As much as I like their cool zebra logo, it appears that RedZee.com (link left out on purpose) is using a slew of bad tactics to attempt to gain popularity in the search space. I haven't personally seen referrals from them, yet, but some others have and based on their non-presence in the space until recently, it's hard to trust that data. It seems that they're also owned by a company called LinkPositions, whose operations are primarily in the creepy side of SEO - the type of "services" I wouldn't trust at any price.
From a cre8asite thread on the subject:
(Sanity)It does seem weird. I asked cause a site I'm managing is getting quite a lot of traffic from it. The referrer is: admin.redzee.com/pluginhtml/RedzeeSearch.aspx They seem to be offering their own PPC and for a few searches I've done there are lots of advertisers. Dunno I would have thought some of us would have heard of it...
(Whitemark) ...check if the visitors arriving from RedZee are indeed browsing your site. Check the path - are they digging into the site and following a logical path. It could be that RedZee is indulging in referral spam or log spamming using a bot. Since they have their own ad program, they might be trying to tempt you to try them out.
(Bill Slawski) I think that there's some reason to feel skeptical about a meta search engine that won't reveal the sources of its information, and that offers a toolbar that it doesn't tell you much about, while also offering a payperclick program.
You can also see from the screenshot that SEOmoz is listed in their paid results for a search on the name. I'm not sure what their game is, but something surely smells fishy.
I registered with RedZee and paid them 500 bucks. All I have gotten is between 300 and 400 hits per month ... all in one day by their BOT that only hits the home page. I've waisted my money.. https://LarryBell-RealEstate.com
RedZee is nothing but bogus. Every single hit that comes from either their search engine or their spybar is a bounce.
I'll say this again because it is very important: Every single hit that comes from either their search engine or their spybar is a bounce.
In every single case where an IP address has entered my sites from the redzee search engine - either directly from their search engine or from browsers that have the redzee spybar installed, which appends redzee "top 3" ppc results to the top of the Google or Yahoo organic listings - that IP address goes no further than the landing page. In some cases, the IP bounces out before the entire landing page is requested from the server.
I have tested and confirmed this through exhaustive manual analysis or my raw log files.
I challenge anyone who has posted here claiming that their ROI has increased as a result of redzee to show me one of their raw log files where a conversion can be tracked.
I have severed my relationship with redzee in total disgust.
Hey RedzeeisBS!!! You are wrong, I just checked the traffic flow today 2/7/06 and redzee is not at 15 users per one million. As of today they are only 8 users per one million!!!
Event1!!! Even with RedzeeBS being wrong he ie MORE RIGHT then you!!! So how long have you been working for Redzee??? Damn sensitive aren't you??? You are transparent as glass!!! Where is the solid exposure at EIGHT users per ONE MILLION???
You can keep your redzee or use it, but the numbers do not lie!!! Traffic ranking as of today is 284,960!!! That is not SOLID EXPOSURE!!!
Final word!!! Mean money can do better damage elsewhere!!!
Moneyismean OUT-
I totally cracked up when I saw internetguru's comments... It was obvious that the first one was fake, but then trying to fake a positive reply to themselves with the 2nd one. LOL! That was hilarious. It shows you the mind set of these people.
I've had 2 sales calls from them in the last month. They claimed to be from "WebWiseMedia.com", an "official representative" of Redzee.com
I kept both of these sales reps on the phone for a long period of time and was able to rack their brains a little bit. Bottomline: the people I talked to were either completely ignorant, or were willingly trying to deceive. I can't count the number of direct questions I asked them that were redirected and never received an answer.
I finally got them to admit that in order to actually see "top 3 results" on google you had to have the toolbar (adware) installed. By the way, Dr. Dickhead... I've never heard of the google toolbar being called adware/spyware. To my knowledge they have never bundled their toolbar into any software download, or did so without prior consent... and even if they did, they don't use their toolbar to hijack other search engines like yahoo. Give me a break!
One other thing worth noting: One of the sales reps kept trying to get me to try a demo on redzee.com, but it just wouldn't load for some reason. But I finally discovered that spysweeper had been blocking it all along. You heard correctly... if you have the most recent version of spysweeper (and other spyware blockers I would guess), your access will be blocked completely to their search engine. Spysweeper didn't even give me a warning about the site, it just completely blocked it.
One last thing, the rep told me that they currently have 30 million toolbars installed on browsers worldwide... I told him that I don't even think that Alexa has half that many. After that the conversation went south and I ended the call with a "bye" -- click.
Redzee is extremely sketchy, and after reading the few people that have made comments here, I'm glad I didn't get sucked into their guerrilla sales tactic. They were the kind of sales people that make you feel guilty or act offended when you aren't interested in what they are selling. I hate that...
These guys are definitely not on the up and up. We signed up with them as an experiment about a week ago. We knew they sounded fishy but were getting pressure from a particular sales rep who was losing customers to Redzee (we provide websites, lead gen and other online marketing services) because of the insane traffic they were getting at such a low cost. We figured that $900 was cheap compared with the rest of our PPC budget (for the lead gen product), so why not give it a shot? If nothing else, we'd have ammo for this and other reps about Redzee's legitimacy.
We got 1100 clicks in one week, on 5 keywords. That's roughly half of what we get from our extensive AdWords campaign. Not likely. The toolbar sounded fishy, as well, but we downloaded it today to see if it could provide some insight into why Redzee was telling us we were getting clicks from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and not just through Redzee. Turns out the toolbar hijacks your browser, and any time you execute a search on one of their "partner" engines for a phrase someone has purchased, it refreshes the page to show that advertiser's ad at the top of the organic results. I'm still not sure how where they are generating the traffic from. We checked some of the IP addresses they've listed for the clicks, and nothing jumps out as obviously bogus. Assuming those are the actual IP addresses, that is. However, something has got to be up, as I find it hard to believe that 1100 people have either gone to the site or downloaded this toolbar and searched for one of our 5 key phrases.
The thing I can't quite figure out is if any of these supposed visitors are legitimate or converting. None of the Redzee referring URLs have shown up in the path from referrer report in Hitbox. I'm not sure if there's a problem with the way hbx is reading those referrals or if nobody who has come to the site through the ads has gotten beyond the first page. I tested it myself today and clicked on several pages, but am still not seeing anything in Hitbox (though I might not, as I believe hbx is set to disregard from inside the company).
One note on the toolbar--while it may be adware or spyware of some kind, it doesn't appear to leave any lasting effects. Uninstalling removes all files and triggers nothing on several spyware removal programs.
REDZEE...
For starters they have peeps posting phoney props on various web pages. Second thier whole process is not organic, so it has no value. You must have their tool bar for your search terms to show up on a google search, so where is the value in that? Especially since as of today I checked their traffic ranking on Alexa.com, they have 15 people out PER ONE MILLION average using their site FLMAO!!! BTW- Alexa and Amazon are affliated, along w/ Redzee (Funny huh?)
crusherfla, enjoy wasting your 5 cents per click ($899 per year or better) and one more thing, having morals I say stay away from Redzee, and stay away from frauds like yourself!
I love this company. (kidding)
First, they called late last year and prior to that call, I had no idea who or what RedZee was and why I should care. Luckily for me, the caller was having computer issues and offered to call me back in a few minutes. My friend Google led me to this thread and a handful of other SEM forums posting similar accounts. I confronted him when he called back, which must have been a surprise since I hung up with him still mumbling "uh, uh, uh, uh..."
Then, last week my boss got a call from "Joe" at RedZee. My boss got the spiel and took his name and number to give me to follow up. Soon as I saw RedZee I threw it out.
Then today, I got a call from "Joe" who "didn't want to sell me anything", but was questioning my reasons for not wanting to work with them and how I found out my information. After telling him that he could do a Google search on his company to find exactly what I found and that the info was on well respected SEM sites, he said something to the effect that I could Google my company or even Jesus and find negative information... that prompted me to hang up again.
Why, RedZee, should I waste my time arguing with your minions about why people don't trust your traffic? Shouldn't you be concerned with your tactics and not engage in hostile attempts to get the opinion of some lowly SEM dude at a mid-sized company?
Anyway, it pissed me off enough to add to this discussion. Not that the above comments haven't done enough to hurt RedZee already!Boo RedZee. Stay away, far away.
Hah. These fools called me AGAIN today. In 2010. They're back trying to hustle!
Found out John Stewart and Ryan Krupnick are behind redz, redze scam, thanks to one of thier shady sales rep just acted like I loved thier services...
