Google First Page placements guaranties : possible ?

Factual Questions
1

Many companies guarantee to place a link to my (not yet existing site) on the first page of Google ( Yahoo, MSN…) for a very reasonable fee around $150 p/m.
Some even prepared to create the web site for free.

Company 1
Company 2

How do they do it ? Is it even possible ?
I realise that given enough money everything could be arranged
but for $150 …I’ve got my doubts.
I’m not saying those ads are scams ( should I ? )
but no amount of googling yielded any explanations.

I’m aware of Pay per Click, Google Adwords programs,
I guess the technique has something to do with wholesale /retail pay per click price differences, but got no understanding how it works in reality.

The company I asked wouldn’t explain how they do it replying :
“We are offering you LEGALLY GUARANTEED First Google page placement for $150
what else do you need to know?”

Please enlighten me .

2

In most cases these companies create ‘link farms’ which try to exploit the math underlying Google’s page-rank algorithm. By cross-linking your page with an artificially high page-rank page your page is promoted.

Although their techniques are legal, they are Google’s natural enemies (it is in Google’s interest to provide an impartial search), and Google can (and has) take steps to remove their artificial influence.

When this happens, presumably you get your money back from the first page guarantee, or they vanish into the night.

3

I’m going to focus on the claim (“They claim to guarantee this”) and the question (“Can they guarantee this?”).

I think many people misunderstand the word “guarantee”. They think it means, “We know our system works in every single case.” But actually, it means, “Our system works a lot of the time. If it doesn’t work for you, and you complain, then we’ll stonewall you for a while, or make you jump through a whole bunch of hoops, and if you are still annoying us after that, and we’re still in business, we’ll give you $150.”

4

Also look at what keywords the guarantee is made for. If the search terms are narrow enough (such as the name of a business), then getting to the top of the first page is trivial. It’s only more challenging if you want to be on the first page for searches like “discount books” or “free sex” and they may simply tell you that you need a more realistic set of keywords.

5

It’s the internet equivalent of snake oil, astrology or political promises. Pure nonsense, but enough people keep falling for it that it’s worth running the same scam over and over.

As Keeve has pointed out, the word ‘guarantee’ doesn’t mean much in this context. It’s just a word they put in the ads to give people a false sense of security. You give them some money, and they do something or other that they think will help your search engine rankings. If it happens to ‘work’, they keep your money, and if it doesn’t then most people won’t bother to ask for a refund.

Those that do try to get their money back will experience long delays and endless excuses. ‘We never received your email’, ‘Can you just send the details once more’, ‘We can’t give a refund without a return code’, ‘We can’t issue a return code unless you have your refund number’, and so on. Plus the company may just go out of business, or change its contact details, or claim that your claim is being processed when it isn’t.

What of the actual ‘service’ these people provide? It’s plainly nonsense. What if two customers both wanted to be top search result for ‘car rental’? They can’t both be top, can they? And who determines what being ‘top’ means… does it mean for one minute, one week, one month, forever… or what? Maybe you and the company will have different ideas about this.

Most of these companies will do nothing except explain to you what meta tags are and how to use them (information you can get for free all over the internet), and then try to create lots of fake links to your site that use those tag words. This may fool some search engines, some of the time, but the search engine people aren’t idiots and they are constantly waging war on these tactics. If they find you are using lots of fake links to drive traffic, they will take steps to either ban you or at least nullify any benefit.

One point worth bearing in mind is that most of these companies advertise their services using a rather subtle bit of misdirection. Suppose they say they can prove their service works. They might mention a site they have worked on that is all about, for example, car rentals in some specific region. They will show you that if you enter ‘car rental’ in Google, the specific site they mentioned is top of the rankings. But this misses the point. It’s easy to win this game if you get to choose the exact search terms, but in real life you don’t. In real life, people might enter any of the following (bear in mind that many people don’t know how to use search engines very well):

rentals car
car for rental
renting car
want rent car
rent a car
hire cars
cars for hire
where hire car?
cars, hiring
Avis

and so on… and perhaps there’s a different ‘top site’ for every permutation. I’m pretty sure I could get any website to be ‘number 1’, so long as I had control over how everyone uses Google and which search terms they use.

I run a successful commercial website, and for over ten years it has generated enough money for me to live on. Here’s the best advice: offer a good product or service. Work hard to get your first few customers, and let word of mouth do the rest. Don’t worry too much about Google rankings. Worry about offering something worthwhile, dealing fairly, and giving your customers a reason to recommend you.

6

I have a six-letter made-up word that I use as a handle on some other forums. References to me are all that you get if you Google that word: it’s not just the top of the first page, it’s all of the 16 or so pages on a Google search. But that’s fairly useless as a business proposition, because people would only Google that word if they want to find me. It would only have some business value if it were promoted, and people started searching for it as a business name like “ebay” or “orbitz”.

7

Thanks guys for confirming my doubts .
I felt there was something fishy about the whole thing.

To be fair,
the company never promised me the very top result only the first page
and
they specifically mentioned that the link would appear as Sponsored Links not in “organic” listing
besides they promised that they would only sell the same keywords to no more than 2 customers.

Anyway thanks for your help
I’ll stay clear from those offers.

8

If they’re talking about the sponsored links where people are bidding per-clickthrough, then yes, it’s possible, and yes, there are some legitimate companies doing this. I don’t know about these companies in question, though.

9

Hell, you don’t need to pay anyone but Google for that.

10

This is a good point, and well put.

11

It’s easy to see how they do this, read this part of the website

(note: emphasis mine)

Do you see what they are saying? They have to be told first what the keyword is. Remember the “GoogleBomb” “Miserable Failure” which landed to George W Bush?

Because that phrase is so uncommon it was easy to set up a first place ranking.

It’s like lawyers that take cases on a consignment basis, and they don’t charge you TILL you win. They’re not doing it because they’re swell guys, they know what cases they can win. If they can’t win your case easily enough, they won’t bother with you.

You’ll have to pay a lawyer, who may or may not win, but is willing to try, 'cause your paying him.

This company will look and they know what words are easy to get. If you want a first page position for “Computers” or “Microsoft” it probably isn’t going to happen. But if you want a first page position for “Mark’s In North Platte,” that is uncommon and very easy to get.

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