Ask Jeeves Selling SEO Tips: Should We Be Buying?

[andrewgoodman]

Ask Jeeves certainly is aggressively promoting the ineedhits.com wares. The question is: should they be?

http://www.ineedhits.com/srr/default.aspx

[rustybrick]

In what aspect or direction are you asking the question?

As an SEM? As a Webmaster? As someone who owns stock in Ask? As someone who cares about the industry? Or as Mr. Jeeves?

[I, Brian]

Let me guess - for $30 you will be told:

"Have good quality content on pages linked to from other quality content sites".

Close? :)

[seobook]

$30 is not much for an in depth analysis...must be rather surface level...tempted to buy the services just to see what I get.

[andrewgoodman]

The point is, a search engine that cultivates a "tough-against spammers" and "scientific" image a la Teoma looks funny reselling run-of-the-mill optimization advice. No I haven't looked into the services, but even the name, "ineedhits.com," bugs me. Shouldn't the folks who advise you on how to get "the hits" operate at complete arms-length from the folks who design the search tech? Or am I a hopeless purist?

AltaVista got into the same thing at a certain point with sending visitors to cheesy submission services if they clicked on a "submit URL" link. It sends mixed messages. It's like saying "dumb people click here."

I personally think it's somehow beneath them. You don't see you-know-who doing this type of thing...

[seobook]

if they wanted to put out or endorse this type of information you would think it would be in a way that some people would have free access to it. (I guess if it is going to be specific there will be a need for some fees though)

yahoo sometimes tells site match people with questions to go to webmaster world. they can't say "stay away from bad stuff" and then give people absolutely no starting point.

what makes forums a better starting point than a single trusted company that the search engine has had a long term business relationship with?

numerous people have also stated in this very forum that AdWords customers who spend enough get special engineer consultations.

somehow there has to be a starting point and $30 to tell people what they believe is ok right from the start might be helpful.