Buyer Beware.....REDZEE IS A SCAM. After tracking them for a while, I have proof that thier a scam. The information I have comes from within Redzee. This is the information that they don't want you to see and know because it's fraud. They haven't bought out anyone.... they have changed names several times and simply merged the data.(Searchclimbers,Linkpositions,CommonnamesUSA)
Over the years, as people start to realize it's a scam, they change names and start the fraud all over again. And regarding the T.V ads...please... Channel 13 will put you on T.V. for NOTHING. They have a department that covers the bay area and looks for "New" companies. And the other ads....they simply pay for them. PRWeb is one that they use....
One last comment........ Some of th people that have left posts here are from Redzee. Randy Zoll, Ryan Krupnik(part owner) and others make it a mission to search the net and act like customers from Redzee and try to defend it. DON'T BE FOOLED!!! The owners of Redzee make money from this scam, so thier going to deflect as much as they can.
If anyone wants an in-depth analysis or PROOF that thier a scam.......leave a post and I'll answer it.
P.S. Redzee....your more than welcome to leave a post too.....although that wouldn't be in your best interest. I have no problem revealing your Scam to the world..........! I've read your posts and they are ridiculous. If you continue your attempts to further your fraud....all my secrets might slip out...!
Last comment: REDZEE IS A SCAM!!!
Website Mechanic,
Would you please post or send me the in-depth information you mentioned? A rep from redzee.com called us today. They looked pretty good on the surface, but I'm not finding ANYTHING good about them online. Would like the additional info that you have if you are still willing to share it.
Thanks!
Could you please reveal these info about redzee?
I just subscribed and paid $500 worth of clicks.
If you would reveal the info, I will call them asking for a refund or I will disput my Credit Card.
Thanks,
My Name
I have also been approached by redzee. Can you send me the information
Thanks
Hiloflylo
Be afraid Be VERY afraid
Can I please have the information that you have? I have been called to renew my key terms. I am embarassed to say that I bought two key words and renew one already. That is a total of $1500. I have been completely suckered and would like to try to get my money back from my credit card company. Any and all help will be appreciated.
Thank you in advanced!
I used to work there, Trust me its a scam run as fast as you can Get your money back Its all click fraud.
Interesting that you mention Randy Zoll - he talked me out of thousands with RedZee until I finally wized up with our new website that has stats that show the bot activity that RedZee uses to simulate real hits.
Nothing went beyond the home page of the site - not one single hit. I wasn't able to track that before, but am with the stats on our new site. Was shocked. Have managed to chargeback some of my money on my card, but am going to the BBB and Attorney General's office in Florida to try to get the rest of it.
REZDEE IS A HUGE SCAM ! Seriously, if you've recently let them charge your card, run to Visa and reverse the charges while you can.
Don't make the same mistake many of us out there have.
"stats that show the bot activity that RedZee uses to simulate real hits."
Does anyone know if Yahoo uses bots to simulate hits? We used Yahoo PPC for my husband's B2B web site for quite awhile, but it never generated any "real" activity (i.e. valid from our perspective)... I have a regular FT job, and don't have time to analyze stats, etc., but I always suspected that Yahoo was just burning through our $$ possibly through bot traffic.
Back on topic, we were approached by RedZee and while they talked a good game, there were several things I didn't like about them, and so I recommended that my husband not bite. As a non-technical businessman, he would have fallen for it if it wasn't for me advising him not to.
I purchased a large quantity of keywords from redzee and in the begining I never really tracked everything efficiently. Then after I installed live chat on my site I really gained the ability to interact with my users and guess what not one redzee user ever communicated or could be interacted with. Not one! I am talking over a hundred thousand visitors and none of them went past the homepage..I kick myself for not realizing this sooner. I should have known when redzee was giving 3 to 4 times the amount of traffic then Google or MSN campaigns..Well, you live and you learn...
Live chat is not a tracking utility... I tried the same thing with mine to no avail. When I called Live Chat to figure out why the RedZee visitors wouldn't track properly, I was told it is not something they could help with, since it was a bonus feature of the program.
I would recommend looking into a decent log file analyzer program, and crunch the raw data from the host. See how that does.
If you need to track a campaign and ensure accuracy, you could always create a landing page and only direct that particular campaign there, right?
A couple of months ago our company signed up with Redzee for a $200 trial on 2 keywords. Sounded like "Heaven Found"......Yup, got a lot of traffic too! The problem was as mentioned many times here.....it all bounced...100%...NOT ONE stayed on the site beyond 1 second. 2 weeks ago the sales rep who signed us up called and said we were nearing renewal. I told her about these stats and sent her screen prints from Google Analytics...never heard back from her.
Today a different rep called and I told him the same thing. He blamed it on Google and said that Google was trying to make them and other non-Goog referers look bad and that they were not reporting the time spent on the site.....tears came to my eyes. I said well how come out of all referers to our site, you are the only one that shows no time spent on the site???? After a long pause, he said.......Because we get them there but beyond that we can't be responsible or see what pages they go to. Furthermore, to do that, he said, you need to get a tracking string to put on your site pages. I asked where you get that from...he said from our host.
Allright, enough of this BS. If any one out there believes in this company, they deserve to get their money taken
I've been in contact with a sales rep with RedZee for about a week now, putting him off until I had time to do the research my budget limitations deserve. He's a great guy and RedZee is located in Tampa along with the company i'm with, so that's a big plus. Unfortunately, I have to go with what i've read online.
Thanks everyone for the great input, i would have probably gone with them at least for a time if i hadn't found Rand's thread. By the way Rand, i missed you at the SES New York conference this year!
The bounce rate for my Google Adwords campaign is much less than 80%.
redzee will attempt to rationalize a claim of a 100% bounce rate with lousy analytics. redzee will request that you send them samples of your log files so that they can determine for themselves if your 100% bounce rate claim is true.
This is like sending a surveillance tape to a crook so that he can determine for you whether or not he shoplifted your store.
1. My Google Analytics show that every key phrase that I had purchased from redzee has a 100% bounce rate. The Google tracking script, Urchin, resides on every page of my web sites.
2. I also use my own tracking pixel on every page of my all of my web sites. I have had this in place long before I started a redzee campaign. The tracking pixel resides on it's own web site that gets no other traffic. The simple script included with this tracking pixel also sends and logs the HTTP Referrer server variable of the visited page. Using the log file of the tracking pixel web site, I can easily track visitors to my web sites, where they came from and every page they have visited. I can easily determine the bounce rate from my redzee campaign using the tracking pixel log file and that bounce rate is 100%.
Another indication that the hits coming from redzee are computer generated is the frequency of these hits.
Traffic to my site consistantly takes a small dip 2 days out of the week. This dip is consistant between my Google and Yahoo ppc campaigns.
The hits from redzee do not take this dip and are fairly consistant every day of the week. This behavior is similar to the AlexaBooster software I mentioned in a previous post.
If you start a campaign with redzee, you pay in advance for the traffic that they promise. You will not get a refund for any unused funds if you request to stop the campaign early.
Save your money. The traffic that redzee promises to send you is all computer-generated and a total waste of your money.
Redzee just called me to sell me the top spot at .05 a click. I typed my search term in and I was already number one. I checked my server logs and read this thread while listening to the sales pitch - fastest growing, #15,000 in alexa , etc., and then having my questions elevated to the lead coder. My server logs indicated one search referral from them in the last 6 months. I get 15,000 referrals a day from google for the same term. I told the lead coder this and he hung up on me. My Personal conclusions: They may be manipulating the alexa results, I should have seen several thousand hits from them for the term I was already number one for if they were as well used as they claim. My recomendation is to steer away!
I received a call from them two days ago. The last thing I want is a cold-call sales call saying I saw you're paying XX on this search engine and we can beat that with 8 cents a click. (I am on that search engine for a reason.) Then the sales rep - when I told her I'd never heard of redzee - said they were in the Wall Street Journal recently. Funny, a search on the WSJ site has no results for redzee or redzee.com.
A news search on redzee displays a couple of vague press releases that don't see redzee as a product at all. I found the whole thing to be very strange. I am glad to know I'm not the only one!
My Adwords campaign has a bounce rate around 50%!! If you're seeing an 80% bounce there's a problem, and those of you who've seen a 100% bounce through RedZee should take any action against them you can. So effing bogus.
File a BBB complaint against them, for sure. Their business practices are outrageous.
Robert,
Redzee makes it appear that your results are great.
But you must strictly define results.
If you base your results on traffic alone then you do get good results because redzee does send you consistant traffic.
To really determine results, though, you must dig deeper.
How do you determine whether or not the traffic from redzee goes beyond the landing page?
What analytics do you use?
