my next post is going to deal with what a lot of people have been asking me since my mindshark.ca posts, and that is how to find a seo expert. So one post that focuses on the closures (or switch from hosting to something else).

Why hosting-reviews-exposed.com became a blog and focused on webhostingstuff.com

The very issue that started this site to have a blog was a host called hostdawgs.com. Another host that had watched my video decided to track one month of top 25 hosts that appeared on webhostingstuff.com (it was either 2008 or 2009), a few months after they posted their finding hostdawgs.com a host that appeared on that so called top 25 list at webhostingstuff.com was out of business.  Clearly there were some obvious kinks in webhostingstuff.com’s armor.

Into my second month blogging I found i7net.net on webhostingstuff.com

What could be worse than a host that went out of business mere months after appearing on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25?

How about a host that was not online at any point when I found it on the top 25 list (from June – November 2010) of when I was doing reviews. Between the 21 – 25 positions.  Never mind the worst part was webhostingstuff.com clearly indicated they had 72.62% uptime, and had stopped tracking uptime in July 2009. Which means it had been offline longer than a year.

I emailed Michael Low of webhostingstuff.com in June 2010 about what I had found. It took him until December 2010 to do something. Which was to remove i7net from webhostingstuff.com’s data base.

I7net.net became the keystone in my argument against webhostingstuff.com.  Which can be found at:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webhostingstuff-com-a-rigged-contest.html

The other “top” webhostingstuff.com hosts that went offline or are out of the hosting business:

Since my 10looniehost.ca post  about them forgetting to renew their domain (who last I checked was still a best host) I figured I would look and see who else on webhostignstuff.com’s top 25 list was offline.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/10looniehost-ca-is-offline-and-perhaps-out-of-business.html

These were hosts I found between May 2010 – April 2011. I did not track any that entered into the top deals or best host lists.  Because out of 64 hosts, I found a lot of flaws. Some of which I am amazed they are still online

Firedragonhosting.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Unknown*

When I first reviewed this host (May 2010), it appeared that it was some messed up Godaddy.com Wild West reseller. By which I mean it appeared the owner of the site was purchasing what people ordered through his reseller account.  If you know as much as I do about Wild West Domains, its illogical. With Wild West Domains your job is to maintain the main site, while working on means to bring in traffic. I know a lot of people that are pretty good with their program. But this guy seems to have a separate order form, where after you order he goes to the reseller and orders what you ordered.  Plus on top of that he is going to have to offer support for a reseller account that is supposed to do the support for you.

He also charged $49.95 to set up WordPress and $9.95 a month for what is essentially a free very easy to set up program.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/firedragonhosting.html

I know that the domains are under a reseller account because the register shows me Wild West Domains, which is a godaddy.com reseller program.  On top of that most of the domains in this sites reviews were under the name of the owner. Plus hosting was on Godaddy.com’s servers.

Keep in mind I think it is a very bad idea to keep your domain with your hosting company.  However what is worse is letting a hosting provider register a domain for you, and keep it under their name. Webhostingstuff.com was supposed to have a policy of not allowing Wild West Resellers from registering as a host in their system.  Webhostingstuff.com placed it in the top 25, it was number 23 when I reviewed it.

When you goto fire dragonhosting.com there is no product page. It appears to be a login page. I see the ability to order, but I get this message when I click on the order link:

Filling out the order form does not guarantee you hosting on my servers

So they might as well be closed.

Topgreenhost.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Closed*

There is not much to add here, other than I have control over topgreenhost.com, and if you type that domain in you will see my first post on this former webhostingstuff.com top host.

Yaspe.net – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Unknown*

October 2010 was when I first found Yaspe.net on webhostingstuff.com’s so called top host list. At the time they claimed to have 20,000 customers. The problem with that was their Alexa score did not validate that.  Yaspe.net was at 1,812,782 with Alexa in October 2010, and as of today it is at 12,348,306. Keep in mind low numbers are good with Alexa and high numbers are bad.  The traffic stats did not back up a claim of 20,000 clients.  At 12,348,306 they may have one visitor a day.

So far yaspe.net devolved into what I can only assume is a web design contact form.  The banner on the bottom goes to securedservers.com, which Alexa says country with the top traffic is China (42,600).  They offer a $75 per sign up or 10% monthly reoccurring payment.

I think it is safe to assume yaspe.net is out of the hosting business.

Aquariusstorage.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *acquired*

“As of June 2012, all Aquarius Storage operations are now officially part of DJAB Hosting.”

This host was recently acquired by djabhosting.com. Which does not offer unlimited hosting, so I have to wonder how the unlimited customers transferred over. At best from what http://web.archive.org tells me, they came online December 2008.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/aquariusstorage.html

Webhostingstuff.com, where awards are bought

To me one of the prerequisites to being a top host is the ability to stand the test of time.  In some cases hosts have not even had to be online to be a best host at webhostingstuff.com (10looniehost.ca and i7net.net), others did not even have to be online a month (Hostinglocker.com).  I have hosts like KVChosting.com that tell me that they are paying for advertising.  Advertising is really hard to find on Webhostingstuff.com. But it is really easy to find hosts that did not earn the right to be called a best host or top deal on webhostingstuff.com. Hosts that have no reviews, little to show for experience. Webhostingstuff.com is too lazy to even fabricate a fake review for the new comers or slow to take off hosts.

