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SEO SPAM from India

India spam emailsWebdesign companies do exist all over the world, but 90% of spammers sending unsolicited emails and phone calls are from India, usually start-ups and unexperienced teenagers claiming that are big companies and fool naive people to outsource work to them. Not all Indian companies are spammers, but the (5%?) doing SPAM damage reputation of Indian IT industry and reputable companies suffer as well.

Chapters:
Why they spam us
How webdesign & SEO companies operate
Link exchange spam
Guest post spam – make money from spammers
CAD design spam
How to STOP spam
How to TROLL spammers
Links to other articles about spammers

Have you been employed in an Indian SEO company or dealt with them? I would like to hear an “inside opinion” or your experiences. Leave a comment on page!

NEVER hire a SEO company emailing you saying that they visited your website, it is not ranking well in Google and promise you to be #1. They are NOT real visitors of your website and may try to scam you.

Anyone can optimize his website himself. The internet is full with tutorials, example: Beginners guide to SEO on Moz.com. If you are a busy man and need an outsourcing partner, do a search and find a reputable company which itself appear on first page of Google, avoid dealing with those who email you from nowhere.

Why Indian web design & SEO companies contact us?

SEO SPAM from IndiaShortly after I moved my website from free hosting with subdomain to teoalida.com in 2012 I started receiving emails from people saying that are working for an Indian SEO company and found that my website does not appear on first page of Google, that I am missing headings, META tags, ALT tags and have W3C errors, or asking me if I am interested in possible website redesign of if I am looking  for a web developer or mobile app. First time I though that India is the center of world webdesign and they want to help me for free in exchange of the free stuff I offer on my website.

For a time I was replying everyone, sometimes receiving a detailed PDF audit report of my website reporting few errors, their report helped me to fix them. But since more and more emails came, and everyone trying to charge me money after few replies, I realized that they are NOT actual visitors of my website. They do use crawlers to find email addresses on websites that were in plain format. Also scraped WHOIS database, which at that time was displaying my email address in full, I did not bought WHOIS privacy.

I am monitoring traffic with Clicky that shows pages opened by each individual visitor, replying to their emails, I saw people visiting my website from a location nobody visited me before.

I do get few percents of traffic from India, but since my website focus on real estate and architecture, is unlikely for my natural visitors to be “working for a SEO company”.

The rule is simple: if they CAN, I can too, if I CAN’T, nobody else can. I don’t want to let my PERSONAL website in the hands of other persons.

Emails are sent to a large list of addresses and my website title or URL is automatically inserted into email to look like an email sent to me personally. Sometimes they sent a second email, apparently reply to initial email, saying that they never heard from me and ask me again if am interested in their services.

I added a javascript anti-spam for my main Yahoo email in About Me page. Meantime, I created an address purposely to catch emails sent automatically, [email protected], forwarder to my main email, put it on website with white text somewhere a human can hardly see it, but a robot can harvest it immediately. It quickly filled up with SPAM emails, but the main contact email was still spammed. I found later that main contact email was still displayed in certain subpages. Once I deleted the main email from every page, the amount of SPAM emails was reduced significantly. Later I removed from website the [email protected] and I periodically create new spam-catcher email addresses. I still get SPAM emails on both Yahoo email and on [email protected], while other SPAM goes to current spam-catching email.

Final conclusion: some spammers crawl the web from time to time, to collect email addresses, and sell to other spammers the database containing URL of each website and emails found in them, so an email address once posted on web is likely to be spammed whole life even if was removed from the web. I also get SPAM emails selling a “list of businesses contact info”, probably SEO companies are buying such things.

India email spamBuying WHOIS privacy and hiding email address under a javascript or using a Contact form does eliminate 90% of SPAM, 10% remains because Indian webdesign companies also employ actual humans to browse internet and find customers, send messages via Contact forms, grab email addresses manually, etc.

As I read on various forums and blogs, the webdesign companies from United States and Europe are heavily spammed by Indians who not just SPAM emails but also make phone calls hoping to convince them to outsource to India.

For a period, my website title was “Architecture & CAD Design services – Teoalida’s Website“, as you can see it contains the words Website + Design, and the robot they made to discover email addresses of web designers accidentally put my website on their mailing list, although I am clearly NOT offering web design services.

I got SPAM on LinkedIn too, where I had name “Teoalida Design” some indians sent me connections and once accepted, they sent me messages like this “Are you looking for a company to outsource your Web Design, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento or Mobile App development work? I at (company name) have helped businesses like yourself“.

Some spammers target companies who want to improve their SEO. How their robot differentiate business websites from personal blogs or other non-profit websites that dominate the web, we don’t know!

I would like to hear an “inside opinion” from someone who worked for a SEO company and tell us their secrets.

How email marketing spamming operate

Indian webdesign company failWebdesign SPAM emails ask me if I interested in redesigning my website, the email body being entirely a generic text. But how do they know that I have a website?

SEO SPAM emails are most intriguing, some of them contain my name or URL in the email subject and also within email body (example of subject: “Proposal for teoalida.com“), but the rest of email body is a generic message telling me that my website do not appear on first page in Google, that I am missing headings, META, ALT and TITLE tags, etc, when in reality my website do not have these problems.

They guarantee that will push my website to top of Google search results, 101% recovery from Panda and Penguin penalties, etc (for your info: no one can guarantee #1 in Google. What if multiple websites in same niche apply for their services, who will be #1?). I asked them how they do that, but most of them do not provide details, they just insist to get paid and let my website on their hands.