How do you determine a conversion?
Do you look at your raw log files?
You need to thoroughly research your log files.
I have researched my raw log files thoroughly. I also have a tracking setup that I wrote that tracks a visitor through every page on my site.
redzee traffic has NEVER - I say again - NEVER gone beyond the landing page.
A 100% bounce over a 7 month period. This is fraud, pure and simple.
Wow,
"Redzee makes it appear that your results are great."
How exactly can they do that? I mean when I look at my stats, they are from my servers, right? And, when I log into my account at redzee, although be it limited to the number of days I can see them, I am able to see the IP address for the visitor they referred. Its kinda nice knowing that I am really only paying for 1 IP in that given 24hr period.
"How do you determine whether or not the traffic from redzee goes beyond the landing page?"
I had actually spoken to one of their reps regarding that very question and its basically comes down to:
"What analytics do you use?"
And knowing how to setup your tracking system to clearly understand and determine where your visitors are coming from. Its my understanding that redirected visitors tend to lose their referring information, therefore it makes sense to create, like most analytics tools tell you, a unique landing page that corrosponds to the appropriate campaign. It could be as simple as looking at the number of "direct hit/bookmark" visitors one averages a day before and after launching a test campaign with redzee. If you go from 2 a day to 14, then its possible its them... right?How do you determine a conversion?
"Do you look at your raw log files?"
The log file will show, a true raw log file, each time a hit occurs on my site and some basic information like IP, Time of hit and some Browser details. Did you look at yours? You said you went thru them "thoroughly" all 7 months worth, I am sure that was quite the undertaking and tedious... all those entries.
Here is how I see your commentary posted here and elsewhere, and this is not in defense nor support of redzee, whatever industry your in and whatever content your website has, obviously is one of the following:
A. Useless information or Junk no one wants anyway.
B A product that may have sold alot better then maybe it does now, and since google would blacklist you, your trying to bully a smaller search engine into giving you free traffic / attempting to Steal it. When probably YOUR not tracking your own visitors accurately and maybe you are either incapable or unwilling to justify any of the comments you have made here and on other boards with any shred of real evidence that redzee has done anything inappropriate.
Wow,
"Redzee makes it appear that your results are great."
How exactly can they do that? I mean when I look at my stats, they are from my servers, right? And, when I log into my account at redzee, although be it limited to the number of days I can see them, I am able to see the IP address for the visitor they referred. Its kinda nice knowing that I am really only paying for 1 IP in that given 24hr period.
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But the IP you see in your log file that corresponds with the IP you see in your redzee account does not represent a real person visiting your web site. It is an automated visit that never goes beyond the first page or landing page of your site.
How exactly can they do that? It's easy. They have a large pool of IP addresses of real people that have downloaded their tool bar. They can also use an even larger pool of IP addresses that are open proxies.
Since the traffic redzee is sending you is not real, they are, essentially, stealing your money. There is nothing nice about that.
-----------------------------------
"How do you determine whether or not the traffic from redzee goes beyond the landing page?"
I had actually spoken to one of their reps regarding that very question and its basically comes down to:
"What analytics do you use?"
And knowing how to setup your tracking system to clearly understand and determine where your visitors are coming from. Its my understanding that redirected visitors tend to lose their referring information, therefore it makes sense to create, like most analytics tools tell you, a unique landing page that corrosponds to the appropriate campaign. It could be as simple as looking at the number of "direct hit/bookmark" visitors one averages a day before and after launching a test campaign with redzee. If you go from 2 a day to 14, then its possible its them... right?How do you determine a conversion?
-----------------------------------
There is no question that hits are coming to you from redzee. You need to be very concerned about what happens after a redzee hit gets to your landing page. The fact is - nothing. It is a bounce. All traffic going to your site from the redzee top 3 ppc never goes beyond your landing page.
redzee hides behind the fact that no analytics software can give you exact details. Each use their own algorithms to define hits, visits, bounces, etc. redzee will tell you, for example, that Google Analytics is flawed with respect to properly reporting hits coming from redzee.
An alternative to creating a separate landing page for redzee traffic is to use a dummy parameter in the URL you supply redzee.
Instead of https://www.thisismysite.com/index.html
Use https://www.thisismysite.com/index.html?rz=redzee1
Try this for a while and use your analytics to see the bounce rate for this URL. When I did, my Google Analytics reported a 100% bounce rate. Whether Google Analytics is flawed or not, this 100% bounce ratre was verified by reviewing my raw log files.
A conversion is where a person enters my site and purchases something from me.
-----------------------------------
"Do you look at your raw log files?"
The log file will show, a true raw log file, each time a hit occurs on my site and some basic information like IP, Time of hit and some Browser details. Did you look at yours? You said you went thru them "thoroughly" all 7 months worth, I am sure that was quite the undertaking and tedious... all those entries.
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I look at my raw log files everyday. Searching back to verify that redzee was stealing from me was very time consuming and tedious. It was worth the effort. I caught a thief.
An entry in your log file is, essentially, a hit on your web server. Everytime your web sever serves up an object to a requesting browser, an entry is made in the log file (also, a log entry is made when a browser requests something that isn't on your web server). If I open your web site's home page, your log file will have an entry for your home page being requested as well as an entry for every object on that page. If you have 10 images on your home page, there will be 11 entries in yor log file everytime a browser opens up your home page.
I also use a tracking scheme that uses a separate log file. I have a tracking pixel on each page of my web site. This tracking pixel image file resides on another web server with it's own log file. The script I use for this tracking pixel also sends the HTTP Referrer server variable as a parameter in the URL. Everytime anyone visits my web site, a single log entry is made for each page the visitor enters and shows where the visit came from and the referrer from that page.
I use this to trace a conversion back to the point where they entered my site and the referrer that got that visitor to my site. It works very well.
-----------------------------------
Here is how I see your commentary posted here and elsewhere, and this is not in defense nor support of redzee, whatever industry your in and whatever content your website has, obviously is one of the following:
A. Useless information or Junk no one wants anyway.
-----------------------------------
The money redzee has stolen from me is really nothing compared to my other pay-per-click campaigns, which I have been doing for years. I will continue to do them because the return on investment is worth what I am spending.
I discontinued redzee because there was no return on investment because redzee was stealing my money by sending me computer generated traffic. There was not one single real visitor from redzee.
-----------------------------------
B A product that may have sold alot better then maybe it does now, and since google would blacklist you, your trying to bully a smaller search engine into giving you free traffic / attempting to Steal it. When probably YOUR not tracking your own visitors accurately and maybe you are either incapable or unwilling to justify any of the comments you have made here and on other boards with any shred of real evidence that redzee has done anything inappropriate.
-----------------------------------
With respect to organic listings, I am not blacklisted by any search engine. I have some key phrases that do very well in some search engines and other key phrases that do very well in other search engines. I would very much like to do a lot better in the most competitive key phrases and I continue work to achieve that goal. My problem is that the market I am in a very, very competitive.
I am not trying to bully redzee. And I am not trying to get free traffic from them. The traffic coming from redzee in their top3 ppc is computer generated and completely worthless. I am trying to expose them as a fraud and a thief. They stole my money. They pissed me off.
I can justify and verify every comment that I have made here and I have all the evidence one would need to determine that redzee is committing fraud.
My complaint to the Florida Attorney General has been referred to the Florida Department of Justice & Consumer Affairs. I would not have made the complaint without any evidence.
If you're participating in the redzee top 3 ppc, then redzee is stealing from you too.
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Reviving an old thread.... these guys are mucking things up again. This time it seems to be that they're screenscraping search results, and posting truncated URLs, which, for SOME reason, Google search is picking up. I'm now getting tons of 404s showing up in Google Webmaster Tools for truncated URLs, some of which are clearly originating from the current iteration of Red Zee, and the remainder of which I suspect are still being pulled from their truncated results.
Is anyone else seeing similar behavior? The only workaround I seem to have at the moment is to configure a bunch of 301s for these truncated URLs, so that they don't continue to discredit us w/ Google search.
Anyone know of an effective approach to getting Google to stop including these guys' links (or mis-links) in their results? Incredibly aggravating to get hit w/ a ton of invalid 404s...
Ah yes, RedZ. Just had a client bring this puppy to me today. Thanks for the write up and input everyone! SEOmoz is grand!
Total Crooks who should be in jail. A couple years ago I used them for a few months and the traffic started climbing so I began to question, due to bounce rates. We created a hidden menu link with a color the same as the background. No human would click on it. Had 200 hits the next morning. They just send a spider to crawl you site and bill for same.