Can Webhostingstuff.com evolve? I don’t think webhostingstuff.com can, and if they do it will not be anything in the realm of ethics.

Topgreenhost.com – Out of Business, but Greengeeks.com is still here

Topgreenhost.com joins a special  list of hosts that were previously top 25 hosts at webhostingstuff.com. What makes topgreenhost.com unique is that it has been offline most of the year; at least topgreenhost.com was offline till two days ago.

When I first seen Topgreenhost.com I found they had a connection to greengeeks.com due to a similar set of IPs, and they both shared the same EPA certification.  I thought at the time that Greengeeks.com created topgreenhost.com due to competition within the so called unlimited space market.  At the time Topgreenhost.com had  it at $2.99 and greengeeks.com had their unlimited plan at $4.95. When a plan offers unlimited resources there is not much wiggle room in making the point that your hosting package is better than a company like hostgator.com. So the only thing left to do is offer the package for cheaper. Which is problematic with all the previous customers that signed on to this so called unlimited plan. Especially when they paid $24 more a year for the same plan new customers come onto.  Never mind Topgreenhost.com, greengeeks.com, hostgator.com, and every other host that offers unlimited space have a magic number where they cut you off. For hosts like topgreenhost.com this is about profit.  Which really why else would anyone want to run a hosting company?

I decided that after my review on 10looniehost.ca that I should look back and see who was out of business and who was still active. This week I explore former top 25 webhostingstuff.com hosts.  Between May 2010 to April 2011 I reviewed 64 hosts. Topgreenhost.com among a few others are either doing something else or are offline. After posts on these former top 25 hosts of webhostingsuff.com I have no future plans on new posts related to this so called hosting review site. Unless they do something drastic there is not much point focusing on webhostingstuff.com.  For over 2 years I have seen little else that I could cover. The most drastic change last year was to make the top 25 into something far less convenient for anyone that pays for this so called “advertising” to be in either “Today’s Hot Hosting Deals” or “Top Best Hosting”.

The hosts like topgreenhost.com that did business with webhostingstuff.com are another story.

Topgreenhost.com is not the first host to go out of business after appearing on webhostingstuff.com top 25.

Hostdawgs.com and i7net.net are on that list.

Hostdawgs.com was found by another hosting company that had decided to do what I should have done and actually see who was on the top 25 list. Mere months after their first post, Hostdawgs.com was offline. That was part of what drove me to look further into who was buying “advertising” with webhostingstuff.com. Just to be clear “advertising” does not have the same definition as the ads you see on this site.  The 1 – 25 position was/is for sale to the highest bidder.

I found i7net.net a month after I had started the blog for this site. It was the proverbial canary in the coal mine that had been dead far before I ever decided to look into hosts that appeared in the top 25. They were my biggest argument for webhostingstuff.com being rigged. Webhostingstuff.com  was  to sloppy to even bother to monitor what was going on.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webhostingstuff-com-a-rigged-contest.html

Never mind Webhostingstuff.com claimed it was a top host, i7net.net wasn’t even online for months at a time. Webhostingstuff.com’s own uptime records for i7net.net indicated just as much. Yet that did not stop it from being off and on the list between positions 21 – 25 from June through November 2010. The truth about what was really going on could not be any more blatant.  By December 2010 Webhostingstuff.com must have either finale got around to fixing the problem, read my email to them, or their customers were letting Michael Low know how bad this made them look. As you can no longer find i7net.net on webhostingstuff.com’s directory. Soon Topgreenhost.com will be deleted out as well.

Topgreenhost.com had no reviews on webhostingstuff.com

Webhostingstuff.com claims that the ranking is based off of:

WebHostingStuff ranks web hosts using WHSRank™ – a powerful ranking algorithm that ranks web hosting companies based on the quality of services they had provided to REAL customers.

The main engine behind WHSRank™ are the verified customer reviews published on WebHostingStuff. WHSRank™ uses these customer reviews to calculate a quality score for each web host.

When customers write their reviews, they are asked to rate web hosts based on service quality factors like:

  • Uptime and service reliability
  • Technical support
  • Customer service

WHSRank™ uses these quality signals to calculate the quality score for each web host. Other quality signals used by the WHSRank™ algorithm include uptime performance.

Topgreenhost.com had no reviews with webhostingstuff.com, so how could it be on the list? I can tell you now topgreenhost.com was not the only one. Some on the top 25  had low review scores some as low as two stars.

So how do I know topgreenhost.com is out of business?

