I have a sneaking suspicions there's something odd going on across some forums at the moment and wondering if anyone's been feeling the same.

In the past month or two I've started to notice something odd about information requests here and a few other forums. There's been a growth in a certain type of post that I suspect may be covert advertising.

The post itself tends to be much the same. Someone signs up and ask about a service. Nothing new in that - it happens all the time. These posts have a feel to them however that tends to be repeated again and again. Anyone who deals with support and enquiries all day as many of us do will know what the average person acts and types like when they want to know about a particular host, or comparing them to another one. These posts have the sound to them of someone in advertising that's promoting the services of a client by creating a discussion about them by comparing them to another service.

Seems there's a few people onboard acting together as often right afterward someone will chime in agreeing with the original poster as being someone who finds 'service X' great too. More often than not, it's a service that's previously never been mentioned on the forum at all.

Usually this is just some host signing in as another user, and they're caught out once IP's get checked. But if there was several people doing this together, you can see how this would slip under the radar

Now maybe I've got this totally wrong, and I have put off mentioning it as it seems a little far fetched, but the growth in these posts I'm sure I'm seeing seems to be growing.

Am I the only one who's seeing this?

Greg Moore

in any particular forum, greg?

i've never paid too much attention to those.... "How's XYZ company?" - "Oh, I'm with them, and they're great" kind of threads...

just here at webhostingtalk and webhostdir mostly. Haven't been to sitepoint in quite a while so couldn't say if it's happening there too.

Greg Moore

Greg (akashik),

I agree with you. I thought it was just me and wasn't going to bother wasting bandwidth (or my time) mentioning it, but I also have the feeling that there are a few "planned" posts with "coordinated" responses. I must admit however that I made a post in the web hosting forum a few days ago that after rereading my own post, I could've sworn that if I hadn't know that I in fact had posted it myself (with no ulterior motive or gain), that someone has posted it as a way to attract business.

One difference is that the suspect posts are always from "newbies" and I've long ago passed the newbie status. I remember seeing a few newbie posts asking about a certain host, and then seeing some newbie replies extolling the virtues of said host.

Vexing. Well, maybe just annoying. But waddya gonna do?

I'm sure it happens all the time with new host coming onto the forum with 6 of his mates and a "knockout" :rolleyes: business idea for getting clients. Pretty lame though. I've never advertised my business here and probably never will. I have enough growth to handle without promoting it here anyways. :)

I wonder if that could be classed as a 'Trick of the Trade' ??

:D

I can assure you as a Moderator that we do all in our power to investigate these types of threads, if you could see the moderators forum you would see that there is extensive evaluation going on of many of the suspect posts, these investigations sometimes take hours to find out all of the possible links.

Luckily 99% of the time someone makes a mistake somewhere, either duping an IP, we track ips to areas in a country, we track to individual ISP's to domain names, to netbios and pings on machines when people come online, trust us on this one, its very rare something slips through the net on WHT.

but if 6 people in different countries on different ISP's with non standard e-mails and no linking domains come along trying it then its difficult to stop, we can only trust that people are not taking advantage of the board in these situations, plus if they are stupid enough to try this tactic they are usually found out to be frauds within a month or so, because remember, many complaints filter back to WHT!!

hope this helps explain things.

Originally posted by xtstrike
I can assure you as a Moderator that we do all in our power to investigate these types of threads, if you could see the moderators forum you would see that there is extensive evaluation going on of many of the suspect posts, these investigations sometimes take hours to find out all of the possible links. We all appreciate the effort. If I can be so bold as to speak as "we".

Originally posted by akashik
it seems a little far fetched, but the growth in these posts I'm sure I'm seeing seems to be growing.It's not at all far fetched, it's not at all uncommon, and it's not at all a new development, though it is becoming more common.

How many people know this: among the universe of website promotion firms and consultants, along with those who do things like search engine submission and optimization, those who use tools like opt-in mailing lists and even spam mailing lists, those who promote using press releases and those who promote through reciprocal linking campaigns... there are firms that promote sites and both online and offline businesses by using name and url drops, setups and "recommendations," on forums and weblogs?

Yes, there are people who get paid to subtly spam forums.

I doubt that happens often here, because this forum has neither the reputation (which doesn't mean I don't love it) or the demographics to make such a campaign profitable, but it does happen.