Redzee is a scam. Their own stats show 10-20 hits per day on a regular basis. Our own traffic administrator confirms this.
A couple of months ago, I get a call saying that we were about to max-out on our 10,000 click allowance. I told them that by both my stats and their own, we should be nowhere near that. I asked for proof thru their statistics archives. And I asked again. And again. And again. Always got some excuse.
After a few weeks of this, they finally said that for some unknown reason, the stats had spiked with unknown activity. So they agreed to reset the counter back to 3000. This was the last week of April '07. I watched their stats (and ours) daily after that for 2 weeks. Same as before, 10-20 clicks per day.
I got busy and missed a week or two. I get back to checking the stats during the last week of May. Guess what? Suddenly the counter is over 8000. That's more than double what it was just days earlier. Yet, when I checked the 5 days of stats that they allow me to see, it still shows only 10-20 clicks per day. I check our systems traffic stats, and I find no spikes. So where did these "clicks" come from? The world wonders. Perhaps it's as simple as one of their guys going into the database and changing the counter to a higher value. But it doesn't really matter how. It just ain't right.
Looks like we wasted $500.
Redzee contacted our company in the beginning of the week and today. I told them we have no interest in signing up with them, because their software (toolbar) behaves like spyware, actually modifying content customers are shown. And nowhere in the agreements does it say what it does.
I believe 99% of the people who were lured into installing this toolbar are not aware what is happening.
My advice is stay away from these guys. Real aggressive sales people. The above posts just reassured me I made the right decision to stay away.
Hey everyone,
REDZEE is a total SCAM. I had the same results...
Bogus traffic, no conversions, 99% bounce rate.
I filed a complaint to the BBB...
https://www.bbbwestflorida.org/
In addition, I filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General.
I recommend that everyone goes to this easy online form and complain - let's go after these crooks.
https://myfloridalegal.com/Contact.nsf/Contact...
Finally, you can see the RipOff Report I filed here...
https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff226...
Feel free to add to it or post some new ones. The more the merrier!
I am sooooo mad at myself for falling for this scam.
I'm out $2500 - but, I'll spend twice that amount making these guys pay.
Oh, what the heck - I'll go ahead a post the complaint that I sent to RipOff Report, the BBB, and the FL Attorney General here.
It bears repeating...
***********************************
After tracking my website statistics, it came to my attention that all the traffic I was receiving (and paying for) from RedZee search was worthless.
Here is an email that I sent to Bill Masters at RedZee - who was my account Rep...
#############
Hey Bill,
I've been using Google Analytics to track my traffic and conversions and the traffic I receive from RedZee is questionable at best.
From all other sources we have an average conversion rate of over 3% - that's 3 out of every 100 visitors, and every single source with at least 150 referrals has at least 1 conversion - EXCEPT for Redzee!
In the past 30 days, out of 1500 referrals from RedZee there has not even been ONE SINGLE CONVERSION! Noone has even joined our Coupon Club, which costs nothing. Obviously, this violates all laws of statistics (and reality).
In addition, traffic from RedZee has a Bounce Rate of 99%, meaning that everyone just goes to the home page and then leaves from the home page without visiting any other pages or doing anything else at all. This is waaaaay beyond the norm. Yet, unexplainably, RedZee visitors stay on the site twice as long as anyone else - yet, do nothing! This reeks of suspicious click activity and fraud.
I'll be honest with you. I feel like I've been duped and I'm not happy about it.
Please refund the $1,000 that I paid last - Inv. #16631 on 10/03/06. I still have the majority of these credits remaining and do not wish to use them.
In fact, I feel that I should be refunded ALL the money that I spent with RedZee for worthless traffic; however, I am willing to just cut my losses as long as you refund my credit card the last $1,000 that was billed.
My only other option would be to call the BBB and the Florida Attorney General and report Redzee for unfair and unethical business practices.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
You are welcome to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
-- Best Regards,
Clark... ... ... ... ...
#############
Their response was to have an "Internet Tech Guy" call me a tell me that I was interpreting the data incorrectly. This Tech Guy wasted over an hour of my time on the phone and ran me around in circles trying to confuse me.
In the end, I was told that the money I had paid was not refundable. The analogy used was, "Go buy a $20 phone card and try to stick it back in the machine and see if you get your money back."
After that conversation, I am convinced that RedZee Search is driving fraudulent traffic to their customer's websites - known as "click fraud."
In addition, I found it to be completely unreasonable that they would not even agree to refund the credits which I have yet to use and refused to even cancel my account.
Clark Columbus, Nebraska U.S.A.
***********************************
Hey DeepRecon,
You are most welcome. I'm glad to see you took the time to file your complaint. We can't let RedZee, being the pathetic scam artists that they are, continue to get away with such blatantly fraudulent activity.
Today I followed up my complaints with The Internet Crime Complaint Center here...
https://www.ic3.gov/complaint
What's crazy is that all RedZee Search had to do was refund me the money on UNUSED credits; however, their greedy black hearts insisted on screwing me over completely. I would have gone quietly, licking my wounds on the initial $1500.
Now, I'll take nothing less than the full $2500 I spent with the RedZee Top3 program. In fact, I'm going to bring the subject up to my lawyer during our next conference call after the New Year - see what he thinks about a class action lawsuit against RedZee and Internet Shopping Interprises in Florida.
Man, RedZee really has me irate. I can't stand being taken advantage of and then have some guy (at RedZee Search Top3) tell me that "I'm interpreting the data wrong" and just don't understand marketing.
Whether from me or from someone else, these guys (RedZee Search Top 3, aka Internet Shopping Enterprises) will get theirs in the end. Cheaters always do - it's Karma.
--Clark...
P.S. Please forgive the constant repetition of RedZee, RedZee Search, and RedZee Search Top 3/Top3 - I just want to make sure that the Search Engines can easily find my post in the hope that others won't so quickly fall for RedZee's SCAM.
The suggestion to file a BBB complaint was a great idea.
I suggest anyone currently using redzee to do the same: https://www.bbbwestflorida.org/
I opened a complaint - BBB CASE#: 67075202 I had requested, as resolution to my complaint, that all remaining funds in my account be returned to me at once.
Initially, redzee stalled by responding that they could not find my account with the information I had filed in the complaint. They did call the number I included in the complaint and cleared that issue up.
rezee then told me that I was not cooperating with them by refusing to supply them my log files.
I told them that they were not going to get my log files but that I would supply them to a 3rd party, agreeable by all parties, including the BBB, for review.
Upon that, the discussion stopped and I was told that my refund was being sent out immediately, that I should receive it a few days and that I should contact the BBB to close the complaint.
I told redzee that I will close the complaint when the check has cleared the bank.
On the one hand, this was an admission of guilt by redzee to me but, on the other hand, it appears as just another BBB complaint filed against redzee that has been resolved.
redzee continues to commit click fraud against the rest of their advertisers.
With A guy like you on there hands they were probably tired of dealing with you and all your craziness.
I wasn't tracking them through the live chat software. I actually use Urchin for that. I just know that I never had one redzee visitor use the live support feature. My urchin stats showed me that not one redzee visitor went past the homepage. This is with hundreds of thousands of visitors.
I'm seeing the exact same referrer in my logs, the admin.redzee.com/pluginhtml/RedzeeSearch.aspx. Really bloody annoying too, since it is causing some of our brower statistics to get messed up (higer-than-they-should be unknown users). They call us right now on an almost weekly basis, quoting things like how their "top 3" program overcomes the aversion that users have for clicking on the kind of ppc ads on G, Y!, etc. Apparently they miss the point; PPC is SUPPOSED to be separate. Organic listing are supposed to be objective, so paying for position is exactly opposed to that ideal. Makes me want to punch someone through the phone.
So violent! Just don't punch your customers :)
We just got a call from RedZee today, I wish I had read this before the call so I could've asked better questions.
Too shady for me.
I was here doing some basic research, to see if anyone else encountered what I found. I have not seen anything beyond the advertising and ad ware discussions here, so I figured I would drop in some information you may or may not find useful.
Some of my research turned up a situation back in 2004 with a company Whereu and Google. If you install the Redzee Toolbar, all search traffic is re-routed through another server, specifically www.linkpositions.com. Even if you load the Google web site by typing it in the address bar, it bumps the natural results down a notch or two, and inserts entries at the top of the list. Changing the results on your own servers to support your own customers is understandable. It is your engine and your equipment. Natural search is no longer natural, but that is a philosophical ethics issue at best. Modifying the results of other systems natural searches is another matter entirely.