All you have to do is type in topgreenhost.com to your browser and see where it goes. It goes to the first post that I made on this host. Which can only mean one thing I have control of the domain. A friend of mine bought the domain, as he thought it should redirect to my first post on topgreenhost.com.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/topgreenhost.html

Topgreenhost.com appears based on Webhostingstuff.com’s uptime records that the site went offline in December 2011, and based off the whois record I have a copy of, I assume greengeeks.com let the domain expire in March 2012.

I made copies of everything that webhostingstuff.com had on topgreenhost.com.

So who else will join Topgreenhost.com as a former best host of webhostingstuff.com that closed up shop?

 

10looniehost.ca – You’re on the Best Host list for webhostingstuff.com, but something is wrong!!!

10looniehost.ca found its way back on my blog last month because they let their domain expire. I assumed that they would not come back online, but I was wrong.  I have no problem admitting I am wrong.  I did not expect that 10looniehost.ca would be back online. However I had details on my iPad that I had over looked, if I had I would have known that 10looniehost.ca was very likely to come back online.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/10looniehost-ca-is-offline-and-perhaps-out-of-business.html

Back when 10looniehost.ca was down I decided to take a look at what Webhostingstuff.com top 25 devolved into, and that is a “Best Hosting” list. I also wanted to see where another host called kvchosting.com was. As a rep from Kvchosting.com came on my site to discredit someone with a negative review. At the same time Kvchosting.com joins the list of hosts that claim to be buying “advertising”. More on that in an upcoming post.

I took screen shots of every host that appeared on webhostignstuff.com’s so called “Best Hosting” list.  10looniehost.ca was in the 16th spot when I wrote my last post and before they came back online. Today they are in the 9th spot. Though keep in mind there is no number by 10looniehost.ca. Simply 5 hosts per page in the “Best Hosting” category. So I am assuming since 10looniehost.ca is 9th since it appeared on the second page for “Best Hosting” 4th result.  Interestingly enough there were 26 “Best Hosts” in August but only 23 in September. Perhaps their pay per click (PPC ) ran out.

Webhostingstuff.com changed from a top 25 list last year.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webhostingstuff-com-the-end-of-the-top-25-as-it-was.html

Before April 2011 the so called “top” 25 hosts appeared on three pages starting from the front page. I found less reason to review and find kinks in the armor of hosts that paid for this position. Mostly because the only hosts that might get their moneys worth were the first 5 hosts. Despite no longer being on the front page any more. After the front page anyone wanting to see the next 5 Best Hosts would have to scroll down past “Show me more Hot Deals …” link.  Where there were 10 hosts to past.  Even on a screen like mine where I work from a 22 inch wide screen I don’t see the “Next  >>>”, and without clicking next I would have no way of knowing that that is how I get more “Best Hosting”.  I have to wonder what the likely hood is for someone finding 10looniehost.ca on the second page of results let alone the forth page.

But that begs another question about the “Hot Deals” list. Could that be a separate list that is also paid for? There are defiantly more hosts in the “Hot Deals” list than there are on the “Best Hosts”. I know at one point I got affiliate cookies for Hostgator.com, though after I did my post on that webhostingstuff.com quickly removed the affiliate cookie. Something I will have to look again later. But as far as I can tell 10looniehost.ca has no affiliate program.

7 days down is an eternity for 10looniehost.ca

Never mind how irresponsible it was for 10looniehost.ca to not renew their domain. There were repercussions. 10looniehost.ca’s search engine results went in the toilet. Granted I have no idea what their traffic stats were before. But 10looniehost.ca’s Alexa rank is at 6,420,431. As mentioned many times before when it comes to Alexa you want a lower number. Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is currently at: 125,674.  Through my own domain register, I sell .ca domains for $12.99 a year.  I am certain the loss of a domain over 7 days will cost 10loonie.ca more in what a domain costs.

In a month I will try and see where 10looniehost.ca are with their Alexa score and post below in the comments.

So what happens when you click on a link on webhostignstuff.com to 10loonie.ca?

Click on any link to 10loonie.ca and webhostingstuff.com redirects to a notice stating:

I get this message anytime I try to click on a link that should take me directly to 10looniehost.ca. As long as webhostingstuff.com does this it makes “advertising” totally ineffective for 10looniehost.ca. I have to ask what company would want to pay for that? After all it says 10looniehost.ca has expired, but look at these other hosts that you can try instead of 10loo niehost.ca. You click on the up time for 10looniehost.ca and you get:

Is 10looniehost.ca down?

No 10 looniehost.ca came up the day after I did my post on their domain being offline.  Amazingly it happen right after the one person that I could find an active site with 10looniehost.ca. Whom happen to post a comment, yet give me no follow up to any of the questions I asked via email or my 10loonie.ca post. I wanted to know how long they had a hosting plan with 10looniehost.ca.

While 10looniehost.ca is no longer being tracked by webhostingstuff.com this site will be monitoring the uptime for 10looniehost.ca as I just added their site on my Pingdom account and you can see uptime here:

Uptime Report for 10looniehost.ca: Last 30 days

Also if you follow me on twitter @hostingscams notices will be sent if 10looniehost.ca ever goes offline again and if 10looniehost.ca comes back up there will be a notification for that as well.

