If you're in business for yourself, you have probably received one or more of those automated phone calls where a recorded female voice says, "This call is for the business owner. This is not Google. To update your Google Places listing, press '1' now. If you do not want your Google Places listing updated, press '2' now."

Normally, I just hang up when I get calls like this one, but this time I decided to press "1" just to see what they had to say. Their system then said it would connect me with a "live operator". When she came on the line, she said, "Thank you for holding. This is Doris. Who am I speaking with?"

I replied, "This is Walt."

"Hi Walt! Are you the business owner?"

"I am."

"Okay, let me look up the listing for Google for your business, and I will tell you why we called you. VA Host LLC. Is that right?"

"Well, that's not actually right. It's actually Virginia Host LLC, but that's all right."

"Okay. Are you in Warrenton, Virginia?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I want to put you under the right industry here. What is it that you do?"

"Website hosting, design, development, video, SEO..."

(SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.)

"Okay," she said and laughed. "You do what we do. We're a website developer. We place people on Google's first page."

"You place businesses on Google's first page?"

"We're an SEO company, yes."

"Uh huh. How do you do that?"

"I'm not an engineer. I can't tell you how we do that," she replied, laughing again.

"What's your company name?" I asked.

"It's called egumball."

"G-U-M-B-A-L-L?"

"Yes, egumball, that's who we are."

"Is that your website, egumball.com?"

"Yes. All right?"

"Okay. And what are you offering me?"

"I'm not offering you anything. You do what we do. You can't benefit from our...You do what we do. How can I offer you anything?"

And that pretty much ended the conversation. After I hung up with her, I utilized the software tools I have to check out their website to see where they rank for their own important search terms. I discovered that they are based in Irvine, California and that their website's header says their main business is "local search marketing". So I checked their site's rankings for the following search terms:

California local search marketing
California search engine marketing
California search engine optimization
California SEO
Irvine local search marketing
Irvine search engine marketing
Irvine search engine optimization
Irvine SEO
local search marketing
search engine marketing
search engine optimization
SEO

The site egumball.com didn't rank on page one for any of those keywords.

Update: August 12, 2011
I later received email contact from Rik Davidson at egumball.com about what I wrote. I've amended this article to reflect what we discussed.

First, he pointed out that there were a few keywords for which their site ranks well. It seems only fair to point these out. These include:

google marketing
google maps marketing
maps marketing
google places help we do not support the location

I thought the last keyword was a bit rare to say the least, but I include it anyway because he felt it was important.

However, there is still the issue of what Doris told me, that their company will place you on page one of Google. His response was that their terms of service make no such guarantees, but that doesn't address the key point. No one goes to check terms of service during a telemarketing call. Instead, we go based on what the caller says, and Doris represented egumball.com as a company that will put you at the top of the rankings, or at least on page one.

This kind of claim gets made all the time by an awful lot of SEO companies, and it needs to stop. It's totally misleading, because the fact is that no one can guarantee anything like that. The reason is that none of us control the search engines.

Update #2: August 12, 2011
I received one last pair of emails from Mr. Davidson in which he denied that anyone named Doris worked for him. He wrote, "Nobody claims guarantee not our reps and certainly not 'Doris' who is not on our active employee list."

I beg to differ, Mr. Davidson. Someone calling from egumball.com, whose name sounded like "Doris", made exactly that claim to me on the phone. I didn't initiate that call, Mr. Davidson. I merely received it and noted it.

He also wrote, "Your opinion that nobody goes to check terms and conditions is false because we provide our terms at contract signage alongside our coversheet and mandatory terms agreement when a client logs into their account. All of which is in large print and in clear view. Your assumption is not factual and this is where we will continue to have pending concerns with your behavior."

By the time the client receives the contract, it's well after the initial telemarketing call. They already have in their mind that you're going to put them on page one of Google if that's what your telemarketer claimed. This is the kind of tactic one associates with marketers of the most questionable ethical standards.

I think it's funny that Mr. Davidson referred to my "behavior" when it is his own telemarketers' behavior that is in question.

The bottom line is this. No one should be allowed to make false claims about what can be done with SEO in order to woo a new customer. It's not only unethical, but it also leaves a black mark on the industry.