To verify this, you can use one system without the toolbar, and a second with the Redzee toolbar. Perform a Google search on the same phrase (Real Estate was a good one), the results are different. You can see the additional traffic if you view the HTTP headers, and safety programs like Site Advisor cannot identify the additional Links.
Google and Yahoo did not take well to this kind of behavior in the past, and I doubt that with the search engine market as heated as it is now, they will view it any better. Whereu was banned from Google and Yahoo! for their manipulation of search results.
Regardless of the results, the toolbar install is designed to circumvent administrator only restrictions and re-route network traffic without notification. While it may not be listed as Spy ware / Malware, these are questionable behaviors. I have not seen any good traffic on any technical sites regarding this toolbar.
I am neither for nor against Redzee. I support start-up companies whenever possible. It is possible they are not aware of the potential repercussions of this, much like Sony and their Digital Rights Root kit fiasco. They may not even see anything wrong with their methods. This is simply a heads up for anyone that would like to be able to answer those questions intelligently should you link to this toolbar. Perception is everything.
I look forward to your feedback. Thank you.
“Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.”
-- Mark Twain
Nice Article. I did want to add in one Distinct Difference. A tool bar is nothing more than software someone "Volunteers" to add on for their own purpose.(For whatever reason).This tool bar,usually through agreement(s),will state the difference it makes on a computer. Since it could be..an "Upgrade" to a system while additionally adjusting the listing order other Companys have on a certain "Engine",so what?....then the philosophical questions could easily start again... Basically it comes down to this: If someone voluntarily decides to enter a "private network" by downloading a toll bar...so be it. Google,Yahoo and others can't really complain so long as the results aren't altered by changing the existing customers Listing.**** Remember..google and Yahoo don't gaurantee positioning. ( https://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/)
WOW!
I have not been here in a while and it's sad to see that Redzeero is struggling so bad that rep's are spamming obscure boards in the hopes of generating business.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Redzeero bites, has very little traffic, less then 60 people per ONE MILLION USERS on average (50.5 users per day / 3 mos avg. per Alexa.com who owns Redzeero). Do the numbers and what are the chances ANYONE saw your website in your area? BLEAK is a good chioce of words.
When you visit www.Alexia.com click on "Traffic Rankings" right underneath the name Alexia. Then type in www.redzee.com and click "Get traffic Details"
When you go to the next page, underneath "explore this site" click on Traffic Details". Now take notice of the graph on the screen. Notice how some days there is almost no traffic at all? Hmmmm, makes you wonder huh? Then suddenly there is a spike. Does it make you wonder about the real value now?
It's even funnier that Dr. Doug uses a cartoon as a his avitar. Even his avatar is make beleive, just like the value he represents! LMAO!
Dougie, how's sales? :)
I bet sales are GREAT. I mean -WOW- they are were sooooooooooooooooooo right! I feel absolutley Great !! I lost 150 lbs with RedZee! CNN, DATELINE, GIRLS GONE WILD, THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL -WOW-
....seriously, who talks like that?
Funny how those last two posts actually make me feel worse about RedZee than perhaps I did before. One after another, written in a similar way, and both totally counter to anything else I've ever heard about the company.
"I am writing this for one reason... It's the Truth!!!" WTF!?
At least they said "SOZmoz," that was pretty good for a few laughs :)
This morning I was looking over one of my client's statistics who has been using RedZee for a couple of years. It shows he has received 1537 unique visitors (1707 total visits) this month. 1376 came from "unknown search engine" under the keyphrase "t002". 1585 visitors left in 0-30 sec. These statistics are totally comparable to what he has received every month since he started with RedZee. Obviously something is not right here. Even if it isn't an out and out scam (I am of the opinion that it must be; however, RedZee is a member with a satisfactory record in the Better Business Bureau), it is definitely NOT a good business move.
I've been using Redzee for some time now and only recently installed Google Analytics. I was surprised, but not terribly surprised that it is doing absolutely nothing for me.
Since June 1, they've brought over 1400 visitors to my site. Pages viewed are about 1.02 / visit. Time on site is about 2 seconds. Revenue is exactly zero.
I have called Redzee a couple of times and e-mailed two or three times more and basically they say they'll be back to me in a day, but I never hear back.
Has anyone else got any feedback from Google Analytics or something similar?
My opinion for what it's worth - avoid them for now. Maybe they have a reasonable explanation for what Google is reporting, but for now, they seem unable or unwilling to provide it to me.
Have I been suckered by Redzee?
From all your posts it would appear that I have, so I have chosen the name redzeesucker.
Does anyone have any real proof that Redzee isn't for real, or how might I find this out?
Any suggestions, information, guidance would be greatly appreciated.
I have been sensing that all wasn't well, but can't seem to prove it other than my Google analytics are also showing the same strange/poor results as other people here. I got the same song and dance from Redzee, but I'm not an internet expert, so I trusted them.
Suckered?
Have I been suckered by Redzee?
If you have given redzee money for their top 3 ppc scam then, yes, you have been suckered.
From all your posts it would appear that I have, so I have chosen the name redzeesucker.
Does anyone have any real proof that Redzee isn't for real, or how might I find this out?
I have months of log files showing a 100% bounce rate for all traffic coming through the redzee top 3 scam. The real proof is that the bounce rate is 100%. Not 50%... not 75%... not 95%... not 98% - 100%.
Any suggestions, information, guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Do not give redzee any more of your money. Do not provide them with any of your log files. Do not listen to their circle-jerk explanations. Drop them.
I have been sensing that all wasn't well, but can't seem to prove it other than my Google analytics are also showing the same strange/poor results as other people here. I got the same song and dance from Redzee, but I'm not an internet expert, so I trusted them.
Suckered?
Sorry. Yes.
If you feel you have been suckered by RedZee file a complaint:
https://www.complaint.ic3.gov
The more of us that file a complaint the more likely this complaint will be investigated and this scam will be exposed.
Use the Redzee search engine and notify other advertisers of this scam.
If you think that you have been suckered by Redzee you can successfully get your money back if you used a credit card, even if the charges are older than the normal grace period.
Here's how:
Contact your credit card and find out where to send/fax a written fraud complaint for old charges that you've discovered are fraudulent.
Include all stats from your website analyzer, the more the better, to show the difference in bounce rates, customer views, length of stay on site etc., Show them the comparison of results from hits originating from Redzee, also send your stats from your Redzee master account with the unbelievable number of hits if you're still being suckered.
If you don't have those stats, at least send a written complaint along with data of when your card was charged, for how much, along with credit card reference numbers.
Ask them to keep your letter of complaint on file so that as more people file against redzee they may also take another look at your charges.
Send fraud alerts to Pay Pal if you used that service.
Send them a link to this site.
Add your comments here to create a growing complaint list.
Together we can all get our money back if enough of us complain, until of course the company goes bankrupt, so don't wait, time is running out on Redzee because their scam is running out of time until the authorities move in.
RedZsucker
Good Job keep up the good work. I was scammed also glad to see its getting out. Also compail to the Florida attorney general so these guys do some time
I refuse to use any of these companies that use the hijack technology on browsers. They claim a million downloads, etc; but most of those people are like me and delete that garbage as soon as they figure out what is going on.
A million downlaods, minus 900,000 detetions = crap-o-la. The several folks in my line of work (Realtor) that are using them are bragging to me about "hits" and then when I ask what their ROI is they say "well nothing has come through yet, but my CTC is a lot lower than at Y or G.
Would Wal-mart brag to their share holders about having a million customerrs walking through their door and then turn around and report 10 sales? Keep this in to perspective. If your particular industry is benefitting frm these guys, that is good news. I hope it works out wonderfully for you. But no on in my industry can look me in the eye and tell me they got a customer out of them. No one.