Chances are after posting this, webhostingstuff.com might resume their uptime monitoring of 10looniehost.ca.

So why the heck a third post on 10looniehost.ca

Really this post is less a bout 10looniehost.ca than it is about webhostingstuff.com. First this host was in the top 25 back when it was first starting:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/10looniehost-ca.html

Than as my last post stated 10looniehost.ca lost their domain for at least 7 days.  While at the same time being on webhostignstuff.com’s 16th position for “Best Host”. The fun fact is webhostingstuff.com validates what I am saying. They still list them as a Best Host, never mind they no longer track their up time. Never mind that you cannot click on any link to 10looniehost.ca on webhostingstuff.com and be brought to 10looniehost.ca.  Yet while there is no uptime checks, and no way of clicking on a link to take you to 10loonie.ca. Webhostingstuff.com says that 10looniehost.ca is the 9th “Best Host”.

10looniehost.ca is another reason you cannot trust webhostignstuff.com.

Amazon Cloud Drive – The Good and the room for improvement

Amazon Cloud Drive did not get a thumbs up review from me last year. Yet it had one redeeming quality and that was the unlimited music storage when you purchased the 20 gig plan at $20 a year.  Frankly that was enough for me to sign up . However I have more than a trig of personal files that I would like to back up.

After backing up most of my music there was little reason for me to deal with the Amazon Cloud Drive.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/off-topic/amazon-cloud-drive.html

In late July, I forget it what it was that I was doing on Amazon with my iPad. But I got an advisement. This is the point where I click accept without actually reading what the heck I just signed up for. The option of improving the quality of some of my mp3’s was irresistible.

Before I continue on my second review of the Amazon Cloud Drive, it’s time for a disclaimer:

While I may not be able at this time to make a commission off of the Amazon Cloud Drive, every time I mention Amazon Cloud Drive there is a link.  In short you buy from one of those links I get paid a commission.  Which means I don’t hate affiliate programs, nor unlike the people I rail against will I tell you to buy a product simply to make a profit.  I actually use what I review.

Oh joy Benjamin is going to do a post on Amazon Cloud Drive, what does this have to do with hosting?

In short I bring up the Amazon Cloud Drive because I am going to recommend it.  As I think that it is now a viable back up option. With some bugs that I will discuss further in.  If you have hosting, I think it is vital to consider this or some other option for backing up your site. Seriously do not expect any pity from me because your host lost your data.  As I personally think anyone that leaves their backups to their host are asking for the worse case scenario.  Which is all/part of your data is lost to oblivion.

The most your host is liable for is a month of what you paid them.  Seriously read your terms of service, I have yet to find a host that does not have a limit on responsibility in the terms of service, most cases they take no liability for data lose.

So please if your data is valuable do yourself a favor and back up your data. This is one option and in a post next month I will outline some others which of course will have affiliate links. Also if you don’t believe me on the liability read your hosting provider’s terms of service.

Amazon Cloud Drive is now a reasonable back up option

The big problem with the Amazon Cloud Drive last year was the inability to import folders. I was told that I can create folders than import the items. That would have taken a long time, making the use of Amazon Cloud Drive ineffective. Seriously it would have taken me a month to recreate every folder.

That has changed the Amazon Cloud Drive now imports folders with a desktop application that has a window you drag and drop your files to. The other nice thing about it is that you can restart your computer and it will start out where it left off. You can also pause if needed. Which I have had to do as I have to upload other files to clients sites. Currently I am in the progress of uploading my pictures, should be done in another week.  At which point I upgrade to the next Amazon Cloud Drive plan.  I should be up to a trig by December (I am taking every prorated advantage I can get).

Other than Music there was not much reason to get a Amazon Cloud Drive account beyond the $20 a year plan.  Now it is no longer unlimited, but more details on my post tomorrow.   But for $5 more a year I get 50 gigs as opposed to 20 gigs at $20 a year.

Reasons to get the Amazon Cloud Drive

  • You get 5 gigabytes for free
  • Desktop Application that uploads (or downloads your files in the background).
  • Uploads files and folders
  • Right clicking on files and folders from your pc provides the option to upload.

What is missing from the Amazon Cloud Drive?

I think the biggest thing missing from the Amazon Cloud Drive is file synching.  After all some of my files get updated, or I add more files to folders.  I am pretty prolific at taking pictures, and probable worse so since I went from the iPad to iPad 3. This is something I would be more than willing to pay extra for especially when I start using this for bigger files.

  • File synching
  • Back up scheduling
  • Option to list some folders/files that go through multiple changes to have multiple backups if file synching was implemented.
  • The ability to access Amazon Cloud Drive files by Amazon Kindle Fire, iPad and other tablets. (yes I know that this can be done through the browser).
  • Space beyond 1 trig byte
  • Server to Amazon Cloud Drive back ups (which would be far faster than from PC to cloud drive).

