Remember that one kid from elementary school who was always popular and surrounded by fair-weather friends because his parents bought him all the newest toys? Well, if you buy a Google +1 package, you can give your blog a bunch of endorsements from fake friends and give it the social life you never got a chance to have. Plussem.com, a branch of SEOShop.biz, is now offering packages of +1’s at a rate of 50 for $19.99, 250 for $69.99, 2000 for $359.99 or roughly 40 cents, 28 cents and 18 cents per +1, respectively. In exchange, you get half-hearted endorsements from people you paid to say how cool you are.
Naturally, this is a dubious way to go about getting popularity. One the one hand, it’s just a matter of principle; you’re gaming the system and robbing the +1 system of whatever legitimacy it might have. The site outright mentiones “cheat[ing] the search algorithm.” On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d trust these folks. After sitting on the homepage, watching the slideshow picture of clouds repeatedly transition into the next identical picture of clouds, I decided to read more about the starter package.
All quoted emphasis is theirs.
Buying Plus Ones can help your site out by showing Google that the content featured on it or the page being Plussed is of value to real people and not spammy. Similar to the facebook LIKE, the Twitter FOLLOW or Digg’s DIGG it adds a human aspect to the ranking algorithm used by search engines and social bookmarking sites.
Funny how an otherwise accurate statement like that can be entirely invalidated by placing the word “buying” at the start of it.
So we can show Google that our website is of value to real people and not spammy by paying people who don’t value it to spam it with +1’s. I’m following you so far, but how do I know this will be of persistent value to me? What if the accounts get shut down, or the flow of +1’s is suspiciously abrupt?
All +1′s come from people with a google account that has been verified by phone (Phone Verified Accounts) All +1′s come from real people. No bots are being used! All +1′s are being given by manually going to your website and clicking the +1 button It’s untraceble because the +1′s are being given from different IP’s All +1′s are given dripped over a couple of days so it looks natural
Lastly, there is what is generously referred to as the order “form,” a bar for the URL address next to a paypal button. Just out of curiosity, I tried to check out the return policy on the main site, SEOShop.biz, but could only find a return form (with no mentions of policy) and these encouraging terms and conditions:
The goods and services we provide are of high quality and we will do our best to protect our good name by making sure any problems are sorted out as quickly and effeciently as possible. Please get in touch if you have any quries.
I’m sure automated social network popularity buffing has been around for a while and there are probably some people out there who have actually benefitted from it. And, wow, Plussem sure is an early adopter, and Google certainly doesn’t seem like they would take measures to meticulously validate accounts, err on the side of spam-blocking, or eject unsavory individuals. Not at all.
Regardless, I think I’ll just stick to the old-fashioned, tried and true way to get +1’s: Telling my friends that they can come over and play my new copy of Blast Corps if — and only if — they +1 my blog first.
(The Atlantic via Reddit)
