EzineArticles Submission - Submit Your Best Quality Original ...

EzineArticles Member Signup - New Free Membership Account ...

EzineArticles.com - Home | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/EZINEARTICLES

EzineArticles - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EzineArticles

EzineArticles - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/user/EzineArticles

EzineArticles | Crunchbase

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ezinearticles

Ezine Articles

Sign in - Google Accounts

https://plus.google.com/+ezinearticles

ezinearticles.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and ...

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ezinearticles-com

EzineArticles (ezinearticles) on Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/ezinearticles/

SiteSell Releases Shocking Wealthy Affiliate Review and Study

Questionable business practices and appalling lack of success revealed.

MONTREAL, Canada (PRWEB) June 14, 2017

SiteSell, a business that has been helping solopreneurs to create successful online businesses of their own since 1997, recently released a review and study of competitor Wealthy Affiliate that has shocking results and implications.

"It's unseemly for one business to review a competitor," said SiteSell CEO and Founder Ken Evoy. "We would normally never do it because such a review would be biased and lack credibility. Therefore, instead of a typical ‘opinion' review, we took it in a completely different direction."

SiteSell designed and performed a scientific-level study and let the numbers do the talking. Why take this unusual approach? It is a response to an organized campaign of reviews that was initiated by affiliates of another company, Wealthy Affiliate.

Fake reviews, written as standalone web pages, constitute a well-known and growing problem. And affiliates of Wealthy Affiliate have acquired a particular reputation.

SiteSell CMO Mike Allton adds, "This is a very different problem than the fake reviews in review aggregation sites such as TripAdvisor and even Amazon. This issue has become a cat-and-mouse game of measure-countermeasure."

"But," he notes, "that type of is under control due to each company's economic self-interest in featuring trusted reviews. TripAdvisor dies the day that visitors no longer believe which is the best hotel in Puglia, Italy, for example."

In other words, the provider of reviews-as-a-service self-regulates. Those with the most reliable reviews win. But who regulates product reviews that are presented as individual web pages or blog posts?

"Surprise!," exclaims Evoy. "It's Google." Or at least it should be.

He outlines a reasonable argument. Google's job is to deliver the highest-quality, most relevant and useful web pages for any particular search term and its likely search intent. However, many affiliates — some as rogues of honest programs, others due to detailed training (e.g., teaching to include the word "scam" or to find a positive aspect to praise so that the opinion appears subjective) — create fake reviews, enough of which rank in the Top 10 to damage sales of ...

Reviews of Solo Build It! are particularly important to a product such as.

"Think about it," says Allton. "We are asking the solopreneur who is interested in to make a serious commitment. It's not the annual fee, as much as it is the opportunity cost of the time commitment, your pride, and self-image, and even perhaps facing the opinion of friends and family who ‘told them so.'"

With all that on the line, it's natural to search for reviews. Notes Evoy, "We feel that it's particularly odious to create fake reviews, especially if they lead people to an inferior product. You're playing with people's futures."

Wealthy Affiliate provides its affiliates with a list of 175 products to target, and Solo Build It! is near the top of the list. After finding that list, SiteSell quickly discarded the "rogue affiliate (for an honest company)" theory for some of the fake reviews.

They found a widespread campaign where reviews win from 2 to 9 of the Top 10 search results for various searches for reviews about its product name ("Solo Build It!"), its acronym ("-") or its pre-rebranding name.

Affiliates of Wealthy Affiliate are encouraged to write reviews about competitors and then refer the reader to their Wealthy Affiliate review. Google has prioritized these search results, so the visitor believes the page to be an honest, balanced review. Few, if any, seem to surpass the European Parliamentary Research Service's criteria for a fake review...

and impartial opinion or reflect a consumer's genuine experience of a product, service or business.

"The actual content ... The Google searcher has not found a real SBI! review — s/he has unknowingly entered a WA sales funnel, complete - comments."

This alone the Harlem Globetrotters. "We just seem to win a review and get the recommendation for these guys."

- Wealthy Affiliate really was a superior product, the ... However, the SiteSell team was confident in its product, "especially after examining Wealthy Affiliate's so-called ‘Certification Courses' in detail," states Evoy.

"There are so many positive Wealthy Affiliate reviews written by Wealthy Affiliate members that it's near-impossible to find a negative one. But "repeating - 1,000,000 times - make it"

"We -based on reviewing their product, that would be at least several times better. We decided to take it further and discover the truth."

Evoy, a former emergency room physician who had taught and practiced Emergency Medicine at a teaching hospital of Montreal's McGill University, designed a simple but objective, scientific study.

"The most important part," he says, "is that we provide the entire methodology to enable anyone to repeat the study if they don't believe it." In other words, no one can claim that the data is wrong, because they can check it for themselves.

How was that question of bias eliminated? Although they can point out countless reasons why Wealthy Affiliate is inferior, "they all boil down to opinion. So if we needed opinion to make our case, no matter how logical, we'd lose," reasons Allton.

"Heck," he exclaims with a note of exasperation, "we have a ton of verifiable proof of success. They have none. And folks still believe them."

They felt this was a case for numbers, not words, to settle. The Study's results are based on raw data from Alexa, SimilarWeb and SEMrush, 3 well-respected tools that measure site traffic of websites.

The study obtained this data for all 17,000 active, hosted sites from Wealthy Affiliate and all 10,000 active, hosted sites using Solo Build It! (-).

Originally conducted in April, they repeated it in May, partially because they feared there could be a great difference in performance. Allton says, "we couldn't spot any error in the methodology or the math. It's all pretty simple, but we did a last-second repeat to see how reproducible the results were."