The Amazon Cloud Drive is a good option especially if your sites back up is less than 5 gigs.

Hostgator.com – Comment spam friendly affiliate program

Hostgator.com in my opinion has the worst affiliate comment spammers.  Case in point my post on Hostgator.com’s annual Black Friday special.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/redemption/hostgator-com.html

Where I plead with Hostgator.com to email their affiliates and let them know that spam is not acceptable. Here is the reply I got from Hostgator.com:

“Hello Benjamin,

Thank you for your email.

Please note that these comments and spam are not from HostGator staff members, these are from affiliates of ours. Please know that we do not condone spam in any sense and we will gladly do our best to track down the affiliates that are spamming and remove them from the affiliate program, as it is clearly against our terms of service that they have agreed to. Please simply notify us and allow us time to look into the matters and we will do our best to control the problem.

Please do also note that we do have a policy regarding disclosure and the FTC guidelines within the TOS, and this was emailed directly to all affiliates as well, letting them know of the requirements and changes in the TOS.

We will also be letting affiliates know in advance when communicating the Black Friday emails that spam is grounds for termination within the affiliate program with the loss of commissions previously pending/sent being a possibility should they spam.

Thanks again for your email. I hope this helps clear up your concerns that we are definitely against spam and we will certainly do what we can to help combat it. It can be difficult when we have well over 150,000 affiliates to control and keep up with their actions – but we certainly do try to have the best and cleanest program around!

Thanks again. We wish you the best this Holiday season.

Best Regards,
Taylor Hawes
CMO – HostGator.com

Please feel free to let us know if you have any further questions.”

I will say this about Hostgator.com they are good about sending out a first response.  However they seem to lose interest after any first replies.  I realize of course that Hostgator.com is not creating the spam. But they directly benefit from it. As any sale generated by their affiliates comment spamming is a benefit. My interest was that they would email their affiliates letting them know their policy on spamming.  We are less than 3 months away from this year’s Black Friday, and the comment spam has been from my own experience worse than it has ever been. In fact combined with all hosting spam I have received this year, it is dwarfed by what I get from these hostagor.com affiliates.  Just one person was responsible for most of the spam.

So what triggered this hostgator.com post?

The above mentioned post got a comment from one of hostgator.com’s affiliates and they wanted to post a coupon for hostgator.com which of course means they get paid a commission.  Had they read the post they would have realized the irony of comment spamming that particular post.

So I am angry about one little comment from one Hostgator.com affiliate?

Personally I found it funny the particular post they decided to spam on dealt with hostgator.com affilate spam.  But what I dread is the comment spam on my personal accounts than there is this one Hostgator.com affiliate that is under the YouTube user: Sophia9Lott3134. This hostgator.com affiliate decided to spam my YouTube video not once, not twice, not ten times, but 71 times. Were they not aware that some videos like mine have all comments approved?

Click the below image to see the full 71 spam comments from this hostgator.com affiliate.

Then there are these two YouTube users/Hostgator.com affilates that happen to have the same comment:

Those two shots and the ones below are all from my first video all of which were people attempting to post coupon codes for Hostgator.com that would lead to them getting paid a nice commission.

Hostgator.com affiliates that spam comment only  targeted my video because it was in relation to webhosting?

I might have been their main target because my main topic is hosting, however a personal Youtube account of mine that has nothing to do with hosting and mostly videos of World of Warcraft has been target by Hostgator.com affilates.

Bottom line Hostgator.com needs to rein their affiliates in.

mindshark.ca – in re-review Part 3: You look for pros, hacks look for you

Mindshark.ca claims to be a top expert. After all this is on their front page “Home to the latest and greatest Internet Marketing Strategies in North America”.

I am going to boldly say no, they don’t know as much as they claim. From the facts in my last post, I think it is safe to say mindshark.ca knows less than me. If you need proof that I know more than they do just search Google.com for “mindshark.ca”. Yet while knowing more than they do, I would not trust my skills to keep a roof over my head. I realize its harder to prove lack of qualifications, so this is the point where I ask you to take my word for it I am a SEO noob.

I would go so far as to say they create an illusion to match their own propaganda. This week I got to look at a pamphlet where they tell you 15 things to beware of with other SEO companies. I don’t have time to go through their full list to tell you how they can be graded.  But I can tell you they failed one point and that is “3. Vague & Immeasurable Services”.

Every award every testimonial lacks any tractable data. Clearly there should be domains to look at to see how they are doing. What I have seen and confirm belongs to a testimonial was what was left by a troll for Mindshark.ca, and the Alexa score was over 16 million. Nothing not even Mindshark.ca’s site can measure up to this site. Any reputable SEO company should have traffic stats that would make hosting-reviews-exposed.com look pathetic.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/re-review/mindshark-ca-%E2%80%93-in-re-review-part-2-proof-is-in-the-details.html

Why is a Seo organization like mindshark.ca being reviewed on a site that is about fake hosting review sites?