  • Emails are sent from a FREE Gmail account and mention that is compliant with CAN-SPAM act of 2003, maybe it do not violate the law but are still unsolicited email. They are aware that they are spamming and once they got their email disabled, they open another Gmail account (while replying to them, it bounced back from MAILER DAEMON telling that their account was disabled).
  • Most emails do not tell company name in first email. On some forums people claim that do this to not damage company reputation, my opinion is that they do this to prevent you contacting company directly, so they can get referral commission (I told to few companies that I do not require their services, they told me that will pay 10% commission if I refer them to anyone requiring webdesign services).
  • Emails are sent by “marketing guys” who may be or not be legally employed in a company (few times I visited company website indicated in second email, and if they had live chat box, I messaged them asking if they sent me an email or asking to speak with the person mentioned in 1st email, the chat support guy was not aware of the email I received, meaning that it was sent by third-party (case in which mocking up company is not a good idea, is not their fault that their partners spam emails to earn 10% referral fee).
  • Do not take in serious their base country. Some emails say that company is based in US, UK, Australia, etc, but when I gave them a link to my website, got a visit from an Indian IP. The company manager may be an american but employees are Indians to lower the costs, thus their services will be Indian-quality.
  • Many emails are written with poor english, excessive colors, etc, given impression of an email written by a kid from his bedroom, but after I reply, their second email inform me that they are a big company with 100-200 SEO professionals, with 5+ years experience and served hundreds of clients over United States, Europe, Asia, etc. I am very doubt about that. A Google search show that their website have PageRank 0 or max 1, meaning that they are newborn companies who their own websites do not rank in Google (webdesign is also highly competitive niche) so their only way to get clients is by spamming emails and lying about their experience. But once time ago I got SEO spam email from a company with PageRank 4 and headquarters in massive 4-storey building visible in Google Earth.
  • SEO company website display a portfolio with their clients, websites showing a list of 5-10 keywords that they helped appearing #1 in Google. These keywords are usually combinations of 3 words which have low search volume but also low competition thus any amateur can get himself #1 in Google with minimum of effort, by using desired keywords in page titles and repeating them few times in body text (LOL! I can make a list of over 100 two- and three-word keywords for which my own website appear #1 in Google, without ever paying any fucking SEO company).
  • Beware! Most of SEO spammers are NOT experts in how to do a business and FAIL on long term, they exploit flaws in Google algorithms, aka Black Hat SEO techniques, build links unnaturally, abusive link exchange, keyword stuffing, etc. They take your money, raise website ranking on short them, but since Google algorithms are in constant change to downrank the sites using such techniques, soon you fall in a worse place than you were originally, then they take you more money to restore ranking failure due to an unexpected Google algorithm change, if you broke collaboration and try to find another SEO company to fix what they damaged, they may revenge and do worse stuff. Google Webmaster Central Forum is full with people asking for help how to erase Google penalty received after hiring “SEO experts from India”.
  • Link building by spam in blogs. Probably you have seen generic comments like “Useful article, amazing blog, etc” having comment author a weird name and linking a website, these are comments left by Indian companies which their SEO plan include using automatic bots to create spammy backlinks for their clients from all over the world. Personally I get hundreds such comments per day, Akismet is a FREE plugin for WordPress blogs that blocks 99% of SPAM comments, but 1% escape and if you browse few of my website pages you can see comments left by Indian SEO companies!

If I will ever need professional SEO services, I will do a search on Google and pick myself a legitimate company, I will NOT work with spammers picking me. Outsourcing to India is a worldwide trend, but many unskilled Indians are trying to join the outsourcing business, damaging image of their whole country.

Guest post SPAM from India – make money from spammers

Indian SEO companies also use bots to find email addresses, and bots to post comments, to find people interested in guest posting.

I got an email offering me backlinks from 5 high authority websites for a price of $20-100. I replied them asking if I can offer a link exchange instead of paying for a guest post on some dodgy website that I do not know if will be closed tomorrow. They replied that link exchange is not possible and sent me an Excel file with list of websites I can place my guest posts on, with their price. I replied that I am NOT interested in paying for links and stop emailing me, but I keep getting every month emails with their updated list of websites and prices. Initially I was intrigued how one SEO company can manage hundreds websites.

I got an email asking me if I accept guest posts and offered me to pay for them. I replied that guest posts are not suitable for a PERSONAL website where every article is written by me, instead I can offer them banner ad / link within existing articles, and I asked them what website he have to link it. I realized that they do not have any specific website, but instead put my website on a database of websites that does accept guest posts, with their price. A month later, they emailed me again sending and article and PAID ME for posting it.

In May 2018 I got an email asking me to post a link to ArchDaily.com while my website already had a link to this website placed from personal interest. I was confused especially when he offered me $60/link to post 3 more links. I though that is a JOKE, I wanted to ask friends what they think about this and I forgot to reply him, I replied after 4 days, he didn’t replied anymore. Lost a great offer.

Over next few months I got filled with emails asking if I accept guest posts or I can add links to their websites, some people gave me articles in attempt to “contribute” to my website, without paying anything, but within 1 year 5 people PAID ME for guest posts or links in existing posts, usually $50 for each website linked.

One has accidentally forwarded me whole email communication with the customer paying for links, allowing me to read that he was going to pay some website and suddenly the SEO company changed words saying that article has been published on my website. This is how I was paid for a guest post about a musician, off-topic for my real estate website.

Note: doing this kind of link building excessively can trigger Penguin penalty and have their website removed from Google search results.

CAD design outsourcing SPAM from India

Email spam marketing is NOT limited to web designers. I also received SPAM emails from India promoting CAD design services, I figured out that these people actually visited my website.

For example: a spammer probably searching “floor plans” on Google found main page (www.teoalida.com) and saw numerous floor plans from Singapore, then clicked Contact page, and sent me email saying that they offer 2D and 3D floorplan conversion service using SketchUp. He did not opened other pages to see that I offering same service at much better quality, using AutoCAD.

I replied like this:
I will never hire a designer using that SHIT called SketchUp. You sure don’t need an AutoCAD designer to do better quality floor plans and 3D models for your customers? See my AutoCAD works /design/hdbflats/ and /design/houseplans/

His reply:
My location is Dhaka, Bangladesh. where my resources are working for less than $5/hr. Im sure that i will never able to hire you.
After going though your site and feedback from others, i have understood that, i need to start developing AutoCAD 3D team.
Thanks a lot. feeling lucky to have multiple replies from an expert guy like you.