It does not do me a bit of good to have a million clicks if they are not truely interested in purchasing or selling real estate in the Memphis area. It is ALL about CTC ratio (click to customer). Period. Keep your clicks, I want customers.
did you ever use redzee and if so what were the results
We have a couple of clients that signed on to their services on their own. Their referrals were useless; they generally hit the home page and left. One month, 2 out of 1007 referrals made it past the home page. The sales rep said they couldn't help what visitors did once they referred them. Nice. In the same month, vamoose sent 1685 with 644 hitting only the home page. That's a bit more typical. Trying to contact redzee today to close an account has so far been futile.
wowPreface: I am in business development but my company has no CTO, so I have to know a little about technology. Very little Today I had a sales call with them. I was ready to spend on behalf of my ticket brokering company. My budget was for ten keywords for 6months, extensions as well as upon a certain conversion rate I was ready to push to 30 keywords in 90 days. I was the sale of the day. This was the response from the first sales rep when asked, 'in general, how is RedZee doing in the organic search listings space?'Answer 'we don't pay for any search listings'ok, I'll spare you the rest of the conversations but alas when I got to the 'senior sales director' he could not answer any of these questions, could not find anyone higher than him for me to talk to and did this all with what had to be a pretzel in his mouth. 1. What language is the site written in? - DON'T KNOW2. What analytic research do you provide? -NONE3. What analytics are you performing on your users to see if they scroll first or click first? - NONE 4. What applications are you adding to the interface? - LOTS MANMy fifth question went something like, 'Can I PLEASE talk to someone above you PLEASE!? I want to buy but I can't keep talking to you?He couldn't find anyone - so I hung upWho are these people? These guys are in this for the quick buck! Buyer Beware! Buyer Beware! Their product is not prepared to launch nation wide, in fact the first sales person informed me that they tried and 'it shut down' - when I said to the senior sales rep that I had some concerns when it came to the product scaling, he said not to worry the site is gonna climb the charts.Oh Lord Now excuse while I call back and sign up.Robert DavitianGood Time Tickets
Clark,
Thanks for the links.
I have also filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General.
My experience has been almost identical to yours. My bounce rate, however, was 100%.
It was Bill that contacted me after redzee received my BBB complaint.
Not so incredible.
They are a member of the BBB and participate in the BBB Online program. They have to resolve any complaints to maintain that status.
I feel as though I sold out.
I should have accepted no less than a public admission of their fraudulent practices as a resolution.
Once closed, it will merely be another resolved complaint.
Signed our company up for RedZee a few days ago and just logged into the RedZ admin area. We signed up for 2 keyword phrases for which they show 32 / 37 visitors for each of our phrases.
We launched our site with RedZ so there is no chance for data to be mixed with any other search engines or search results.
When looking at our search logs our #1 keyword phrase logged is "too2" - showing 56 visitors to our site for that keyword. When looking at referring sites / links only the RedZ admin page shows up.
I've been doing this for awhile and i can't determine yet that I'm getting any valid traffic or visitors from RedZ.
We are using AWStats on our server and also using Google Analytics to do a comparison.
For our company it is very simple. We don't give a rip about visitors, unique visits, page views, etc. .... it's all about conversions. If we can't determine what our conversion rate is with a particular network or marketing program it has no value for us.
Currently, I can only see that we are getting some visits with zero conversions on a jicky keyword.
I wanted to stay open minded with this program, but the more reading I do and my current stats I am doubtful we will see any conversions from this program.
Look for future post regarding our RedZ results.
https://www.bbb.org/west-florida/business-reviews/internet-marketers/redz-in-tampa-fl-52004311
Just got an inbound call from RedZ to pay for sponsoring a top three position for my keyword. As soon as I mentioned I would first do some research, starting with SEOMoz. He basically hung up.
Thanks!
RegularJoe---How did your results come out? We had a bunch of hits...all within a few hours of each other.
By far the most important metric is ROI and many marketers do not get that data correctly. There is so much misdirection and BS on the internet that I did not trust the Analytics. I remember one time Google told me I had more conversions than clicks. Since I strongly believe that MOST advertising does not pay for itself (there is a natural downward bias), I tried an easy solution for a sanity check. Here is a simple effective way to find out exactly what RedZ or any other search engine or any advertiser for that matter is doing for you. We have a 7 digit product ID, (which we need to extend to 9 now). The last 4 are unique to the product, giving us up to 10,000 products. The first 3 are groups. I use 101 for Google ads, 102 for Yahoo (now changed to RedZ) and 103 to MSN. I took my pages I wanted to test advertise and copied them into folders Google, Yahoo (now RedZ) and MSN, then changed the first 3 numbers to 101, 102 & 103. I put those pages in the robots file and also added the robots meta tag. Once I download all our actual sales to a spreadsheet I can very easily see how many of the products we sold, along with how many were from our ads by Google, etc. More importantly, I can see the ratios involved.Naturally, this will not work for 100s or 1,000s of products, but selecting 3 or 4 or even a dozen products as a sanity check can support, or show a potential problem with your analytics. If my Analytics are showing 12% conversion, but my test products are showing 3%, then I am probably missing something with my analytics software.From the above, RedZ failed miserably with no sales at all. And all the BS, hype, misdirection an bragging about super conversion rates is not going to change that data. Anyone who understands their metrics can tell fairly close what their conversion rate should be for their type of product, based on their website and the changes in that metric through out the year. For example, a group of my products get 1% conversion rising up to 10% at the Xmas holidays. If you truly are getting high conversion rates with RedZ, then you cannot argue with that, unless you are not using verifiable metrics.
Well, I have to shamefully admit that I got suckered into their sales pitch. I figured I might as well give it a try because I can always get a refund for the balance with them. I managed to get them to give a bunch of search terms for $500 because I told them there is no way you can generate 5,000 clicks for one search term for me since Google doesn't. I should of just walked away, but that's my nice side giving them a chance. They tried to get me to sign up for a particular search term, "Deer Scram". It has a very good ROI for us on Google, so I figured ok fine, but it doesn't drive that much traffic. Since I managed to get a bunch of other search terms placed with them, I decided to give "Deer Scram" a shot
My Google Adwords campaign shows that for Jan. 1st- 31st their was a total of 839 impressions on Google and I received 13 clicks. I converted at 23.08%. Ok got that. 13 clicks that resulted in 3 conversions. In two days on redz (late January) I received 123 clicks for the term "Deer Scram". ??????? My redz campaign returned a bounce rate was 93.42% for the two-day period. Average page views was 1.13 and the time spent per user was 12seconds. My other terms that I signed up for returned approx. 20 some clicks. keep in mind these are search terms that all generate 10-100 times the number of impressions on google each, than does "Deer Scram" alone.
It's can't be a coincidence that the term they were recommending me to sign up for was exactly the term that drove most of the weird traffic results. Obviously click fraud. My Redz representative had no answer for this other than, "we don't do that type of stuff".
Luckily I have made plenty of good decisions over the last two years so $500 is nothing in the grad scheme of things, but it just pisses me off that some people can run illegitimate companies and feel ok about the money they take from everyone. Almost all of the good decisions that I have made have resulted in me seeking out services from other companies. Almost all of the bad descisions that I have made have resulted from cold calls. Good companies don't have to do much cold calling, because they drive new customers through referrals, word of mouth, Public relations, etc.
They called me a few weeks ago telling me about how they are stealing billions of searches from Google every month yet couldnt provide me with the amount of searches for any keyword I asked them about...
Click....
...about 13 calls later they finally gave up...
Oof....
billions of searches?? Although I take compete data with a grain of salt, it only shows them at 300-400k visitors a month on average.
-BMB
Stay away from this program, total ripoff. Something must be done about this scam of business. I will be making calls and writing to Florida State Attorney office.
"How long did it take them to get in touch with you after you first submitted the complaint? Nice job dealing with them; it sounds like you handled it perfectly."
Thank you.
redzee responded two days after receiving the complaint from the BBB.
Case opened on 12/19, BBB sent complaint on 12/19, redzee responded on 12/21.
I stopped receiving bogus redzee traffic soon after the telephone conversation between me and the redzee representative ended, about 90 minutes ago.
Interesting conversation.I clicked on a link to a posted comment and got a "pop-up" and a redirect to someones'SEO page.It would be nice to read an INDEPENDENT view without a bunch of picking through the service.Does it work is the question? Spend some time on Overture and its'program and you'll see something smelly too!
Redzee is full of it and just slams your site with a bunch of hits all in a couple of hours. we have tried them with 5 very specific key phrases and we were told that some of these were only searched a few times a day and for some unknown reason once I gave them money those very same keywords searched 4 times a day are now searched 1,000 times in 15 hours. No refunds all scam.
Got a cold call from Redzee tooday. First, the sales guy said that he was interested in buiyng our products from us. However, it very quickly turned out he was trying to sell me the "top 3" placement for my keywords in their "2.0" version of the search.
I told them I'd never heard about Redzee before, so the sales rep brought up their usual (as I see now after reading this post) sales pitch. I like especially the one "we have only one spot left" in their top 3 placement program. Almost immediately he offered to buy 5000 clicks at 8 cents each. When I hesitated he offered their trial program for $200 but more expensive clicks.
Apparently, the sales reps try to press you to buy before you have any time to research their company and feedabck. They haven't managed to do this with me, so I am glad. I told them I need more time to research, and so found this post, among others.
He actually sent me an email with his contacts, and I suspect he will be calling back soon.