The key word here is spam. mindshark.ca harvested my email in a way I had never encountered before.  They came through this site’s contact form, and the moment I replied to them, they considered me opted in. After they started spamming me, I contacted them and told them to remove me from their list or face a complaint to netfirms (which they are no longer with), and a post on this blog. I made it clear I had not opted in. I got a happy email from Zamir of Mindshark.ca where I was told I was removed………… And that I had opted in.

Ok so either I am lying or mindshark.ca is lying…..

Here is the email mindshark.ca sent me.

Janice Jacobsen jesseholdenjk@gmail.com via p3slh102.shr.phx3.secureserver.net 
7/21/10     
to me 

To: Webmaster

From:
Janice Jacobsen
jesseholdenjk@gmail.com

Message:
I’ve helped hundreds of companies increase their traffic and I’d love
to show you what my service can do for you. I don’t promise the world,
I’m straight forward and to the point … I deliver rankings. My rates
are completely affordable and I don’t want to oversell you either, I
start small and have my clients begging for more. I won’t take on your
site unless I know I can deliver rankings. Reply to this e-mail if you
have the slightest interest … you’ll never see rankings the same way
again.

Sent from (ip address): 122.162.103.20
(ABTS-North-Dynamic-020.103.162.122.airtelbroadband.in)
Date/Time: July 21, 2010 8:33 am
Coming from (referer):
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/blog/contact
Using (user agent): Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100713 Firefox/3.6.7 GTB7.

How do I know it was Mindshark.ca?

Because they were the only people I asked who they were. At this point I was a bit naïve and probable should not have replied to the email: But this had been my third month, and I had not had a lot of emails coming in at the time. I made sure to respond to everyone.  A few weeks after I replied I got this email from Mindshark.ca:

Where Mindshark.ca said my comment was: “your website is?” Which was In July 2010 not August.  Out of 20 people that contacted me on my forum between July and August that was the only one I asked who their website was. Which can see there were other people that were contacted through a gmail account or non-mindshark.ca account.

But this is another key in the puzzle because Zamir admitted in his email to me that Mindshark.ca was going through a third party to get emails. But I  think this was the point they were starting up. After all mindshark.ca started their social media in September 2010. I had a few pieces of their spam come in before I finale had enough in April of last year and made the demands of removing my email.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/spammer/mindshark-ca.html

Why would I be interested in Mindshark.ca’s services?

My own traffic score beats Mindshark.ca and all of what I do is organic. Not to mention I have friends with a proven track record when it comes to SEO, yeah they are not cheap though generally my weak skills seems to egg them on to help for free just because sometimes I frustrate them. But still even if the price is high and I get what I was expecting, why try some one that harvested my email? Besides I get a friend discount, and I would be sad if they picked someone else to do their graphic work.  So why try an unknown like mindshark.ca?

Then there is the spam I was sent by mindshark.ca, something about my competition out doing me or something.  I have competition? Never mind this is not a highly profitable niche (I.e. exposing fake hosting review sites). Last month I made $123, which by no means covers the operational costs for this site. Seriously hosting-reviews-exposed.com is a money pit, and this site is nearing in its 5th year. I have even had people offering to buy it off me (Well this is a keyword rich site). Obviously there is something more than money that motivates me to keep this site going.  The only posts that make money are the ones for items like the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, and the iPad 3. Next week will be the last of my off topic product reviews, as I should have my personal site up so that will kill the profitability of this site.

Part of my proof that mindshark.ca is not a professional company is how they find customers. Mindshark.ca got my email by going through my contact form waiting for an email from me to hit their in box. With other people Mindshark.ca was harvesting contact details through social media. Not just email accounts, but cell phone numbers and other details. I get contacting a company and soliciting your business. I have done that myself. But what I don’t do is throw the contact information into a mailing list, especially when the other side tells me they are not interested.

What started this latest string of posts on mindshark.ca was someone had their email accessible to everyone for the purpose of bringing in new clients with places like LinkedIn. Like anyone that has a website like *domain removed upon owners request*, the idea of getting more traffic was appealing. He started get emails glorifying the company and than ones with warning of the dangers of the other companies:

 

But my friend here decided to not stay on the designated route and went off trail. He decided to see what search engines had to say. How do I know mindshark.ca does not want possible customers to go elsewhere. Because one of the emails from my new friend that inspired me to do these posts. Like this one I posted from Zamir.  That last email from Zamir of Mindshark.ca to my friend who decided to see if Mindshark.ca could to repair the situation. I dare say it was desperate.

Google penguin reshuffled rankings recently , however you will see that site moved off fairly soon.

They are also being legally served as we speak.

We recently were rated #1 SEO Company

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012Mindshark_Rated/08_Top_SEO_Company/prweb9814756.htm

None of the negative comments are from any real clients.   As you can see our BBB rating is A.     The internet allows anyone to post anything unfortunately.   We get things moved off very fast, but when google makes a change things can pop back up temporarily.

