Skeptive.com has client seeing red

[CraigAllen]

Yesterday one of my clients put his domain name ([Removed By Admin] ) into Google and found that the second listing, directly below his own site, appears to defame his website.

Specifically, the listing displays as follows:

-------------------
[Removed By Admin] - Source Report - Source report for ...
(url here)
How much do you trust [Removed By Admin] as an information source? ... [Removed By Admin] is implicated in the following disputes on Skeptive: ...
-------------------

Naturally concerned, he clicked the listing and on the Skeptive page that opens, other than the Skeptive logo, header and footer navigation there is virtually nothing except his domain name and "This source has not been rated yet. How much do you trust [Removed By Admin] as an information source?"

The text "[Removed By Admin] is implicated in the following disputes on Skeptive:" does not even appear on the page. In code view it shows up in a div with style="display:none"

Quite naturally, he is concerned that in the Google results when he searches for his domain name, the Skeptive.com listing is defaming his website's domain name and therefore himself. He is interested in knowing if this is happening to other people and I can only presume it is, as through whatever methods Skeptive is including random urls in their search engine results.

Just for fun I did a Google search for the following string: "How much do you trust" "as an information source?" skeptive and that returns 4 pages of results from skeptive.com with different domain names "implicated." Expanding that by clicking the show similar results link at the bottom of page 4 returns "About 1,060,000 results" -- 60 pages of domain names that are all "implicated in disputes on Skeptive."

Anyone have any experiences with this and what can be done about it? What's it all about?

[monstercoder]

That's just a bot scraping all the domains it can find to do that so that when people search on a URL their pages will show up at the top of the results. I wouldn't worry about it.

[claybutler]

That's just a bot scraping all the domains it can find to do that so that when people search on a URL their pages will show up at the top of the results. I wouldn't worry about it.

True, but keep a casual eye on it. Could be the beginnings another extortion site like rip off report. Rip off report intentionally posts anonymous and fraudulent reports against other companies. When the companies complain they offer to remove them for perhaps $10,000. Otherwise they stay. Because they are so aggressive with their SEO they often get their fraud reports ranking higher than the company's website or ahead of Yelp or other legitimate sites. This is their leverage in extorting money.

[confettiguru]

Would there perhaps be a benefit in reporting them to Google, Yahoo, Bing?
Seems as though they wouldn't condone this

[NJ]

Rip off report intentionally posts anonymous and fraudulent reports against other companies.

I didn't know that about Rip off Report. I was researching a company that goes around the country doing "internet workshops" where they end up charging folks thousands of $$$ for a template service that should cost about $15.00/mo. The reason I was researching them was that I had received several calls from folks who had been ripped off by them. I also ended up with a couple in my web development class who had been ripped of by them. Riff-off-report accurately reported their tactics. The weird thing was that they also had large banners saying that the company had resolved the problems, even though they are still deceiving senior citizens and low-income people. In the long run, I found the actions against them by various state Attorney Generals, which was a much more credible source. In fact, I was able to direct the NM Attorney General's office to a specific action by the Texas AG to help them combat the problem in NM.

So, I'm wondering if the Rip-Off-Report is really all that bad. They got me started on the right road in my investigation.

https://oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/rel...mergentpop.pdf

[claybutler]

So, I'm wondering if the Rip-Off-Report is really all that bad. They got me started on the right road in my investigation.

No they really are that bad. It's shocking that they haven't been shut down and thrown in jail. Yes they have legitimate stuff but they also intentionally post fraudulent reports in the hope of extorting money. Search for rip off report fraud and rip off report scam and you'll see how many people have been dealing with their extortion racket. To see how bad it is search for "zigabid review". They come up first and refuse to remove a fraudulent claim although they have offered to remove it for a fee. I was so appalled I wrote my own review of the company in hopes of knocking it down but it's still number one and shouldn't be. But it is because they are SEO pros that use their rankings to extort money.

[NJ]

Wikipedia certainly has some interesting information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripoff_Report. The information seems to be backed up with references to legal action, etc.

[CraigAllen]

The way I got it figured is they give out just enough info to make you "have" to click and visit their site to find out what the alleged "disputes" are. This gives them good traffic. Some of those site visitors are going to create an account hoping still to find more out about the "dispute." This gets them a great member base as well as a lot of email addresses. Now, armed with their traffic reports and their huge membership, they have become a popular site and have some sway in attracting advertisers to post ads on their site, and a nice fat email address list to sell. Pretty much a win-win situation for them it would seem even if no one ends up really being implicated in any disputes, all because they have baited their hook well.

Seems to me a lot more money is made dishonestly in life than honestly. Nevertheless, I'll stick with my white hat even if I'll never get rich.

[deepsand]

The text "[Removed by admin] is implicated in the following disputes on Skeptive:" does not even appear on the page. In code view it shows up in a div with style="display:none"

Smacks of cloaking of the sort that Google should like to hear about.

[monstercoder]

I've used them frequently. Look at how many complaints University of Phoenix has. I was going to go to that school until I saw all of the hundreds of complaints. That web site saved me a boatload of cash.