"Case opened on 12/19, BBB sent complaint on 12/19, redzee responded on 12/21."
That's incredible! It's really interesting that they got in touch with you so quickly, and definitely suggests that they are concerned about their reputation. These complaints may teach them the lesson they so desperately need to learn.
It could be that RedZee is indulging in referral spam or log spamming using a bot.
I am currently running a test campaign with RedZee because like you, I was a bit skeptical. They have their own admin area, where I am able to track the Unique Visitors by individual IP's. They even showed me how to use the WhoIs Lookup to check the IP's origination... I am watching things closely thru their tools and comparing them with mine, and so far so good. If something goes wrong, I will post it right away.
I asked them also about those sponsors listing on the right, the lady I spoke with said they are doing some beta testing, and those are not actually PPC Clients yet. But that will be a more traditional PPC arena.
I hope this helps yall.... -Just a Regular Joe
I would like to see your follow-up. We started with RedZ and built an entire area with modified product IDs, so there is no misunderstanding about conversions. Results so far? More hits then MSN and almost as many as Google, with zero (YES, ZERO) conversions. Found that almost 1/2 of the hits were coming from Canada and not the US. Also found that over 10% of their traffic is coming from porn sites (See Alexa). Not sure what that is all about. One thing I am sure of is that there is something wrong with this search engine. The data does not add up. The traffic is anything, but qualified and very suspect to say the least. When I compare MSN, Google and RedZ, RedZ falls way short, regardless of the metrics used. I would also warn to be very careful with RedZ. Also, we pay .15 per click with RedZ and up to $.90 on MSN and Google, yet our ROI is much better on Google and MSN. On RedZ, as I said, it is basically non- existent.
Just received my 3rd sales call from them!!! They just can't take a hint! LOL
Your a deushbag and can see a good thing when it smacks you in the face.
How long did it take them to get in touch with you after you first submitted the complaint? Nice job dealing with them; it sounds like you handled it perfectly.
Short of waging a media campaign against them, filing and resolving a BBB complaint is the best thing you can do. A resolved BBB complaint still looks plenty bad for them, and as more people file and resolve these complaints there will be a much better chance that legal action can be taken down the road. RedZee will be extremely vulnerable to a civil or class action suit if people continue to file and resolve complaints against them. In resolving a complaint they are acknowledging wrong doing, and if they don't make changes to solve the problem they will be knowingly deceiving their clients.
Everyone that can should file a BBB complaint, and please continue to post your experiences to this thread. I'll do what I can to get someone interested in writing a story about this issue for a few online publications, but it'll be much easier to get someone's attention if there are a ton of people involved in complaints. Keep it up!!
You just sound sad because Redzee is taking all your business your an seo I would bet thousands on it.
I signed up for two keywords in March. I really didn'y expect many clicks from them but wanted to help out an upstart company.
Sometimes I get 2 times the traffic from Redzee as I do from all other searches combined! I am well placed and pay for top lisiting PPC on many Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, search engines.
None of the Redzee vistors go past the home page.
When I called Redzee about that they said the referrals were "bouncing back" What ever that means. They don't return phone calls.
I have live chat on my website and have never had one return response when I request to chat. Over 1,000 chat requests and no response?
I have pages of evidence that I sent my credit card company. I showed how 86% of all visitors go to other pages, yet no one from Redzee goes past the first page. I show how Redzee will one day have 7 visitors and the next day over 100!
It is really too bad that I don't trust these guys any more.
I am wondering if something has gone down with these redzee people in the last few months. I was asked by another employee at my current company to check them out and see if we wanted to give them a try - I am in charge of new, small online advertising acquisitions at an online retail company. I have tried signing up with their forms, calling their 800 number and emailing several of their posted info email addresses and I never get anything back (except for delivery failure emails).... I decided to search around today to see what people were saying about them and came across this discussion as well as a few others on similar boards....so I guess I am glad I didnt waste my time - although I do wonder if anyone has heard of any recent news about them....or why they might be so hard to get a hold of. Normally I have to beat potential advertising sales people away with a stick....
wow...high powered, long lasting link bait this post was. ;)
Internetguru... I couldn't agree with you more... I got unique IP hits... and outside of my current Yahoo and Google campaigns... I found this to be a tremendous compliment at a fraction of the cost. I also went to Alexa.com and found that they are tracking under 4,000 of all websites over the last week. I guess that traffic information is wrong... NOT... Yahoo is #1 and continues to be #1 as it has been over the last decade... Numbers and facts speak for themself... not the words of a jealous competitor... I am writing this for one reason... It's the Truth!!! Note from the moderators: This user signed up for two accounts to create fake dialog.
Tons of hits but nothing ever moves past the homepage... no conversions ...these hits don't behave like normal users look like bots. I made a small bet but would have better to throw it in the trash....
Wish I could get my $$ back. Whats the emoticon for feeling sad and stupid ?
:>/
That's really interesting, my site in bedding did really well. What industry is your website in? I've moved away from bedding, but I would much rather use their service than spend $2.00 - $3.00 per click for Adwords.
Are you still using Redzee. What is your opinion and how does it work for you?
I have been using RedZee for a couple of years now, and have spent over $10,000. I would bet $1 it doesn't work. I have just read all the above articles (because I have to renew another $500 contract tomorrow). The most interesting comments are about how the chats don't work - although I don't have chats. I have other evidence. I look at some keywords usage that overture would say gets 3,000 hits a month. Redzee bills claim that they have 20% market share! That would make them a many Billion dollar company. Redzee DOES NOT HAVE 20% Market Share! Bu;t, I purposely monitor their hits through Yahoo, and Yahoo does say I am getting the hits. Redzee is usually exagerating about 20%. I talk to Redzee a lot. I asked them today how they get their customers. I figured they fool a lot of people to download their toolbar, but that scenerio would mean they have 1000's of telemarketers doing that, which I don't believe. I don't know how they are doing it. I made them put in writing that I am only being charged for "click-throughs". Again, I'll bet a $1 I am being ripped off. I thought some genius can tell me how. The only interesting thing that happened about a month ago is that I was getting complaints that people were getting spammed by my site ON TWO PAGES THAT I HAD JUST CREATED with Redzee. People were getting my same page, a popup, every time they opened their emails. I AM NOT A SPANNER - I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO IT. But it is a wierd coincidence. I looked on my pages and somehow a code was planted to revisit my page. At 5 cents a hit, my mother would say, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Again, if those chat stories are true - then that is the best evidence yet, that something is not the way it seems. I don't know if I will renew again - I don't believe their figures. But, no one from the above articles has been able to prove fraud. I don't think spyware is the total answer - because I doubt if they are really on those many computers to begin with.
This thread is extremely helpful and I hope it stays at the top of legitimate search results when people look into RedZee. I got a call from them today totally out of the blue; they were trying to sell me on their PPC ad space. I had a funny feeling about the whole conversation... Their numbers just didn't add up. For example, the person I spoke with told me that they get 8 million searches per day. That sounded funny since they have such a low Alexa rating, and when I called back to ask how that number could be possible they offered a bit more (though I suspect not all of the) information. They get 8 million searches on their “entire network,” but only get “millions” per month on RedZee. They were very oblique when answering every one of my questions, but they were clearly very knowledgeable and surely knew more than they were offering. Def not a company I’d want to do business with.
My experiment to bust redzee shows that redzee is all fraud. I did not get one customer to click through to the next page, although redzee shows over a 1000 hits over a week. I tested this on 5 different pages with redzee, and again 0 clicks to the 2nd page. I called them, and my rep (who probably doesn't know what is going on) was dumbfounded. This company should be shut down. Lloyd
"I made them put in writing that I am only being charged for "click-throughs". Again, I'll bet a $1 I am being ripped off."
You are only getting charged for click-throughs - AND - you are getting ripped off.
As I stated above, the 100% bounce rate is very important.
A 100% bounce rate means that the click-throughs are not coming from real people but are computer generated.
This is why no redzee "visitor" has ever opened up a chat session. There is no visitor.
I beleive it is working in a way similar to a program called AlexaBooster, which is used to boost a web site's Alexa ranking. This program will boost your web site's Alexa ranking by sending "human emulated" traffic to your site and other sites using AlexaBooster through the Alexa toolbar. It uses IP addresses that it phishes from other Alexa toolbar users.
redzee is running this scheme to line their pockets.
Fraud? I strongly believe so.
I figured out how to BUST Redzee, I'll let every one know the outcome Today, I changed many pages with REDZEE to a very simple "click page". My Yahoo software (great program for $10.00 a month) monitors the click-throughs for free. I can easily count to see if I get any clicks sent to those pages as I am currently getting 0 clicks at these pages.
