I get a call today from a company ****Solutions. Count the * and figure out the URL. Note that the correct spelling is wrong. It should be 3 * but they added another “t” at the end. Did you figure it out?

Ok, first letter is “N” third one is “T” forth one is also “T” and then we have “E” in the middle.

Anyway, got a call from this company today offering to have one of the companies I run to be in the Top3 Pay Per Click positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Wow, I already like the guy, he wants me to get more business.

Interesting fact though … I notify him that we are already in the Top 3 positions on the search engines for almost all of our keywords (PPC). He acts surprised. (I guess he didn’t do much research)

Then he tells me that what they do is Search engine placement. I am told that Yahoo, MSN and Google … yes, Google, have a search engine placement program. So now I know I am speaking with the B.S. artist.

Next I am told that their company (has been in business since 2002) is a legitimate partner of these 3 engines. What I notice is that throughout the conversation this sales guy tries to badmouth Google and suggests working only with Yahoo. (I wonder why).

What I am promised with their company is that I’ll secure a PPC position in top 3 results for our keywords AND my CPC will never go up for the entire year. I am also told that all the reports will be provided by this company and I can’t log into Google and see stats (CPC, Clicks, Avg position, Impressions, etc). They’ll simply do little research and tell me how much I have to allocate for the entire year. They take personal checks.

I start asking how they make money as I want to better understand their program and how the company works. Two times this guy avoids to answer but then I simply say … “You’re avoiding my question”.

His response ….. “I don’t know. I don’t run the books and I can’t go ask our CEO this question right now”.

I look at their site. A lot of text copy but it’s all in an image format. I guess they don’t want to be found on Google for their copy? Something fishy.

I start pushing the salesperson for answers and I can hear him getting aggravated. I simply finish the conversation by saying that “we’ll think about it and if something … we’ll call.”

I type this company’s name and here is what I find.

Look. I am not trying to be nasty or make fun of people or just blabber. I want every little SEO or SEM scam to be known to people who might fall for these things. I feel that these SEO/SEM shmucks think that they are smarter than the entire world and they can just go and fool legitimate business owners.

I had another SEM company visit our offices about 7 months ago. This is when I again found out from them that Google had a “placement program”. I said … “Are you sure you can pay Google to get a certain NATURAL position within the search results?” ……… Straight into my face the answer was “YES”.

Oh and this was a very popular SEM/SEO company. I posted about it on a Forum and this post even made it on few newsletters and blogs. Anyway, shame on them.