Aside from the expected minor random deviations, the outcome was identical. Three highlights from what they call, "The Study"...

• sites are 33 times (33X) more likely to achieve "Outstanding – Excellent" levels of traffic than Wealthy Affiliate.

• sites are 10 times (10X) more likely to achieve "Medium" levels of traffic than Wealthy Affiliate.

• 87% of Wealthy Affiliate sites are "Invisible." The only category where Wealthy Affiliate "beats" is in that worst level of failure ("Invisible" meaning that the sites get no detectable traffic).

(see chart above)

Have there been criticisms of The Study? "Nothing valid and substantive," replies Evoy. Most amounted to "I don't believe it," a statement that seems to be more a sign of brainwashing than rigorous analysis.

Those comments appear mostly in Part 1 of The Study — quite a few disbelieving Wealthy Affiliate users and affiliates. Many threads also arose in the Wealthy Affiliate community, but several of them have been deleted, leaving the ones that favor Wealthy Affiliate, "-" adds Evoy ...

As a result of this review and study, Evoy and Allton have determined to raise awareness among consumers and other businesses regarding the dangers of " reviews" and " for affiliates.

While the affiliate as a primary actor is the one who has to live with his/her conscience and direct legal consequence, the SiteSell team has found that many simply re-draw the line between "good person and bad."

Allton notes that "Wealthy Affiliate had told them in the training materials that Wealthy Affiliate was the best, nothing like it, and so forth. So, without looking too deeply, they could feel comfortable using what amounts to an - present what they may have believed to be superior. That has changed…

"We have now informed every ranking affiliate of the results — twice. Only one has looked hard and realized the damage he was going to others. He pulled the review. The rest seem willing to trade their soul or reputation and good people who just want to know what the best product is. It's "

They have to live with that, as well as potential lawsuits from customers who may only learn of The Study sometime after being review.

What about at the company level?

Wealthy Affiliate, the company, walks its own ethical and legal line. Ethically, it has an obligation to disclose this study and how it relates to its "recommend us because we're the best" advice. "But then again," adds Evoy, "it's our impression that the advice to create what amounts to - reviews in order to

"From a sheerly human perspective, we don't understand how anyone can do this to someone who wants to build a serious online business, growing profits and equity that make a difference to his/her life.

Then Evoy returns to "Google as an unwitting -."

" reviews dominate the online business space. They do large numbers and because some of the MMO ("Make Money Online") affiliates have been doing this for a long time and are skilled."

"This is not a small problem. Google searches that - reviews cause loss of money, as well as pain and ... It employs -review technology for its own commercial Google merchant service. for search?"

"Frankly," interjects Allton, "I'm amazed that Google has not cleaned out most of the reviews. The technology seems to be there. We can see how RankBrain may have to advance a few levels before it picks up the stuff that is good enough to fool the sophisticated reader. But much of this is basic Panda-type junk."

Every affiliate and affiliate program manager for businesses should know that such tactics are immoral ... They should also know that the issue of misleading online advertising is high on regulatory body priorities.

Individual reviews represent disparagement of a business's products, goods or services, subject to trade ... A new term called "astroturfing" has emerged to describe widespread - reviews (either positive or negative) orchestrated by a profiting company or organization. Although, centrally organized fake reviews constitute misleading advertising.

Consumers who made ill-informed purchases are taken particularly seriously when ...

Here's how to report it to them:

• Australia

• Canada (Competition Bureau)

• United Kingdom (ASA)

• United States (FTC)

• Other countries and general information

And, of course, you can report high search rankings of reviews by Google by clicking "Send feedback" at the bottom of each search results page. Impress upon them that the reported ranking(s) has/have failed them both as weak information and as the very opposite of what their primary function is — to provide high-value, helpful information. Their high ranking adds credibility to some review in existence, helping at times.

Journalists and influencers who have an interest in protecting the rights of consumers should review the full study…

Part 1: Background, Summary, Peek at Results

Part 2: Debunk vs De-bait, Methodology, Why Traffic?

Part 3: Complete Results & Discussion

Please contact SiteSell for additional insight & data.

-

Contact SiteSell:

Mike AlltonSiteSell CMOEmail: mallton(at)sitesell.comhttp://www.sitesell.com

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/06/prweb14419333.htm

Learn Affiliate Marketing - Free 7 Day Account & Workshops AD

www.wealthyaffiliate.com/signup

Wealthy Affiliate - The Home of Affiliate Marketing

https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com

Wealthy Affiliate

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/home

A Community That Cares, Starting With ... - wealthyaffiliate.com

https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/about/

Pro Wealthy Affiliate - Your Gate For Better Life

https://prowealthyaffiliate.com

An HONEST Wealthy Affiliate Review (WealthyAffiliate.com ...

https://www.affiliatemarketertraining.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/

Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020 - Why There is Still No ...

https://bestlifetimeincome.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/

Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020:Affiliate Master or BIG Scam?

https://eliteaffiliatehacks.com/wealthy-affiliate-review

Wealthy Affiliate Review - Biggest Scam of 2019+? Find Out ...

https://hotmlmcompanies.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/

My Wealthy Affiliate Site - FREE to start making Websites

https://mywealthyaffiliatesite.com

Wealthy Affiliate Review - How it Saved Me from My boring 9 to 5

https://www.barenakedscam.com/wealthy-affiliate-review

Wealthy Affiliate Still Work? - Yes and No. So What Happened? AD