Originally posted by Abu Mami
I must admit however that I made a post in the web hosting forum a few days ago that after rereading my own post, I could've sworn that if I hadn't know that I in fact had posted it myself (with no ulterior motive or gain), that someone has posted it as a way to attract business. That's me, too.

Sometimes I get a little too excited about singing the virtues of my providers. Then days later I see my post and I think, "Wow, that post of mine sounds contrived and planted."

As WHT gets bigger, it will be more and more attractive to post these stealth advertisments that you are speaking of, Greg. On the other hand, as more and more newbies sign-up, there is also an increase in this innocent extra enthusiasm that I know I've been guilty of.

I'm getting better, though. :blush:

I believe it happens.... I have a hunch it happens because the barrier to entry into the hosting industry has been lowered by the many aggresively priced dedicated providers.

The lower barrier brings more people into the industry (like myself).... Also, I am always eager to give a good review of a provider that I have used and have not had problems with.

One thing that I recognize is that when a customer comes here complaining about their site being down, I see alot of competitors offering sympathies but no real value to the thread!!

Originally posted by indyjon
I believe it happens.... I have a hunch it happens because the barrier to entry into the hosting industry has been lowered by the many aggresively priced dedicated providers.

The lower barrier brings more people into the industry (like myself)... Sorry Jon, I'm not following your reasoning. "It happens" (spam posts, fraudulent "recommendations" posted by a host themselves or their operatives) because the cost of entry into the hosting business is so low?

I don't see the connection. Are you saying that the current crop of one-person web hosting businesses operating on a remote dedicated server are more likely to make such posts than older, more established companies? Or just that it's more likely to happen just because the growing number of hosting companies has people trying somewhat underhanded marketing methods?

Anyway, part of my point in my earlier post is that it's not restricted to the hosting business, and it's also not done exclusively by small companies or individuals.

It is a widespread method to use customer generated perceptions for the purpose of dissemination from a particular provider, retailer, manufacturer, and has been done for donkeys years. It is used in conjunction with viral marketing, especially by marketing firms and consultants for their clients that pay big bucks for this means of promotion.

That however is on the larger scale and places like this will never be immune to it, considering size doesn't count but turnover does as someone being registered on this board and looking at a membership count, doesn't preclude the fact of many also not registering and using this place for a reference.

On the other side of the coin, you have the participants here and the increasing dime a dozen progression of hosts and resellers, in an increasingly saturated marketplace and think it's the be all, end all of the hosting world which it is not, in reality. This does therefore foster underhanded techniques to be utilised and the moderators do seem to be monitoring this type of sneakiness as best they can.

Greg, yes I've seen (and we've caught) this kind of comparative advertising. You mean posts like, "I'm considering XYZhost and VenturesOnline..." We try to stomp them as much as any other.

I do try to excercise caution and reserve when it comes to banning people (as it is counter productive to the whoel discussion thing). I can generally post a complete report (so to speak) in the admin forum about the member and the issue, and if I can't, I wait, even if it seems obvious, it isn't always. Sometimes it doesn't seem obvious, however we are waiting for the slip up, as we're 98% sure. When I'm 99% sure, I'll kill them off, however I prefer to be 100% sure.

JayC.... I wasn't very clear. Please allow me to clarify:

I think that the increase in posts that are looking for info about a product/company is due in part to newer less skilled folks (such as myself) that are genuinely looking for info. Now... yes I do believe that there is a lot of baiting going on here.

This place has a reputation (even with the host bashing) for bringing out the finer and not so fine points about a service provider... whether they are a dedicated provider, colo facility, reseller, domain registry, merchant/3rd party vendor, etc etc.

The biggest indicator that puts a company on my "don't use them" list is how they react and respond to negative posts and other adverse situations. I also will not use a provider that "gloats" about another providers downtime or other misfortunes.

We're also getting many more people than we used to (topping 1,200/mo) so it will draw the people looking for hosts no one has heard of before, and the hosts trying to get away with it. There are plenty (too many) host names blocked and at this point, I'll try to suggest some other ways of preventing this from happening in the first place.

Uh... Is that 1200 new registrations per month?

Originally posted by indyjon
Uh... Is that 1200 new registrations per month? No, Chicken is talking about how many posts he has a month. :-)

Originally posted by indyjon
Uh... Is that 1200 new registrations per month?
Yes, and grrrrr on that new posts crack! :angry: :D

Originally posted by Chicken

Yes, and grrrrr on that new posts crack! :angry: :D Ooops. Sorry. (Gotta stay on CGS)