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I just wanted to add that mapquest, a direct map service that is still used by a lot of users just went ALL OUT YEXT with no more free option.

What is to say that hotfrog and many others will not be coerced or tempted to do the same after years of offering free options that the majority of business owners who are smart use?

what if yelp did this? What if yahoo closed off its free listing too? What if Google though oh who are we kidding, it costs too much to run a maps api for google plus and local mess, and just takes a nice sweet, technically proficient offer from yext with a fat negotiated pay rate for something that they did not charge for before at all? This spells death of anything known as LOCAL SEO for SEOs... it means we all have to sign up a reseller account with yext, and just be happy we are allowed to do even that...

I am deeply disturbed by this very manipulative and monopolistic approach to this directory market. At any moment, any of these companies can decide to go this route and pull a mapquest on the consumers and businesses. What should one do in that case other than to sign up as a yext partner and start ripping people off "as the way it is" way of doing business which i generally despise of... cuz it only benefits one entity massively and disproportionately, I mean how is it that for years and years these services were free and suddenly in the last year or so, a lot of them, especially the smaller guys are going premium only. I just don't get it. Did they have a wrong business model at first for so long? or did they get bullied/coerced/manipulated/tempted by Yext to go that route. Because we all know Yext HAS NO competitors in any meaningful way...

SEO market is only going to get more like this it seems... driving up the cost, and pushing smaller people out of the market, including smaller customers and clients. in 5 year time, yext can cost as little as 1500 bucks... I know of businesses who are still using win xp machines they bought 8-10 years ago or even longer for $600-700 range who refuse to change it due to budgetary limits even though it gives them a headache every day and wastes at least half hour of their time in stare-at-the-monitor-while-you-wait-and-grown mode...

Time to introduce some government regulation to this industry if you want my take, because it is about to get really nasty if you allow these giant corporations to push you around like this and extort money like a life requirement...

Well the site belongs to a friend of mine, he is located in the middle east and is pretty happy with his local online sales, although he knows and I know that none of this traffic gen via the manipulative methods is not bringing him any of the conversions directly, but he claims he reached his top rank for his keywords of interest only after he used these gimmicks

My question is more concerning Google and its policies / future punishments, does this stuff sound like a type of thing that can be detected and compensated for via search algorithms? As far as I have figured it out, this is really not "automated" and users who sign up to services like this and others (he is using another service, local) have to manually open a browser window and then the system has a way of knowing they are doing that to a subscribed site and it will thus stream other subscribed users to their site in return.

This is a clear manipulation of SERPs in my view and I am really wondering how is Google or other experts in the field viewing this? This results in high time spent on page, low bounce rates, higher traffic, and of course nearly 0 conversions. but it has affected his rank despite his local competitors doing a far better job both technically and visually.

ah nevermind then, I must be mistaken. anyway thanks for being on these forums for so long on a saturday, without personnel like you moz would possibly get a lot more hatemail

Our campaigns came back right when you posted this response, all crisp blues skies and few fluffy clouds in here.

Thank you Keri & sorry about the rant, nothing personal at all, you people generally awesomeness. It was just beyond frustrating to wake up with plans and limited time and run into... well I'm sure you know how that goes

oh btw just totally out of curiosity and without meaning to be stalking here, did you not just get hired / promoted out at moz? I think I saw your face on twitter somewhere along with a tweet about working at moz lol man they have given you the hardest job

So, in recent years some services have been developed such as Engageya

I want to ask the experts to weigh in on these types of services that generate traffic. I know of sites that have achieved higher ranking via these NON-bot, user browser visitors.

Here's their own explanation. Any thoughts will be appreciated. I could not find what Google's Matt Cutts has to say about these affairs, I suspect not very good things. However, I KNOW of sites that have achieved higher ranking, with about 30-40% of traffic coming from similar systems to this.

Join our exclusive readers exchange ecosystem

Engageya offers an exclusive readers exchange ecosystem - either within the network only, or cross-networks as well - enabling participating publishers to exchange engaged readers between them in a 1:1 exchange ratio. No commissions involved!

Why networks work with Engageya?

