Quoting Jordan Miller <fcd@craiglist.org>:

I am VERY interested in your add. Please look and tell me if this is the one.

http://www.craigslists.org/fcd/ctd/909780589.html

Thanks !

At first I thought it was weird that someone would reply to a posting about an event like this.  I closed it and didn’t think anything more until a few minutes later when I took a second look.

Ah ha!

The URL – check it out.  It goes to craigslists.org.  I’m not clicking on it. I’m betting anything it’s a spyware/malware site.

Sure enough, Google shows that site as only having 5 pages. Yeah, that’s because all the vicious scripts are hidden, probably.

If you’re posting ads on Craigslist, watch out for this one.

For some reason though, today I thought I’d just check one out.  The email was just like the others.

From: Jerry Dennison
Subject: your website
Date: January 21, 2009

We can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.

Sincerely,

Jerry Dennison
Big Block Search

So I thought I’d do a little research on Jerry’s website, and his claims to get me to the top of the search engines.  Which is cool, because I really want to rank for the term ‘SEO’.  I’m sure if anyone can do it, Jerry can.

First stop, BigBlockSearch.com.  It’s a pretty generic website, most likely it is the same landing page as all the other SEO-spam emails I get.  There’s a form that I can fill out to find out more information.  No information about the company, no other pages.  There is a little blurb on the page about Christmas approaching.  I guess they mean Christmas ’09.  Man, this company is on the leading edge!

There’s two contact us links on the page, both going to linda@.  Hey wait, where’s Jerry?

So I fill out the form (Get a free review of your website!) for one of my newer websites, along with the message ‘not sure what you can do but we need more traffic’.  I don’t want to leave a phone number, so I leave it blank.  Whoops.

Guess I should filled that out.  Interestingly, the title bar says Unable to Send E-Mail – CoffeeCup Form Builder. Ah, coffeecup.  FrontPage’s cousin.

So I hit the back button, fill out all fields, and hit Submit again.  Funny thing, I get the same result.  So apparently they aren’t relying on the website to generate many leads, or their site just happens to be down when I visit.  Either way, it doesn’t look like my chances are good for my one-word ranking.  Darnit.

Next stop: WHOIS.  According to them, the site was just registered in December of 2008, its not even a month old.  Yet, it says that the site is climbing the Alexa rankings like mad, and that it gets over 3000 visitors a month.  Wow, really?

The domain is privately registered, so that’s a dead end.  The server is located in China, and when I click through to the 2 other websites hosted on this server, they both come back as Chinese sites.  WHOIS gives them an SEO score of 68% (I know it doesn’t mean much, but still, shouldn’t it be 100%?)

Next stop: archive.org.  It’s a long shot, but what the heck.  Sure enough though, no info.

Last stop: Google.  Maybe they’ll have some info for me.  I really want these guys to help me rank.

Hey, I’m in luck! My buddy jerry is listed here, linda is mentioned here, and here too.  There are some other mentions, but they are all about the same.

Darnit, it looks like my rankings are still far off.

So the big question still lingers, what is the purpose of all of this?  They obviously aren’t getting much business from it.  3000+ visitors? I don’t believe that.  Especially when their forms don’t work.

My only theory is that they are simply using it as a ruse to gather email addresses for other spam-related mailings.  The SEO stuff is just a ruse to get business owners to fill out the form for their email address.

I should also mention here that I could have emailed “Linda” for more info, but I decided that was probably a bad idea. I’m really hoping I’m wrong, and that Jerry (or Linda) will get me to the top of the search engines soon (sarcasm).

What’s your theory?