Hi all,
I received a call today from a guy who says he works at google.com. He said that in conjuction with Yahoo and MSN they are offering a unique bit of advertising. Basically, their "team" has searched for photographers in every city and they have choosen a few that they felt were worthy based on their website and work to get this special offer. It is a $99 set up fee and the first month is free, no contract and if I want to continue it is $149/month to be one of the top three listings on google, yahoo, and MSN.

Does this sound like a scam? Should I believe it and is it worth it or is it a rip off?
Opinions? Input? He has already called me back once to see if I have decided so I feel like it's a little high pressure.

Thanks!!!

Google is not partnered up with Yahoo & definitely not MSN. Sounds fishy to me. I would definitely want to see this in writing before I signed up for anything. In fact, I would want to see the "services.google.com" site with this information on it. (like: http://services.google.com/marketing/links...a-cmb_adwords/)

Yeah, sounds really fishy. Google has -never- had a $99 setup fee ... ever. If you are still interesting in going with it, I would be sure to ask:
Top Listings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN 24 hours a day? 365 days a year?
Top listing as in I am the #1 ad result on google, MSN, & yahoo?
Top listing for ALL of MY search phrases?

... just sounds fishy to me. Asking these questions & getting the answers in writing would ease some of that ... but still ...

Hope this helps!

I thought it sounded kind of odd, but wanted to get advice. I'll do some more research and report back.
Thanks for the advice!!

Sounds fishy to me too. It also popped up here:
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00KvEU

Sounds scammy to me. There are plenty of ways to raise your rank in search engines for FREE and I've seen many posts on OSP explaining how to make it happen.

I just tried seaching the phone # he gave me and it showed up as a restaurant. It is the same as caller ID the first time he called and the 2nd time he called was a different # that I couldn't find anything on when I did a reverse # lookup.

Definitely a scam. I would say!!
Glad I checked it out!

Thanks for your input!

Unfortunately when you advertise to brides, you also hang out a big "please come scam me" sign.

I probably get 4 to 5 calls every week from people wanting to selll me SEO, some new listing service, wanting me to donate to their "charity", wanting me to switch to thier credit card processing system, you name it.

I just hang up on them.


In this case, their "team" has gone out and cost a bunch of people money by clicking their pay per clicks - so just getting the scam call has already cost you a buck and whatever for clicking your ad. If they dial up 200 or 300 people a day, one or two may fall for it. Chu-ching. Not a bad day's pay for clicking and making phone calls.


Scammers and telemarketers are like that. They will tell you ANYTHING you need to hear to get that card number. ANYTHING. You want 735 hand picked clients with million dollar wedding budgets? I'll email them to you tomorrow - but sign up right now, offer ends any minute.



These people and spammers are the root of all evil.


Just cut them off "take me off your call list", and hang up.

Or if you need to blow off some steam at their expense, just keep them talking. Start asking all kinds of personal info. "What's your name? How did you get my number? What's your last name? What's the address you're sitting at right now? How many of these calls do you make in a day? Does anyone ever actually buy your service? Have you ever seen the inside of a jail cell? How many times? Did you enjoy it? At what point did your life take such a horrible turn that lead you to making hundreds of phone calls a day?"

.... eventually they'll just hang up on you.