Feel free to check our case studies and testimonials to see how effective we are.  We also have over 300 SEO firms who outsource all their work to us.

Tx

My thoughts on this last emai from Zamir of Mindshark.ca:

  • Google Penguin was implemented April 24, 2012, not sure how that was recently
  • Hosting-reviews-exposed.com has had til this week had two results on the first page for the results on “mindshark.ca” among others. Now its four results right under Mindshark.ca’s own site. Tomorrow it should five right under Mindshark.ca including this post.
  • As for being legally served, I have not told a single lie and I am at the top of their search engine results because I know more about SEO than they do.
  • As for prweb.com, in short this is a company that is practically selling links on to their page rank 7 site. They assure me they are only in this for companies to post their press relations and nothing else. They did not issue Mindshark.ca an award.  Topreviewstoday.net did, and now the link to that award does not work.
  • As for negative comments, most of those are coming from people that have been spammed and had their emails harvested via social media and like mine was from my contact form.
  • BBB record amazingly for a company that deals with thousands Mindshark.ca has a clean record. Anyone with thousands of customers is going to have a few complaints after all there is that old motto “You can’t please all the people all of the time”.
  • According to video by Mindshark.ca, Mindshark.ca has methods for dealing with those comments that anyone can post.
  • Exactly how long is it supposed to take for Mindshark.ca to remove hosting-reviews-exposed.com, apparently fast is longer than 72 hours. Over 1.3 years Hosting-reviews-exposed.com has appeared under the search engine results for mindshak..ca consistently since the day of the first post on Google.com
  • If 300 seo companies outsource to Mindshark.ca, why does Zamir have to handle spam and sales inquiries? After all Mindshark.ca has 450 – 500 SEO experts.

I am planning on this being the last post unless Zamir from Mindshark.ca wants to push the subject.

Mindshark.ca – in re-review Part 2: Proof is in the details

Mindshark.ca is one of those companies that rely on people to look no further than what they post.  Which is why Mindshark.ca claims:

Home to the latest and greatest Internet Marketing Strategies in North America, Mindshark Marketing gives you access to state-of-the-art service solutions. Hands down, Mindshark Marketing knows more about Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization than anyone else—it’s part of our DNA— and we live and breathe it each and every day with a passion. We are a confident, direct and engaging Service Company which delivers honest, independent Internet Marketing consulting and solutions for businesses of all size—with no hidden agenda. This is Integrity Selling— the Mindshark promise.

Or better yet when my friend saw behind the scenes what Mindshark.ca said next:

Feel free to check our case studies and testimonials to see how effective we are. 

The big problem with those testimonials is there are no websites. I think I figure out who two of them might be.

Don Lavigne Healthsoft Solutions

healthsoftsolutions.com

Alexa Score of 9,808,327

and

Haroon Mirza Director of Business Development Cognovision Inc

http://intel.cognovision.com/cognovision/news/100-intel-aim-suite-the-solution-for-an-industry-pain-point

Alexa score of 3,058,355

They have really high Alexa scores that must be good right? Actually lower is good. Really low is even better.

Mindshark.ca and Alexa

For those that do not understand what Alexa is, they keep track of websites and where they rank in traffic. Each site has a number with them.  That number indicated who has the most traffic, and that number is 1.  I think the highest I have seen is 18 – 20 million.  No data is assigned to those with no traffic at all. Practically buying a domain puts you it in the 18 – 20 million area range, perhaps because someone decided to look at the place holder.

But who is number 1, is it Mindshark.ca?

Google.com has rank 1

But let’s look at a few other sites.

Yahoo.com is 4
Amazon.com is 10
Hostgator.com is 55
Aol.com is 66
Godaddy.com is 89
Webhostingtalk.com is 1,050
Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is 129,240 (Last night it was 130,691)

So what is Mindshark.ca’s Alexa score?

Yes Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is almost 5 times lower than Mindshark.ca.

Last year when I did my post Mindshark.ca’s rank was  387,496 I forget what mine was and I did not post it, but I had stated Mindshark.ca’s was double mine. I think mine was at 180,000 defiantly my score has improved since then. By February 12, 2012 their score was at  809,927.

But there are more sites to look at, like those people saying such good things about Mindshark.ca  in the comments for hosting-reviews-exposed.com.

http://betterlivingcanada.ca/ Their score is 16,014,054, it was 4,201,186 in February of this year (back then I stated they should ask for their money back).  But this was the only site to posted out of the 6 people claiming to be happy customers of mindshark.ca. Two of those commenters had ips in a very close range. What they did not seem to realize is Mindshark.ca’s trolling was only aiding this site’s position on the term “mindshark.ca” by adding comments and reasons for me and others to add more content.

All this trolling from Mindshark.ca has me asking how old are they really?

For me they can’t be any older than their domain. After all what kind of online service company was online before their domain, unless of course they were on another domain.  No one has offered me another domain mindshark.ca operated under.