There are also AutoCAD design companies that do spamming looking for customers. Several people contacted me via my website’s live chat instead of email, I though that they are architects who saw my message that I am hiring architects for partnership, but after a little talk with him I realized that they only do paper to CAD conversions or 2D to 3D conversios, they do not make floor plans from imagination as I do.

(7:40:20 PM) *** Visitor has joined the chat ***
(7:40:20 PM) Visitor: Good evening..I’m Ankit from India
(7:40:39 PM) *** Teoalida has joined the chat ***
(7:40:42 PM) Teoalida: what’s up
(7:41:22 PM) Visitor: we are AutoCAD professional looking for drafting work.
(7:41:48 PM) Visitor: Do you outsource your work?
(7:42:19 PM) Teoalida: I can outsource
(7:42:25 PM) Teoalida: show me a drawing made by you
(7:42:58 PM) Visitor: Can you please provide your mail id
(7:43:49 PM) Teoalida: you are in Contact page and still asking for email? what’s wrong
(7:44:27 PM) Visitor: sorry.
(7:45:25 PM) Teoalida: BTW, I have a partner in Philippines which I am currently outsourcing to… but he is expensive and often busy with bigger projects and don’t have time for me
(7:48:26 PM) Visitor: Please update your mail
(7:49:50 PM) Teoalida: got email
(7:49:59 PM) Teoalida: OMG… you’re great, what software you used for these 3D?
(7:50:49 PM) Visitor: 3Dmax
(7:51:30 PM) Visitor: at present we are giving priority to 2D drafting
(7:53:24 PM) Teoalida: some of your plans looks similar with those seen in UK websites
(7:54:13 PM) Visitor: Yeah, we do regualar job for UK clients.
(7:54:44 PM) Teoalida: I wonder if these plans seen on UK websites were made by you, or you just learned to do in same way with them
(7:55:47 PM) Visitor: we have few clients in London to whom we provide floor plan service.
(7:56:36 PM) Visitor: Do you have similar job?
(7:56:44 PM) Teoalida: BUT….
(7:57:07 PM) Teoalida: in the way you addressed me initially I though that you’re an architect who want to work for me
(7:57:28 PM) Teoalida: now I see that you’re a big company with a variety of services and not focusing on architecture
(7:57:59 PM) Visitor: we also do architectuaral drafting.
(7:58:40 PM) Teoalida: let’s say a 200 sqm 4-bedroom house… are you able to do floor plans, elevations, sections, structural, electrical and plumbing drawings? and at what price?
(7:59:26 PM) Visitor: We normally do conversion project

How to stop email SPAM from India

The general rule: DO NOT post your email in plain format ([email protected]), robots pick it regardless if it is clickable or not, instead you can:

  • Do not post the email at all, use a Contact form (on your website).
  • Write the email as “name_at_example_dot_com” (no longer reliable, bots learned to find such emails too).
  • Write the email in an image uploaded on Photobucket and post the image.
  • Write as javascript code, example: <script type=”text/javascript” language=”JavaScript”>// <![CDATA [emailE = (‘name@’ + ‘example.com’) document.write(‘<A href=”mailto:’ + emailE + ‘”>’ + emailE + ‘</a>’)// ]]&gt;// ]]></script>
  • Buy WHOIS privacy, some spammers target newly registered domains hoping that they need webdesign services. I heard of people who registered a domain and immediately got few dozens emails in few days.

Note: if the email address was displayed on website for long time, and you protect it today, you will still get SPAM emails because it has been included in many spam lists. Make a new email address if possible. Above rules protect you from automated spam only. If you are in webdesign industry, you are likely to get manual spam. Some web developers informed me that they get SPAM messages from India via their Contact form, Facebook, LinkedIn, as well as phone calls.

On the plain, unprotected emails, you may get other types of SPAM:

  • Promotional emails advertising groceries, travel agencies, pharmacy, drugs, casinos, adult websites, etc.
  • Chinese manufacturers trying to sell you various products. Their marketing is very bad targeted, I have a website about real estate and I often get emails trying to sell me construction materials for buildings, furniture, bearings, car parts, led display, office paper, etc, sometimes written in chinese.
  • Domain name scams: a chinese company is trying to register yourdomain.cn which is similar with yourdomain.com, so they offer you to register yourself yourdomain.cn and dozens of other domains before someone else will register. NEVER reply to such emails. My article: SCAM alert for web owners, see also Wikipedia article and another article.

How I deal with Indian spammers & FUNNY cases

Note that I am fan of DO IT YOURSELF. As teoalida.com is a PERSONAL website, I don’t accept professional help from others, I accept only suggestions and do all the work myself. My web building knowledge is not at professional level, but I prefer to learn instead of being dependent by professionals.

If you SPAM our emails, expect to get replies from people NOT interested in your services, students or owners of non-profit websites, or who like wasting your time (LIKE ME!).

I occasionally replied to spammers acting like a customer looking for help. Half of them never reply, once I received a second email “We did not heard from you“. So what is the point of spamming potential customers? Conclusion: so many people reply at their emails, probably bullshit replies, and they do not have time to read all, and reply to potential customers.

I also send them often funny and short replies, sometimes swearing them, sometimes slightly serious.
From first email I warn them that “I am NOT interested in outsourcing but if you have any suggestions for my website, feel free to speak!“, despite of warning that I am NOT interested, they still ask me for Google Talk and Skype ID, as well as phone number, etc. As I read in various forums, some people were repeatedly disturbed via phone by Indian SEO companies, speaking like this “Hi, we analysed your website and seems that its ranking in Google is dropping, you have broken links on your website, you have W3C errors, you are losing potential customers, blah blah… We are there to help you! Are you 100% sure that you don’t need our SEO services? For only 199$/month we guarantee you #1 place in Google!!!“. This is very AGGRESSIVE way to turn people into their customers.

