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When you say you have checked with Google there is no fraud involved, what exactly have they said they have checked? The only way I could see of evaluating if the forms were the result of fraud would be checking they didn't come from the same IP address (similar to how they try to identify 'click fraud') but this is fairly easy to mask with an extension like Stealthy or a more sophisticated IP masking app. Few Qusetions -

Could you give an example of how the info is 'fake' ie legitimate sounding inquiries with a fake email address or is it just nonsense information?

Do the forms look like they may have been spammed by some sort of bot or automated program? Usually relatively to spot this kind of thing ie repetiton of some sort of pattern or syntax that would never be entered by a human etc.

Has your client recently (or ever) had an acrimonious situation with a competitor or past client/customer?

My first suspicion would be someone (most likely a competitor) taking 'click fraud' to the next level by also wasting staff time with dodgy inquiry forms, a little elaborate but really the only logical conclusion I can reach. I would also say this scenario is more likely in a market where cost per click is reasonably high (say £2+). Be interested to see if you discover any more.

Oh, one more thought having said that - has a developer thoroughly checked the functionality of the form? I'm sure they checked the obvious but you never know.

That's strange, I don't see any problem - I wonder if you found one of the other domains that hasn't been re-directed to the new site? relevanceweb dot com should work fine.

Hi Aeronet,

Just wanted to confirm to anyone else coming across this thread that this was exactly the issue and was simple to resolve in Joomla as described.

It took some time to get access to the site so was in the dark until I could confirm. Knowing this I looked at a few of the companies other sites and found similar issues in other free templates that had been used. From my limited experience it looks like sneaking links into image alts in j-query scrollers and slideshows is not un-common. Though not difficult to find and rectify if you are looking can easily sneak under the radar.

Thanks again for the help : )

Absolutely agree Ben, of course just because something doesn't carry the weight it did doesn't mean it should be ignored. I would say in a similar fashion to meta description while H2's and the like aren't big for ranking they exist originally to improve user experience - a well structured page is easy to navigate and works for users.

I like the outline view tactic, build it in a way that is good for the user and the engines are probably going to like it too. Never really looked into annotations in analytics but sounds like a good tip too.

And yes the cardinal sin on their sites is text as images. The very worst is the NAP (name, address, phone). I do a lot of work on local/maps seo and this is a shocker in terms of localised search, and now the with the 'Venice' update local is an ever bigger factor. If you've not read up on venice I recommend it.

Thanks again and as I've said in the response below I will report back once I've seen the back end with their developer.

Thanks again Aeronet : )

That really helps me - obviously image alts always need to be set to the best possible for SEO. As I say, I am just looking from the outside and haven't talked at all with the developer yet. But will be great to point out specifics to the website owner at the first proper meeting. Only thing I'm slightly confused by is the rest of the alt's are written in a way that suggests SEO was considered - I'm going to guess that the adding of the "visit camp26.biz" prefix is hidden in the Joomla interface and happens at publishing. I will hopefully be able to sit down with the developer and identify exactly what's happening. When I have an answer I will update here. Think this will make a nice little informative blog post in the future as I've found it's not a subject that there's readily available information on. Will be sure to mention you both and share for you to re-produce if I do.

Thank you both.

Thanks for that Ben, the site is definitely suffering from text as images, low content volume etc like you say, it's definitely a poor template. In my opinion headings, certainly below h1, don't have the effect they used to on seo but the structure of the template isn't great regardless and I had recognised a number of the other issues you cover.

I'm still trying to get a little more clarity on exactly why when I look at the 'bot view the [ visit camp26.biz] pre-fix appears on every link. You mention hidden links originating in the index.php code or a site-wide module - little over my head! Would you mind taking a really quick look at www.partyman.co.uk and see if you can spot either of those things or any really obvious nastys?

Appreciate your help, that's a really informative and in-depth response, thanks.

Have been looking into a potential clients site that performs really badly, when I took a look in 'googlebot view' I see that every on page link appears-

[visit camp26.biz] clients link title as expected

Have tried searching for answers to this online but template providers are so prevelant everywhere I can't find any decent information on this issue.

If anyone can throw some light on this for me it will be much appreciated : )