With so much being written these days about how hard it is for local media companies such as newspapers to survive, I thought it would be helpful to share with all of my readers working in these companies a fantastic new revenue opportunity I recently discovered called Google Cash!
According to David Rodnitsky of PPC Associates in his Google Cash Review post, some scam artists have been creating sites that look like local news services – such as “Los Angeles Tribunes” or the above screenshot from the “Elk Grove Career Digest” – to promote a fake money-making scheme that seems designed to part the reader and his/her money as soon as possible.
Jonathan Hochman offers his take on the whole thing here with his Google Scams post.
And Jonah Stein, founder of WhiteKnightSEO.org, weighs in with Google’s Cash Cow.
According to Jonah:
Readers should be highly skeptical of any company advertising for “Google Cash” or “Google Money Tree”, but this is not a specific characterization of individual companies as fraudulent . Read their fine print and decide for yourself.
Read it carefully and you may see that by paying a very modest fee, say $1.99 or so, you are actually agreeing to a repeated monthly charge of $70 or more unless you cancel your “membership”. Again, the exact details vary, but each of these offers depends what is called reverse billing fraud to make money…by victimizing the same people again and again.
Since the publication of these article these faux-local news sites have disappeared, but they are sure to reappear in some other form soon. If you are interested in using your pagerank to put these scam artists out of business and clean up the SERPs and I recommend you get in touch with Jonah at WhiteKnightSEO.org.
5 Response Comments
Andrew,
Fabulous find on Google Cash! Are you using your newfound earnings to buy Aca berry tea and natural male enhancement pills?
Frankly, I think Google should be taking a stand on the paid search side– since that’s where most of the traffic is. Peole are NOT coming through via organic SERPs. I know most of the Google Cash guys and this white knight effort is valiant, but won’t do much.
Better to expose how the scam works and publicly shame Google, Facebook, and MySpace into doing something. Same is true on mobile offers– expose the fact that the carriers are taking 50% of the revenue and looking the other way.
We made millions on such deceptive advertising via Google and Facebook with zero regard to organic results. You serve an ad and people convert– they’re not opening another window to check for reviews. We don’t do that stuff anymore, thank goodness. But unless you know how these offers work, it’s hard to stop them.
Dennis
I am surprised these scammers are able to blatantly use legitimate branding to sucker people. Companies that allow these ads are just as responsible.
Vero Beach Real Estate
Google has suspended people’s adwords accounts for promoting this product. Be careful 🙂
Do not order this. You will never be able to get the rebill stopped.
A big fistbump to you for taking action by pointing out a shady website. Why wait for the government to step-in. These scammers can be stopped if consumers and legit businesses take the kind of socially responsible action you have done.
Thanks for sharing this informative post with us.