If they are friendly enough to ask for my Google Talk and Skype ID, insisting to have a chat with me, I engage them in friendly talk, asking how to, ideas for my website, most of them do not answer my questions and insist to let my website on their hands. But few times I managed to learn new SEO strategies and few useful advice, which I applied to my website myself instead of hiring them. Once I got a very detailed report in PDF format, listing things that were done good and things that need fix or improvement, offering me to fix all the problems for several hundred $.

Sooner or later they realize that I am NOT going to pay, they stop replying at my emails, they block me on Skype, etc. But guess what… they SPAM me again with their original email offer!

His email:
“Greetings! My name is (…) from a reputed leading SEO company based in India. We provide….“

My reply:
“If you are ashamed to tell us the name of your “leading company” in your first email, you can as well don’t tell that you are from India! Especially on freelance websites, Indians suffer from bad reputation for LOW price but VERY LOW quality.
and BTW, a “leading company” would NOT try to get customers in this way, by spamming emails!“

More funny replies written by me:

“This is the 10th SEO services email received this week. I can hire 1 SEO company, not 10 different SEO companies every week, sorry!“

“This is the 10th SEO promotional email received this week. If I was in need for SEO services I would have hired one already.“

“One of my friends have hired a SEO company from India, his traffic increased with 20% during first month but second month he lost 80% of traffic being penalized by Google Penguin due to link building done by that so-called SEO expert… so I am NOT interested in your fucking ANTI-SEO services.“

“Thanks for contacting, I NEED YOUR HELP regarding 1 single problem: how to display my email on website to protect it from being crawled by fucking spammers like YOU!“

“Fuck off, your employees / workmates are fucking SPAMMERS. I have got exactly same fucking message from another 2 email addresses. I already replied once that I am NOT interested in your FUCKING SERVICES.“

“Spammers SUCKS, if you want customers, make yourself a website and we will contact you!” (if the email did not contained any URL of their company and also did not specified that he visited “my website”)

How to TROLL / ANNOY the Indian spammers

  1. Make a free email address on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, that sounds like a company name but does not contain your real company name.
  2. Make a spam-bait email address, like [email protected] and put it on your website in plain HTML code with white text (I really collect lots of indian emails on this email address, being posted there in plain format).
  3. Make a forwarder from spam-bait address to the Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo address.
  4. Once you receive SPAM, reply from the Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo address, because certain spammers may try to spam even more the email addresses where they received reply from, also may sell email lists to other spammers. Using your domain name email address to reply is risky to have them visiting your website and look for other email addresses to spam them as well (protecting email with images won’t help).
  5. When reply, say “I am really interested, can you please tell me more details?” or “We are a startup / we have a SMALL budget” but in the same time mention a BIG sum of 4-5 digits in USD / EUR.
  6. Request for examples of their work, names of their proposed development team, also their data security and legal compliance people, and as many other details is possible.
  7. When they ask you to describe what is your project about, you can say that you are making a community website where people can share information and build a database of companies using spammy marketing strategies to generate leads and/or companies that people had bad experiences with, so future people can avoid them. Some spammers are enough idiot and desperate to get work to do, that will still offer to help you, not realizing that you’re pranking / wasting their time.
  8. Continue conversation asking as many questions you can that will require elaborate answers from spammers.
  9. Ask for details of their Finance contact (“for the paperwork, so we can pay you afterwards“).
  10. When you’ve had enough FUN, ask “one last thing for the paperwork. I’ve lost track, can you just remind me how we initially got in touch?“.
  11. Whether they answer or not, go back and say that your procurement team has looked at your proposal and pointed out that the contact was initiated by a SPAM email, and that no reputable company would ever deal with spammers. Thank them for the Finance details and say “I’m going to invoice them for wasted time and resources“.
  12. Log in PayPal and click Request payment or Create an invoice. Out of the hundreds spammers, you may find few stupid enough to actually PAY YOU!
  13. Add that you have been fired for encouraging spammers, contrary to company rules, and wasting everybody’s time. They will probably reply sorry to hear that, but could still use their services!

You can create a new Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo address and change email forwarder to the new address. New spam emails will come to the new address, and you can track whenever the spammers you talked with, have shared your email address with other spammers.

Thank you Richard and BobL comments for giving me above ideas about how to troll spammers.

Let’s hope that if we all do this in mass, the fucking Indians will realize that spamming emails will not bring many real customers but mostly time-wasters, and discourage them to SPAM whole world again.

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69 comments about SEO SPAM from India

  2. Priszy
    Reply

    Thanks for posting this..
    I uploaded my own website a few weeks ago and suddenly my whole email box was full with their spamming mails..
    It scared me because they called me by my full name and also set my phonenumber there..
    But I never had the doubt that it could be real..
    It looked so fake to me.

    Now I’m just putting their mails in my spam box..
    But I hate how they know my personal info…

      1. Priszy
        Reply

        Thank you really much for telling me this..
        I am new to hosting a domain and didn’t know about this.
        Gladly I could set all my personal stuff on anonymous now.
        If I didn’t posted a comment here and didn’t get a reply.. I would have never known it so..
        Thank you again!

      2. Dilshan
        Reply

        That is why you need Private Registration. Most registrars charge you about 10USD per year additionally for hiding your personal information but some registrars dont. Ex: Porkbun

  4. Teoalida
    Reply

    Someone provided me more info about how Indian SEO companies are disturbing us:
    (he said that will post a comment, but he didn’t, so I’m gonna post myself)

