Anybody know these people?

[jampers]

http://www.getmetop.com/

They guarantee within 180 days! Three months?

Fort Laudersale?

Jampers

[respree]

Don't know anything about them, but considering they've misspelt "Arthur Andersen" (from the client list) on their own website, I'd question their ability to focused on the details.

[David Wallace]

but considering they've misspelt "Arthur Andersen" (from the client list) on their own website, I'd question their ability to focused on the details.
ROFL !

On a serious note, I think its a scam.

[steve sardell]

On a serious note, I think its a scam.

Or a JoKe. Maybe if one fills out the form a white rabbit will pop up and squeal, "gotcha". But I am more inclined to think scam, and it is sad but some will actually spend the $99.

[seobook]

their page loaded extremely ugly like in my FireFox browser. not sure why, but that coupled with the $99 top ten ranking guarantee indicates to me that you would probably be better giving your money to a charity.

[Terry Plank]

...They guarantee...

Personally, I suspect anyone who advertises a blanket guarantee of positioning, especially at $99!

[I, Brian]

Heh, for a moment I thought it was to "makemetop" - I was wondering why everyone was picking on Barry Lloyd. :)

[seobook]

Heh, for a moment I thought it was to "makemetop" - I was wondering why everyone was picking on Barry Lloyd. :)

likely the idea behind the name may have been borrowed from Barry's site name.

[dannysullivan]

I wouldn't say it's a scam to offer a guarantee. However, guarantees do need to be viewed very skeptically, because there's little that can be guaranteed when dealing with free listings on search engines.

In this case, you're told that:

For ONLY US $99 we will GUARANTEE* you can be in the Top Ten on Google for your chosen 10 key phrases or your money back!

OK, specifics? First, you aren't guaranteed to be in the top ten for all your terms. You're only guaranteed to be in for 5 five them:

If you follow the very simple instructions we provide, the MagicPages you create will get your site into the top ten search results on Google for at least 50% of your key phrases within 180 days.

Next, your terms can't be anything. They have to be three to six words long:

You may enter any number of words in any line, but we only guarantee phrases using a minimum of 3 words and a maximim of 6 words.

The guarantee is also only going to give your full money back if you have five or more terms that fail to get in. In other words, say only four of your top ten terms get in. That's an 20 percent refund. Three? A 40 percent refund .. and so on.

Length of time? Very unclear -- the guarantee covers if you don't have a certain number of ranking after six months. But it doesn't say how long -- ie, whether you'll stay in the top rankings permanently or so on. You do get a 12 month extension if there's a Google algorithm change, so you can keep trying for a long period of time, it seems.

Overall, I think this underscores that guarantees really offer very little. No one can guarantee to get you top placement in free listings. All they can do is guarantee what they will do if they DON'T get you into the top results -- and the terms for refunds can be so specific as to make the guarantee to be less than it may initially sound.

[Chris_D]

Like many 'claims', I think this one falls into the category of:

If it sound like its too good to be true - then it probably is...

:)

[Incubator]

Hmmmmm................ i wonder if i put together an online-casino, http://www.getmetop.com/ would help to the top in that industry ......

Or made i need phrases like" streched plastic over the heads of $99.00 solutions providers" could work..........

cheers
WC

[yellowwing]

I think they are trying to take of advantage of the well earned Barry Lloyd brand.

Plus:
"Our previous client list includes: Priceline, Hotel Reservations Network, Travelnow, Farebusters, TDK, Arthur Anderson, FT.COM"

Except for the unprofessional misspelling of THE accounting firm, all the rest of the 'clients' are affliliate programs!

If you have an affiliate link to Amazon.com, they are not your SEO client! :rolleyes:

[Incubator]

I agree with you yellowwing. I really cant see some of thier corporate clients paying the $99.00 fee, its obsurd. These type of companies os SEM companies do more harm to the SEO/ SEM industry then any good at all. Plus a client like TDK would not see any value to it at all in the market place ....there is no return on investment for them.


Cheers

WC

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Personally the business model seems quite clear to me: If you throw enough dirt on the wall some it will stick. The only question is, do you (or your company) want to be that dirt? :)

Companies that market these kinds of $99 services very well know the failure rate of what they do. They also know, that even withn the failure rate only a small percentage will bother to try and get their money back. With the (usually) very low production costs of such services this can be profitable.

But, to me, this is more like betting - it's not really a service... Make your bet and see if it works. Most likely it will not, but you could be lucky.

I do not think it has technically anything to do with fraud but I am pretty sure the buyers of these "services" most often do not realize the limitations of what they get.

[steve sardell]

Personally the business model seems quite clear to me: If you throw enough dirt on the wall some it will stick. The only question is, do you (or your company) want to be that dirt? Absolutely agree. It is a numbers game. Get the add in front of millions of eyeballs and some will bite. Blast out millions of spam emails, throw in some worthless bonuses, and more will bite, Get a few thousand bites and run to the bank. It is just another way some continue the darken the SEO image.

[excell]

Be careful with this - it appears they are out there with the same offer under multiple business/domain names...

Good one to be on the client "is this any good" alert list.