Jacob Allred

Why you shouldn't have fake pages on your site

Jacob Allred •
#my-sites#rants#web-dev

I’m in the market for some rack space in a colocation facility. I’ve been running the numbers and it looks like I could save some substantial cash and add redundancy to my websites by buying a couple of servers instead of renting from SoftLayer. But where to colocate?

Ideally it’d be somewhere I either already live, am moving to, or near someone I visit often. I don’t plan on living in Connecticut any longer than I have to but I have no idea where I’m going to move, so that leaves me with the option of near someone I visit often. My parents have a goal of moving overseas so that leaves Becca’s parents in the Roanoke, VA area.

So I search for “roanoke, va colocation” and lucky me! The first result is a Roanoke colo from a company called Coloco! I check the pricing, spend time crunching numbers, checking my bandwidth usage to see what I need, pricing servers, etc. Becca then asks where the colo is actually located. I search their site but can’t find an address. Weird. They give the addresses of other locations.. The page definitely says Roanoke. Where in the world is this colo?

And then I realize what is happening. This company has flooded Google with fake pages that say whatever city name you are looking for. To test my theory, I visit: http://www.coloco.com/colo/colocation_in_your%20mom’s%20basement.HTM

Sure enough, I’m greeted with this entirely convincing sales pitch (emphasis added):

In your mom's basement

Grrr. I’ve just wasted 30-45 minutes evaluating a spammy company that is at least 3 hours from where I want to host my servers. I’m not sure which misguided individual at their company decided it’d be a good idea to introduce their company to the world using blatant lies, but I’m definitely not going to host with these guys.

I decided to thank them for wasting my time by offering them some free SEO services. I’ve submitted a few of their URLs to Google that were missing before, including your mom’s basement, the ghetto, and the ball pit at your local McDonald’s. I sure hope it gives them some extra traffic.