    (1:58:22 PM) Teoalida: how many emails do you get per day?
    (1:58:46 PM) Visitor 99810627: 4 to 5 e-mails and up to 10 phone calls during their mating season probably
    (1:58:52 PM) Visitor 99810627: (lmao)
    (1:59:50 PM) Teoalida: did you displayed phone number on website in easy-to-crawl format?
    (2:00:04 PM) Teoalida: I can imagine how annoying are phone calls… how they do address you?
    (2:00:18 PM) Visitor 99810627: Just before I find your article I just rudely hung up on an indian SEO company that did like the others : call using a US VoIP number, (showing as Washington) but talks with a thick indian accent. Yes the phone number and e-mail are displayed on the website, I was reading about your [email protected]
    (2:00:25 PM) Visitor 99810627: that’s a good idea, since they crawl our sites
    (2:00:47 PM) Teoalida: they can send emails in mass, but phone calls….hmm, do they really call each one individually?
    (2:00:52 PM) Visitor 99810627: I’ll place our e-mail and phone number on a jpg file seamlessly and hide with css a [email protected]
    (2:01:19 PM) Visitor 99810627: “they can send emails in mass, but phone calls….hmm, do they really call each one individually?” Yes they call us every day almost, it’s insane, no matter how many times we send them to piss off.
    (2:01:30 PM) Teoalida: they are likely have phone number in their database and will still call you for a period
    (2:01:38 PM) Teoalida: same person call you every day?
    (2:02:02 PM) Visitor 99810627: I block the numbers they call us with, sometimes it’s the same lady and sometimes it is different man
    (2:02:14 PM) Visitor 99810627: Using Tokyo, Washington, San Francisco numbers
    (2:02:30 PM) Teoalida: and what they say on phone?
    (2:03:27 PM) Visitor 99810627: They ask for the owner of our company, the first time if I say I’m not the owner they say they will call back, if I say I’m the owner, they start reading their 10 minutes speech. Usually I’ll say “yeah I’m the owner, what’s up?” and put it on speaker and leave it on my desk while I code and they talk on their own
    (2:04:11 PM) Visitor 99810627: I’m web dev/ui-ux designer in a company based in Thailand, so these calls and e-mails are cancerous and waste our time/polut our inboxes
    (2:04:20 PM) Teoalida: what is that 10 min speech? I am curious if is similar with what I read on a blog
    (2:05:16 PM) Visitor 99810627: Basically they say the same things as on the e-mails we get, they say they checked our site, we are not #1 on SERP, we have missing tags, meta etc (even though our site has 100/100 on Page Insight and rank #1 on our main niches)
    (2:06:10 PM) Visitor 99810627: I have applied 10 filters on our inboxs that automatically reject e-mail with the word “SEO” on Subject and other keywords they seem to be using

    Beware! Indians can also steal your money!

    (2:17:53 PM) Visitor 99810627: One of my client used indian SEO Services, she has an online store in Australia and sells erotic lingerie, a few months after she used my services for redesigning her website, her database was hacked by the same previous indian SEO company and they stole 26k Australian Dollar from her bank account
    (2:18:15 PM) Visitor 99810627: At first she accused me wrongly, because I was the last person to work on her website, but the investigation led them to the indian company
    (2:18:51 PM) Visitor 99810627: I got in trouble back then, a police team raided my house and arrested me at 4AM, I got 15k$ as damage compensation for wrongly accusing and arresting me
    (2:18:59 PM) Visitor 99810627: breaking my door and dropping my monitors
    (2:19:18 PM) Visitor 99810627: The story is much more interesting in details, but that’s the short version, haha.
    (2:19:34 PM) Visitor 99810627: I’ve had my share of problems because of these assholes.

    1. BobL
      Reply

      It’s a thread about “spam from India” so it’s inevitable that it will blame people from India. If you read it carefully, it doesn’t blame the companies so much as third parties trying to get commission from the companies.
      I get a lot of SEO spam, and I’m sorry to say that ALL OF IT comes from India.

  7. google
    Reply

    Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring
    on other blogs? I have a blog based upon on the same topics
    you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my readers would value your work.

    If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

  8. Dilshan
    Reply

    Hi Teoalida, strange name. I am from Sri Lanka (yep very similar to India) and starting to spam people around the world about my software development services to earn a buck.

    I came across this page when I searched online how fellow dirt poor developers market(spam) people and businesses.

    I do send out ‘spam’ emails but not the type other Indians send out.

    I love your self pride. Web Design by myself eh. Very nicely done. Clean simple and professional.

    I actually went through your web site in the hope of sending you a proposal for a new site. But you have already done it great. Only thing I saw is that maybe you can offer Flash or WebGL / Java players to showcase your 3D models.

    Thank you and have a nice day
    Sri Lankan software spammer

  9. Richard Harder
    Reply

    Dude, if you really wanna fuck/mess with them, reply to every spammer with the text below….
    Then if they continue to spam you, actually try to bill them/send an invoice, do a real PayPal “request for funds”!
    I actually had a guy in India pay $53.46USD for my so called “data storage fees” for “storing” his unwanted spam emails on my device/server!
    I couldn’t believe it myself, but he did, he really thought he was in trouble and legally had to pay the bill!
    It just proves how STUPID those fluckerz over there are, sitting in their stinky, greasy, smoke filled, over crowded Internet cafes ripping off unsuspecting elderly folks over here in our country, it’s time, oh yes, well over due to start fuckin’ em’ back, dry, with not even a courtesy spit!
    Do this over and over and over to every single spam you get and actually send out the invoices, en mass, you’ll see, eventually one, then two and so on of these greasy retards will actually pay!

    Let’s share “Let’s fuck-over the Nigerian & Indian spammers, phishers and scammers” techniques!
    Hit me up at: [email protected]
    and use “NIGERIAN/INDIAN FUCKTARDS” somewhere in the email subject and/or body.
    (Remove the NOSPAM from my email address, I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that though, I hope! ?)

    ****CUT BELOW THIS LINE, DO NOT INCLUDE IT IN YOUR CUT/PASTE****

    Legal Notice Regarding Junk E-mail/Spam
                 —    —    —    —    —    —     —

    Unsolicited and/or commercial email is not permitted at this address;
    immediately remove the address from which this email was sent from any
    mailing lists you may be using.  Your address has been recorded
    automatically and any future mailings to this account will result in
    your being billed for message transmission and storage services at a
    flat rate of $100.00 per message received.

    Your receipt of this email communication constitutes legal notice and
    acceptance of this policy.  This is the only notice you will receive.

