Real Estate Web Scam?

[ResaleBroker]

Tonight I receive an "Unsolicited" email from a company wanting me to put my profile and photo on their site, http: //www .azrealestateexperts .com, for one-time fee of $45 that is good for one year.

Among other things they state that they are ranked on the first page of Google for more than thirty (30) keywords including; arizona real estate, arizona real estate agents, etc.

Of course I have the Google toolbar installed and instantly noticed that their site had no Pagerank, Cache, or Backlinks. So I went to Google and pulled up many of the keywords they say they are number one for and couldn't find their site at all. So then I performed a WHOIS lookup and noticed the domain was only first registered on 11-12-04.

In your opinion, what would you do?

Would you report them? If so, where?

Would you turn a cheek? If so, why?

[Duncan Pollock]

Who would you report them to?
Google won't care less and I can't imagine NAR etc doing anything about them.
Just pass on them and hope they'll die -- which seems likely.
And you have put the Beware word out here, for which we're all grateful I'm quite sure.

Duncan

[Oppenheimer Group]

Jeffrey:

I read an article earlier this week regarding link building and one of the central points was to work forward not backwards - when building links. That said I agree with Duncan, who will actually police this problem?

Why not post on all of the forums explaining the problem and hopefully with the word out less realtors will eventually be tricked.

[SanDiego]

caveat emptor
I am sure these sites are dime a dozen. With 5 dollar domain names, free webhosting, and a free web template, a spam program and a real estate list.. these fools could sell you a different site every day.
Rule # Don't But anything from EMAIL
If everyone did that - people might not get as much spam...lol

[zee]

Actually...that site is listed "1" on Google under the term "arizona real estate"
Look more carefully.

[ResaleBroker]

Actually...that site is listed "1" on Google under the term "arizona real estate"
Look more carefully.

Zee, that is a "Sponsored Listing." There is a difference. In fact, at the time of my original posting that link was not showing and as of right now it is not showing again.

That's part of the deception. If you didn't know there was difference do you think the general public would?