• Create traffic circulation within your network - increase your inventory and impressions within your existing properties.Engage readers within your network and experience an immediate increase in network's page views.
• Enjoy readers'- exchange from other networksOur engine intelligently links matching content articles together, from within your network, as well as from other networks. Get new audiences to your network for non-converting users clicking out.
• New revenue channel - monetize pages with reader-friendly content ad units, while making your readers happy!This is the time to move from aggressive and underperforming monetization methods - to effective and reader-friendly content advertising.
  Let our state-of-the-art semantic & behavioral algorithms place quality targeted content ads on your publisher's content pages.
• Enjoy highest CTRs in the industryContent ads are proven to yield the highest CTRs in the industry, starting at 2% and up to 12% click-through rates! This is simple. Readers click on an article they are interested-in, whether it's sponsored or not.
• Enhance your brand - Offer your publishers private-label content recommendations today, before someone else does.Content advertising is becoming more and more common. New content advertising networks and suppliers are being introduced into the online advertising market, and, sooner or later, they are going to approach your publishers. Engageya offers you a private-label platform to offer your publishers the new & engaging content ad unit - today!
• Comprehensive reports and traffic control dashboardTrace the effectiveness of the content recommendations ad units, as well as control the traffic within your network.

same here

emails sent to help@moz.com bounce, posted another thread so they know about that too.

This is what their twitter said an hour ago. wowrack? really MOZ?! This is what happens when corners are cut... even this company's own site is down... a simple check on their reviews brings up bad things, apparently some management and contract issues, and utterly spam-dated reviews here. really?! 5 happy reviews on the same dates back to back? their engineers are overseas too. come on moz, you can afford better, throw one less ceo swap a year.... #ranting of course. but come on!

Moz ‏~~@~~Moz 1h

We're having some server issues, which won't allow you into campaigns. We're working w/ wowrack to get the issue fixed asap!

same here

emails sent to help@moz.com bounce, posted another thread so they know about that too.

This is what their twitter said an hour ago. wowrack? really MOZ?! This is what happens when corners are cut... even this company's own site is down... a simple check on their reviews brings up bad things, apparently some management and contract issues, and utterly spam-dated reviews here. really?! 5 happy reviews on the same dates back to back? their engineers are overseas too. come on moz, you can afford better, throw one less ceo swap a year.... #ranting of course. but come on!

Moz ‏~~@~~Moz 1h

We're having some server issues, which won't allow you into campaigns. We're working w/ wowrack to get the issue fixed asap!

I just wanted to add that mapquest, a direct map service that is still used by a lot of users just went ALL OUT YEXT with no more free option.

What is to say that hotfrog and many others will not be coerced or tempted to do the same after years of offering free options that the majority of business owners who are smart use?

what if yelp did this? What if yahoo closed off its free listing too? What if Google though oh who are we kidding, it costs too much to run a maps api for google plus and local mess, and just takes a nice sweet, technically proficient offer from yext with a fat negotiated pay rate for something that they did not charge for before at all? This spells death of anything known as LOCAL SEO for SEOs... it means we all have to sign up a reseller account with yext, and just be happy we are allowed to do even that...

I am deeply disturbed by this very manipulative and monopolistic approach to this directory market. At any moment, any of these companies can decide to go this route and pull a mapquest on the consumers and businesses. What should one do in that case other than to sign up as a yext partner and start ripping people off "as the way it is" way of doing business which i generally despise of... cuz it only benefits one entity massively and disproportionately, I mean how is it that for years and years these services were free and suddenly in the last year or so, a lot of them, especially the smaller guys are going premium only. I just don't get it. Did they have a wrong business model at first for so long? or did they get bullied/coerced/manipulated/tempted by Yext to go that route. Because we all know Yext HAS NO competitors in any meaningful way...

SEO market is only going to get more like this it seems... driving up the cost, and pushing smaller people out of the market, including smaller customers and clients. in 5 year time, yext can cost as little as 1500 bucks... I know of businesses who are still using win xp machines they bought 8-10 years ago or even longer for $600-700 range who refuse to change it due to budgetary limits even though it gives them a headache every day and wastes at least half hour of their time in stare-at-the-monitor-while-you-wait-and-grown mode...

Time to introduce some government regulation to this industry if you want my take, because it is about to get really nasty if you allow these giant corporations to push you around like this and extort money like a life requirement...