    Bills left unpaid after 30 days will be forwarded to your service
    provider and assessed a 50% late fee.  After 60 days unpaid bills will be
    referred to applicable credit reporting and collection agencies.

    A second unsolicited email to this account will also result in action
    against you under the terms of applicable U.S. law, including Title 47,
    Sec.227(b)(1)(C) of the U.S. Code, as follows:

    US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(1)(C):

    “It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to
    use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device
    to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile
    machine”

    A “telephone facsimile machine” is defined in Sec.227(a)(2)(B) as:

    “equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images
    (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular
    telephone line onto paper.”

    Under this definition, an e-mail account, modem, computer and printer
    together constitute a fax machine.

    The rights of action are as follows.  Under Sec.227(b)(3)(B):

    “A person or entity may, if otherwise permitted by the laws or
    rules of court of a State, bring in an appropriate court of
    that State —

      (A) an action based on a violation of this subsection or the
          regulations prescribed under this subsection to enjoin
          such violation,
      (B) an action to recover for actual monetary loss from such a
          violation, or to receive $500 in damages for each such
          violation, whichever is greater, or
      (C) both such actions. If the court finds that the defendant
          willfully or knowingly violated this subsection or the
          regulations prescribed under this subsection, the court
          may, in its discretion, increase the amount of the award
          to an amount equal to not more than 3 times the amount
          available under subparagraph (B) of this paragraph.”

                        —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —

    ****CUT ABOVE THIS LINE, DO NOT INCLUDE IT IN YOUR CUT/PASTE****

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      How I can contact you? Can we talk a bit about how to fight against indian SEO spammers?
      I sent you an email shortly after you left comment, but you never replied. Yesterday when a spammer left a comment on this page, you replied and swear to me instead of swearing to spammer.

  11. BobL
    Reply

    I really enjoyed reading your article. I particularly appreciate your clarity that it’s a small minority of Indian companies, giving skilled and professional people in India a bad reputation. In the UK we also get a lot of cold calls from India, and for many people these calls and the spam are the only contact they ever have with Indian people.

    I get a lot of spam from Indian website development companies. Like you, I’ve had some fun wasting their time the way they waste ours. Some of my favourite methods:
    – Write back saying I’m really interested
    – Request lots of additional details, examples of their work, names of their proposed development team, also their data security and legal compliance people
    – Say I have just agreed a small budget for this work, and mention a HUGE sum, asking if they can do anything with this
    – When asked to describe what my website does I say it’s to allow people to share information and build a database of companies using spam to generate business so that they can avoid them. Even then, many don’t realise thst I’m wasting their time
    – Ask for details of their Finance contact (“for the paperwork, so we can pay you afterwards”)
    – Keep the dialogue going with more questions
    – I’ve never got as far as doing the Skype call. I got one set up once, with about 5 of their people, never called, and they actually phoned me to chase me
    – When you’ve had enough fun, ask “One last thing for the paperwork. I’ve lost track, can you just remind me how we initially got in touch?”. Then, whether they answer or not, go back and say that your procurement team has looked at your proposal and pointed out that the contact was initiated by spam, and that no reputable UK company would ever deal with spammers. Thank them for the Finance details and say I’m going to invoice them for wasted time and resources.
    – I told this story to one company, adding that I had been fired for encouraging spammers, contrary to company rules, and wasting everybody’s time. The guy came back saying he was sorry to hear that, but could I still use their services!

    Keep up your good work!

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      You should really having too much free time and nothing else to do if you are wasting your own time chatting with indian spammers so much. You contacted me via chat shortly after leaving comment and told me that are 60 years old and just retired. This does explain…

  14. Logo bigben
    Reply

    I really like your blogs. According to me, when a business plans to have a digital presence so it is very
    necessary for a business to go for Custom Website Design which can showcase their business digitally.

    URL: logobigben.co.uk/index.php (dead website)

  17. source
    Reply

    Hello, i think that i noticed you visited my web site thus i came to return the prefer?.I am trying to to find things
    to improve my website!I guess its ok to use some of
    your ideas!!

  19. forex forum
    Reply

    I am really loving the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into
    any browser compatibility problems? A handful of my blog readers have complained about my site not operating
    correctly in Explorer but looks great in Opera.

    Do you have any suggestions to help fix this issue?

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      What are my gains or your gains if you give me names of companies doing SPAM and I publish them here?

      Most spammers do not tell company name from 1st email so you need to reply everyone to find this out, even if you reply, 75% won’t reply back.

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      As a person offering services, I don’t think that is a good idea to use my personal website to shame other companies, because I would not like someone else to shame my name too.
      Also, this particular page gets very little traffic and people coming here would not care about list of companies doing SPAM so putting their names here would not have any significant impact.
      In case you did not noticed, this website main topics are real estate, architecture and data providing, so I don’t want to add too many articles on other topics.

    2. anon
      Reply

      Naming and shaming does nothing to help one’s inbox. All spam has spoofed emails, to the point that those spoofed emails have an onion-layering effect. It’s all to distance the spam from the company. The best thing anyone can do is create custom filters that block out specific lines of text at given seasons of spam. I just create ghost accounts when I want to use a legit email yet want to avoid my personal email getting spammed. This really keeps me from getting alerts at 3am about getting a wiener enlargement.

  28. Mark
    Reply

    Awesome Article! I’m a US senior designer and developer for 19 years and on my Freelance site that constantly contact me about SEO and the BS about outsourcing. I use Outlook so I just put them to spam, but I check to see their email to make sure that didn’t put one of my emails. Sometimes they do that now so when you block them, you block your own emails(a$$holes).

    On my site I use a honey pot that works with a session ID for my email form. It helps but it doesn’t sop the ones that crawl the site.
    And Yes they try to contact my business threw LinkedIn. I check who requests contact by name, if its foreigner like Indian or Chinese, i don’t allow it.

    I’ve worked on some big projects for big companies in the past where they outsourced. India was one of them and their work was absolutely terrible. Another was China and that was a joke, they couldn’t even write proper HTML. I will NEVER OUTSOURCE EVER!