As you can see Mindshark.ca was not even a year old when I did my first post. But these are the claims:

Mindshark.ca troll 1 “We have been using Mindshark SEO and blogging services for 2 years now with quite a bit of success.”
Mindshark.ca troll 2 “We have also used their services for several years.”
Mindshark.ca troll 3 “We have been using Mindshark for 3 years, not 2 so i can definately confirm that they have been around for several years.”

But here is a fact of when Mindshark.ca registed the following:

  • Twiter September 23, 2010
  • Facebook September 9, 2010
  • YouTube Dec 16, 2010
  • BBB September 23, 2010
  • Registered Domain February 2, 2010

As I mentioned before the Better Business Bureau does not check start dates or ask for any paper work to confirm it. They ask for it over the phone. For a SEO company I think it is safe to say that Mindshark.ca officially started in September 2010 based on the registration  of Social Media.

So what killed the Mindshark.ca trolling?

To be honest I am a really losing focus on all of the numbers so I am going to use what a friend of mine posted In short one of those SEO expert friends of mine did not take kindly to the insults I got so they decided to pick mindshark.ca apart piece by piece. I redacted 30% of it. Ultimately what she said ended all further trolling by Mindshark.ca.

Linda’s comment February 12, 2012 on https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/spammer/mindshark-ca.html

Based on what you said, your own knowledge of SEO is so bad that you don’t realize that every time you comment on someone’s blog (whether it’s this one or anybody else’s) and the only thing you’re doing is giving that blog a boost in the SERPS. Google LOVES multiple, relevant, legitimate comments.

Say whatever you want, but you can’t ignore public facts.

1) Mindshark.ca has a piss-poor Alexa score. 809,927 Global rank. That means that 809,926 sites rank better than Mindshark.ca

2) Low-quality backlinks (only 1 .edu backlink) and no .gov backlinks. LOL

3) Referring domains/backlinks: Mindshark.ca has 3,706 referring domains, but only one-third of these backklinks (1,273) are on unique domains…. and of those domains, only 654 of these are unique IPs.

Proof: http://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/summary/www.mindshark.ca

4) Mindshark.ca has a PageRank of 3 — again, a total joke for a self-proclaimed SEO firm like Mindshark.ca. If you want PR3, all it takes is a few PR5 links and a couple PR7 links combined with good quality content. If you’re hiring a SEO firm and that firm/site has less than PR5, RUN — don’t walk — away from that SEO company.

5) Mindshark.ca has only 224 indexed pages in Google — again, a total joke for a self-proclaimed SEO “professional”.

6) Mindshark.ca’s Domain Authority? 57. — again a joke. I have automated blogs with PR5 and 20K indexed pages which do better than Mindshark.ca, SEO-wise.

7) Total organic keywords for Mindshark.ca? 11 — again a joke. Here’s the proof: http://www.semrush.com/info/mindshark.ca

8) When I Google “Mindshark.ca”, this site (hosting-reviews-exposed.com) comes up on the same page. Whether I am logged into Google or not. WHY would anyone want to hire Mindshark.ca if they can’t even populate the first page of the search results with non-negative results? Even the most mediocre SEO firms are capable of this.

9) Worse of all: Mindshark.ca has a history of using comment spam. Doubt me? Go through their backlinks. Comment spamming is the absolute WORST SEO offense. It’s amateurish. It’s stupid. It’s harmful to your website…. Yet Mindshark.ca is comment spamming other blogs. What a joke.

If Mindshark.ca is capable of doing what they claim they can do, then why haven’t they done it for themselves? One would think that a site that claims to have “4000+ Clients” and hundreds of resellers could do a lot better… A LOT better.

Bottomline: Mindshark.ca is an apparent fraud based solely on current PUBLIC facts and evidence. If you think otherwise and/or you are a client of Mindshark.ca, either you’ve been sold a bill of goods by Mindshark.ca — or you work for Mindshark.ca and you’re trying to perform some ill-directed damage control.

So what about the BBB and that Award that Zamir of Mindshark posted?

As I stated before all the awards have no domain behind them, I think I found 2, and then there is the single one shared on this blog. All of them have an Alexa score in the millions. Which can be obtain without any SEO expertise at all.

This site has demonstrated how a many review sites are just a front for affiliates. But I can’t begin to figure out how Mindshark.ca won an award.  Because based off everything I have posted this is a company to avoid.

As for the BBB, at best I can figure is that Mindshark.ca customers may not know what to look for. But even without complaints the BBB is not the number one source for figuring out if a company is good or bad. For that matter their site is really decades behind where they should be. Plus they have an interest in collecting memberships. Plus there is crap like this: http://bbbthetruth.com/abc-news/. However claims of a large customer base, while having zero complaints is a warning sign up its own. I have yet to meet any company with a large costumer base that has yet to run into someone that just can not be pleased.

However Mindshark.ca has 5 complaints at ripoffreport.com.

Next post will cover Mindsharks.ca’s harvesting and spamming.

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