Is this a scam? (Web directory link)

[snorlax]

My father runs a website for his small business and got the following email:

Hi,
I am creating a web link directory with homepage thumbnails (www.frety.net). With your consent I would like to feature your website <my dad's URL> on various related topics such as "<relevant keywords>". If some of the keywords are not correct you can edit them in the submit form.

Here you can submit your site :

http://www.frety.net/urls.cgi

Your link will appear on our site in a few hours pending review. Please add a link to us too. Here is a simple linking code:

<a href="http://www.frety.net/"> Frety.NET </a> - a web directory with homepage thumbnails <br><br>

Thank you

Yours,
Mike B.

I've looked at the home page and it is nothing but a series of keywords. It smells like a scam but I have no idea what "Mike B." would gain from this. If I had to guess I would think it has something to do with improving rankings on search engines, but if so why would it be free?

I found a reference to this on Google groups with exactly the same text but the thread was in German and the translation wasn't helpful.

Any ideas?

[Larry Mudd]

Originally Posted by snorlax

It smells like a scam but I have no idea what "Mike B." would gain from this. If I had to guess I would think it has something to do with improving rankings on search engines, but if so why would it be free?

Because the only significant benefit goes to "Mike B."

A return ranking system like Google's valuates a link based on how many other web pages link to it. If you encourage lots of people to link to your site, your ranking goes up, and your site appears closer to the top of the listings. Spammers exploit this by using webcrawlers that harvest contact links from webpages and targeting them.

A popular method is to appeal to people's vanity by saying their site has been selected for a "site of the month" award or some such, and providing an honorific graphic with HTML that links back to the sender's site.

Once the rankings are attractive enough, commercial content is moved onto it. The suckers' sites are used to provide the spammer's site with a higher profile. The spammer's site benefits the suckers' site in no way at all.

There are also scams running where people are encouraged to submit to web indexes and then (possibly months later) receive invoices at inflated prices, although no charge is mentioned at the point that the person is enouraged to sign up. Threatening letters are sent, trying to bully people into paying for something they never agreed to. A certain percentage of people actually cough up money when confronted with terms like "theft of services."

It could be either (or both) of those scenarios. Whatever it is, it sure as hell ain't worth your father's time.

[snorlax]

Great answer, Larry. Thanks for the quick response.