    I advise all to never outsource and if you do GO AMERICAN! Support your country and pay up some money and stop being cheap!
    In the World of IT, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!

    1. anon
      Reply

      It’s impossible to block your own email with Outlook. They even stop you from blocking it. They just spoof your email over their own. But you’re right about never outsourcing. There’s plenty of Americans who need the money, but never get a chance because companies keep outsourcing due to it being cheap. They need to stop being cheap and start budgeting better. I’ve worked for a cheap boss before. I’m stick of cheapskates who buy stuff because it was discounted.

      And as someone who’s ran into a lot of sketchy companies who outsource and pressure their workers — it’s irritating on two fronts: For one, I feel like an ass when I have to yell at them to stop upselling when I want to have my way. But then the other problem is that the company is forcing their workers to behave like jerks, because they’re pressured into upselling or losing their jobs. So either we have to be a jerk, or put up with them being overly aggressive. It’s just not good on the workers nor the company. I know it can happen in India, or here in America, but we at least have equal rights for all people in terms of jobs. We don’t have that caste system forcing people to be stuck in dead end jobs.

  30. Funny Lola
    Reply

    I have about 15 websites / domains registered to my name, most of the emails [email protected] are public on the contact us pages, and I receive tons of these spammers every week, but I have a different strategy:
    1- I always reply with a very legitimate requirements email
    2- They start sharpening their knives & 95% of the time they reply
    3- I very kindly ask them their company’s registration & ownership documents to prove they’re not fakes (fair request)
    4- they send and prove who they are, now I have their emails, IP addresses, their owner, registration certificates and all

    The plan is to have a dedicated website to methodically and legally list all those spammers, to hurt their business as much as they hurt the internet world, and their fellow legitimate indian professionals

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      Good idea, but this need to be done on a dedicated website where you do not post any info about yourself or offer any services, to prevent revenge, NOT on my personal website as suggested by Bob in previous comment.

      However, by doing this you may hurt whole IT industry in India including legitimate companies and in the same time you may promote spammers. Many startup companies use such shortcuts like email spamming to build an initial customer base then rely on referrals and more professional marketing strategies.

      Few months ago been contacted via Google Hangouts by an Indian SEO company who I had them in my friends list since 2014, after I replied their SPAM email. I asked how their business is going, if they still send such emails, they admitted that did this in the past but now they have long-term contracts with 6 US webdesign companies for outsourcing so is no longer necessary to spam emails, and they also expanded into CAD outsourcing.

  32. Bernard Parker
    Reply

    Dear Teoalida, a good post you have shared. It is very informative and shares information about the scams on web designing and development companies in India. Before choosing the web design and development company. You must check about the reputation and reviews. This scam mails not only comes from India, but they are generated from other nations as well. But, there are many reputed web design and development companies that provide best services. I have once worked with such company before.

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      How do you know that is 85%? Do you know exactly the total number of IT companies in India and total number of IT companies who use email spamming to get customers?

  38. Gurtek
    Reply

    Hello mate, I am also from India. Don’t know why people spam a lot. Indian or not Indian, I hate spam. I find it quite hilarious that people actually spam in this blog comment section too without even reading the content. That’s a shame for the SEO world. I guess people actually don’t know how to either put a blog comment.

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      These SPAM comments are not posted by humans but rather by robots who cannot read page contents, they probably just look for pages with “SEO” in title. I get about 100 such comments per day of which 99% are blocked by Akismet and the rest I need to clean manually.

      https://www.teoalida.com/singapore/hdbmap/ is preferred page by PORN comment spam.

      https://www.teoalida.com/contact/ is also spammed with SEO comments from indian bots but also human visitors who tick “notify me when new comments are posted” and a funny case was that a spammer replied ME asking for pricing details after he get notification that another spammer left comment!

  40. Logo Bigben
    Reply

    Website design good look and very professional and feel so good see website. And we are providing to better level website and check it out our design logobigben.co.uk/web-design.php Web Design Company UK (dead website)

  41. Bob
    Reply

    You could block displaying links in comments and commenters emails so that you you would not help those SAME Indian spammers that you hate. Maybe you DO need professional services?

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      How do I help them? Links in comments get NOFOLLOW tag automatically so posting comments on my website won’t help them. They do post comments on 1000 websites hoping to get 10-20 dofollow links. I also track link clicks and don’t see any human visitor clicking the links in comments. What professional services I need and do you offer?

  43. Topxlisting
    Reply

    This is very informative post ,thanks for share it with us .if you are looking for web development company then Topxlisting provides best web development services.

    URL: topxlisting.com/ (dead website)

  44. Gustav Niemmi
    Reply

    Thanks for this comment. I’ll definitely add Topxlisting to our public database under “software companies who use spam for marketing”.

  47. SEO Executor
    Reply

    Hi!
    Thank you for these tips Karmen – I totally agree with you! There are so many posts I read were so-called SEO gurus are sharing “loopholes” that will help people rank on Google and I cringe when I read that.
    The process is really simple – Google wants to match searchers with the best and most relevant content… so make your content really good and yes use keywords and put them in the right places. There are plenty of little things that can be done to juice up SEO and I find it so much fun learning these things and implementing them on my websites.

  50. matebiz
    Reply

    I am really impressed with your blog post, such great & useful knowledge you mentioned here. Your post is very informative.
    MATEBIZ is an Indian origin web design Company, based in New Delhi that offers a wide range of services including web design, web development, digital marketing, SEO, SMO, and PPC services all over the world.

  51. coherentlab
    Reply

    I completely agree with your points but I would like to highlight something here no only in India but over the world, we can see the spam in SEO. Nowadays SEO is changed a lot and a lot of SEO sexpert still doing old SEO techniques which are not good. A lot of thanks to you for doing great research and shared with us.

  52. Cemdocs Technologies
    Reply

    Thanks for much for sharing about spamming in seo. Great keep it up.