Redzee told me today that "he" read that Google gets 80% bounces. I have a feeling REDZEE is going to get 100% bounces. BUSTED. I'll probably get 0 visitors to these new pages for the whole month!
I'll let every one know.
DeepRecon what has Redzee done to you. You seem mad at them I mean you are constantly making false comments like you actually know what your talking about when you have no idea. %100 Bounce Rate what a joke? How long did it take you to make that one up?
First: Thanks you for not banning this discussion. I would never re-visit a blog that delved that far in to censorship.
Second: as a businessman who has begun to spend a great deal of money in the on line marketing world; I would have to say that the absolute bottom line is ROI.
Obviously a lot of what is being discussed will have a great impact on ROI, but that is the underlining final tell all. I am in a wait and see for now, they just called me and this is the first I have heard of them. I have several friends that appear to have purchased their services, I will give them a call and ask them what their thoughts area.
Word of the day: ROI
I always want to believe that things work. I get pinged by redzee people all the time since I run about 6 online properties. I want to believe these folks so I do my homework..I have access to comscore and othe online intelligence apps along with a paid search team under me.
We tried Redzee and to date can't even get our money back.
Many of these posts are sooo planted..
There are no magic bullets in online marketing and there are a ton of snake oil salesman.
Absolutly true. It is ROI, although many marketers do not get that data correctly. It is far better than coversion rates.
Love your idea of open forum. My point is simple.When I read these comments about a particular company,I wonder to what reference is being made and between whom? Google has a Network that includes multiple other(third patries) they use to re-direct traffic to their users.(Yahoo too).If a company has developed a technology to re-direct and filter "cleaner" traffic while including Features that " safe gaurd" chidren...isn't that monumental . Simple:Clean Searches,No Obscene Language,No Porn "Redzee is Remolding the net" Elvis has not left the building
To clear the air to some degree RedZee PPC is in fact part of Findwhat/Miva. At some point all search engines are new. It is not fair for SEO companies to use the RedZee name to try and draw clients from bad write ups soley based on opinion and assumptions. Just like AskJeeves has (websearch) and Google has (Dead Urls, Lycos side search. All search engines practice in this arena some more public than others. RedZee has people behind them that know all the ins and outs of this and are doing nothing different than the rest. RedZee has in fact launched a National TV campaign with DirecTv, so as that unrolls and RedZee does climb will your opinions remain or will you also be submiting your clients. If Google or Yahoo does something on the slighlty creepy side it gets overlooked. But when a smaller search engine trys to enter this arena they always get slammed. I worked for one of these engines in the past and do know directly or indirectly they all show their ads on downloadable (Adware). RedZee is up front with all their practices.
RedZee Search Engine is just fine. I have a pretty nice size campaign running and have got a fairly good response. I work with golden palace and have phrases like poker, Online Casinos etc so they are the best ones. I do not know how good it would be on a less popular keyword combination but these are doing well and we are getting a good number of users from it.
Although they may have bought out a few other companies with downloads, I think we need to get over it and really wake up. The Google Toolbar and the Yahoo toolbar are adware also. I think in the coming year we will find, that their will be ethical adware and unethical adware.
When the bigger guys do it noone says a peep. Its the smaller ones that get all the garbage for it. I like what RedZee is doing and I love the concept behind it and feel they actually may have something going that others do not. Have you checked out the RedZeepedia? This is really great and by far gives some of the best results I have seen since Google. Although I am still using Google All the time, call it maybe habit, I am using RedZee to now. I would give them a chance. For one thing I know they are the only smaller search engine I know with National TV commercials. They have some deal with DirecTv.
Why the silence? Has everyone been busy watching up-and-coming companies like Redzee Hit the National News. Saw them on Fox Network last night.-WOW-Channel 13.You know...Someone once told me that we'd be in the news...All over the News....I remember......CNN,DATELINE,FOX,NBC.....How unique that they were sooooooooooooooooooo right.I feel absolutley Great !! Living in Paradise !!
Why do Dr. Dickhead. Do your friends call you that too?
Chris, this post is from 2005, so you are not likely to get too many responses.
I purchased a placement on redzee. I got actual customers and purchases from the service. I use hitlens (webceo) to track my sales and I paid $200 toward my PPC campaign and made well over $2000 off of the customers that came from redzee.com. Before I was allowed to join their program, they checked my site to ensure that I wasn't a spammer and offered quality content and real products. I am very happy with my relationship with redzee and will continue to enjoy my relationship with their company. I recommend you contact them to make arrangements as they offer a viable PPC advertising model that puts you at the top of the natural results.
That's good to hear, Diamond. What kind of site do you run? Also, it's strange they let you pay $200 up front... they were telling me I had to pay more for a test campaign.
Marketing Man,
This was for my bedding website memoryfoamfurniture.com. The ROI was astounding. Mind you, I learned how to do really well with PPC campaigns, but this was really different. The results were great and I didn't have to bid on 1000 small keywords to see results. I was the adwords king for leggett and platt adjustable beds and my ROI with that term was around 5000% for overture and adwords.
It was nice to be able to use a popular term and pay as little as I did. My balance lasted roughly 90 days and it worked out great.
Send me an email at info [at] diamondseo.com and I'll see if I can talk them into letting you start a campaign for what I did. I have a background in sales and can be very pushy when I need to be, so I made them take the $200 - LOL.
I've used Redzee and I still am. They are a great company bringing me great results on a monthly basis.
RedZee has really assisted my company in keyword positions with amazing results in a short time. I can list in the upper 3 NATURAL listings Guaranteed not to be bumped or sold out unlike SOZmoz engine which could not compete nor did it's listing provide any traffic worth talking about. But it seem that SOZmoz's Team would talk bad about Redzee whom they view as their competitor. Get a life SOZmoz and compete honestly!!
Interesting story !! I signed up with Google and Yahoo's PPC and realized that I wasn't gauranteed ANYTHING.First I had to pay a fee to just Jion Yahoo,then I have to COMPETE WITH EITHER SLICK WEBMASTERS,or risk the game on bidding for my keywords without ...again...any Gaurantee of position.With a minimun.10cents per click...I have to wonder...If there's a keyword where there are 28 active bidders above.10 cents...where can I find all 28? They place those "Users" on partner sites to re-direct trafic hits. Think I'm crazy....then who's making the money....you...or...Yahoo.(See for yourself). https://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/rele... And the tool bars they offer......whew...WATCH THE ADD-ONS!! By the way..what's the difference between...Googles',Yahoos',Redzees'......tool bar.If everytime someone calls a tool bar "spy-ware", then lets start to pick on the originators of those tool bars. Google-must be spyware Yhaoo-must be spyware AOL-must be spyware... Get the point! If your gonna sit around and pick your ass,then start with the ones WHO truely steal the money from the small mom/pops.If a company can't Gaurantee Position,Price or Parental Controls....Then Maybe REDZEE.com is gonna solve the problem for them. By the way...have you seen the stats for Internet Users for 2006? Yahoo,Google top winners !! Were you ?
Hey RedzeeisBS Mr SEO. Morals? getting on a BB and blasting a solid tier2 engine because their hurting your business? or maybe your an X employee? Either way, there are a few SEO's awaiting court dates for making slanderous statements about RedZee. I run a marketing company and RedZee is one of the many programs that we offer to clients looking for affordable ways to get solid exposure on the search engines. The bottom line is they are ALL renewing their click buckets with us, and are very happy with their ROI and click through rate. It, in my opinion is the best 5 cent per click program out there. But keep on talking YOUR BS! Oh, and since you are so savvy, examine the Yahoo and Google toolbar, then come back and further discuss your parameters for morals.
Hey Iamhrh, As far as I know it is there own search engin so they can put you where ever they want. I have 5 terms with them and have seen my ROI go thru the roof. RELAX they are not G or Y. nor have they ever claimed to be. As a business owner I dont care where my visits come from. These are all unique hits. For 5 cents a click its a no-brainer. go to www.alexa.com and check thier ranking. By the Iamhrh. Go to Yahoo marketing,they wont tell you or any one else but the entire front page are paid listing. If you dont spend a certain amount in PPC you are placed in a sand box and can not get in the ORganic listings, but its Yahoo so I guess its OK
PS Imarah, Just wondering how much you charge uninformed customers to optimize thier sites and doo absolutely nothing. If you had any morals you would tell you customers to call RedZee
Personally, I think you should keep this information to yourself, so you can get rich with all of your conversions. Now that I think about it.. Why are you sharing? mmmm.. Might there be an alternative reason?