    URL: cemdocs.com/affordable-seo-services-india/ (dead website)

  53. Idiot
    Reply

    Discover their website, domain name, and write negative review complaining about their practices of unsolicited mail. Then send spammer notification so he knows about it and may have impact to stop their activity or make their busines worse, or let more clever people not buy from them.

  54. SEO agencies Cardiff
    Reply

    Hi, thank you for such a brilliant post. I have been reading some blogs that gives me more knowledge about this topic spam from india web development seo services. I must say this is one of the best among them. You have done a great research for I feel, thanks for sharing.

  55. Grayson Peddie
    Reply

    Great article about webdesign/SEO spam. I started receiving SEO-/webdesign-related spam emails when I launched my website a few weeks ago. Here’s my website if you are interested: https://graysonpeddie.com. Honestly, I don’t care about SEO and web design improvements and I simply want to be left alone. Before I launched my personal blog, I rarely received spam. Mostly zero spam email messages per month and sometimes 1 that can be deleted immediately.

    Also, I am making use of unique email addresses and I cannot trust websites with my main email address. If a data breach occurs, I can simply change my email address. For a blogging site, unique email addresses are unnecessary, but an ounce of paranoia can go a long way on ensuring my privacy on the Internet.

  56. John Jane Doe
    Reply

    Sometimes I wonder if the children in India have their brains removed – then again I remember that there are just a lot of people in India, a lot of people are very poor and not very educated, and yet access to the Internet is almost ubiquitous. As a result, there are simply a lot of idiots there because there are a lot of people – in percentage terms, the proportion should be comparable to other countries.

    It takes a certain amount of stupidity to sell spam mails for any services and hope that some idiots will then knock out an order. On the other hand, it is those who react to such crap who give these spammers hope that their antisocial activities will lead to success.

    To put it clearly: Whoever sends spam – for whatever reason – is an antisocial piece of shit. So practically shit that shits shit. You don’t have to deal with these subjects – and you certainly don’t have to be nice. Nor should you, because every reaction gives these idiots the feeling that they have succeeded.

    Let them jump off the next rooftop, drown themselves in the next river or jump in front of the next train… That would at least be a service to humanity, if they don’t choose the more obvious alternative of looking for a respectable job – and really any job (apart from bankster, real estate agent, art critic, politician, rapist, terrorist or lollipop thief) is more respectable than that of a spammer.

    Conclusion:

    You shouldn’t sacrifice time for the spammers. They don’t deserve even a minute.
    You should simply delete the shit they send without reading it.
    You can curse them and wish them pimples on their ass and balls.

    1. Teoalida
      Reply

      I DISAGREE that I should STOP reply spammers to troll them because every reply give them a feeling of success.

      If they SPAM 1000 email addresses, we can assume that 1 or 2 recipients will be dumb enough to reply and PAY their services, those paying idiots give them feeling of success, not me trolling or anyone else who is trolling them inspired form my article.

      Guess why? I personally contacted few of the websites the Indian spammers post comments on my website with link to them. One replied me that got an email saying that website perform bad in Google and they can raise it, price was good and they agreed to pay that Indian SEO company. They were not aware that email was automatically sent to many people, also not aware that Indian company is building links by spamming irrelevant websites. Their website was indeed poorly built apparently with ZERO SEO knowledge, whenever it benefited from the link spam I don’t know, we did not talked further since they didn’t even know how much traffic have.

  58. Ivory Howard
    Reply

    There is an outstanding free tool accessible to businesses to assist them market on the internet and to get prospects to join their organization, business, or opportunity. GetProspect is an innovative application created by LinkedIn with business leads database, a corporate social network for business contacts – https://getprospect.com/b2b-contact-database . When it comes to marketing your brand online, you don’t want to be restricted to just one type of promotion. That’s why the leading internet marketing company has integrated this award-winning program into GetProspect (you can check here what is the GetProspect lead generation success rate). LinkedIn members have access to useful information about the businesses as well as helpful suggestions and guidance on how to become successful online. Make the most of your social networking efforts and establish the reputation and professional image you seek by using GetProspect’s services.

  60. Chis
    Reply

    SEO has become a big hit with Indian scammers. And Yes. They are all EXPERTS!

    Most of the time, you will receive an email to tell you that your website is not ranking well on Google (Even if it ranking in top place!)

    These are what I like I like to call “Reseller Spam Beggars”

    They know nothing about SEO, and the could not rank there mothers infected toe nail. What they really are is a reseller. Claiming to be a SEO agency. They dont get a real seo agency (still worthless shit services) to do all the work and they take a a cut.

  61. Bob L
    Reply

    I thought that all these SEO and Website/App development spammers from India were just agents, who would sell any leads to a real company. I have been trying to lure them into telling which companies they sell their leads to, so that I could then confront them with their use of leads from spammers.
    What I found surprised me. I have recently found two companies, Code Brew Labs and Nile Technologies, who have their own “marketing” teams sending out spam.
    I reported Code Brew Labs on Trustpilot, and had one of their marketing team messaging me begging me to remove the comment and promising never to spam me again (thereby admitting that it had been them). Nile Technologies claimed they had made a genuine error, but refused to answer when I asked “Why is a reputable company sending out marketing material from burner gmail addresses?”. He said that was something he couldn’t discuss, then I noticed that even he was using a burner gmail address.
    Please take the time to report these companies, and let the world see who they are dealing with.

  63. Argy Ell
    Reply

    Well done! I also got spam from Code Brew, and reported it on Trustpilot and had them begging me to remove the comment.
    I also have the phone number of one of their team (Manish) and now send it to other spammers who ask to discuss my requirements.

  64. MarkOrion
    Reply

    Thank you for sharing this informative information. It’s important to stay vigilant and aware of the different tactics used in SEO. Your insights on SEO spam, especially from India, shed light on a critical issue that can impact online credibility and rankings. However, it’s also important to recognize that not everyone in the industry is a scammer; there are many legitimate professionals who deliver quality SEO services.

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