Tips On Identifying And Avoiding Internet Scams

In doing something, we are always advised to follow our hearts. No doubt it is practical for us to do so, but in the context of the Internet world, following your hearts can sometimes lead you into calamities you have never thought could happen to you.

You would also need to let your minds determine the actions you would take. This is especially crucial when it comes to identifying our most horrible nightmare in the Internet world; Internet scams.

Prevention is better than cure. Hence, let us be cautioned about Internet scams right away! Here we would like to share with you some of the prominent scams that you should be mindful of:

Moneymaking Offers
The first type of scams comes in the form of moneymaking offers. They would give you an assurance that you will earn big bucks without having to do any kind of job. But ask yourself! Is it realistic that money can come pouring on you without you having to get on your feet? So to avoid this, you should have the ability to develop a common sense that helps you think things logically. Yes, earning a living through shear hard work is not easy, but at least you are guaranteed the money that you are supposed to receive. It would be even harder on you to find out that you have signed up for a scam.

Protection From Fraudulent Moneymaking Offers
It is important that you are educated on the moneymaking offers that you should never trust, and all that can be done by visiting RipoffReport. At Ripoff Report, you will discover a long list of moneymaking websites that are unreliable, and if you are caught in a moneymaking scam, you can directly file a report on the scam for free. All reports filed in Ripoff Report will be published in the site, so everyone who visits the site will be able to view the report and be kept informed of the latest moneymaking scams that are out there to cheat on you.

Email scams
Beware of email scams. Email scams will normally appear as emails from unknown sources that have never been added in your email address book. Be vigilant when dealing with emails like these. To find out how you can be protected from email scams, please read our post on how to Be Protected From Scams.

Gaining Traffic
The next type may not involve monetary earnings, but it involves promises of gaining unbelievable amount of traffic. Some of these sites would even request you to pay a small amount just so that you can receive the desired amount of traffic for your site. But it is actually not worth paying for it because your traffic increase is based on machine generated hits rather than the visits that your site receives. Besides that, it is not sensible for a networking company to sell such a huge amount of traffic to you at an extremely low price. Therefore, always believe in making the effort to create an attractive design for your site and inserting informative and eye-catching articles, which can contribute to an increase in the number of visitors and the amount of traffic, although it takes a longer time.

Search Engine Submission Software
Another form of Internet scam is the search engine submission software. These are search engines that would require users to purchase a submission script just to make a new search query. The popular search engines that you can find in the Web would never compel you into doing such things. So if you stumble upon a search engine that does this, just give it the elbow.

Link Brokers
The next group of scams to beware of is the group of link brokers. Actually it is not a mistake to buy links from a website, but it would be a mistake if you were to rely on a website that gives false promises that you will gain links and attain an increase in your traffic.

The most recommended suggestion for all would be to buy links on websites that are associated with what you are selling, and ensure that your visitors can see the links you have bought. In this way, there is a chance of a boost in your traffic based on your targeted visitors who click on those links.

Link Exchanges
A scam can also be spotted when doing link exchanges. Websites that offer link exchanges can be a little deceiving most of the time, especially those whose link pages are hard to navigate. Therefore, always believe in the conventional way of link exchanging. Visit blogs that you are interested in linking to, and request for a link exchange. If they do not link back to you after a while, you can definitely tell that this is not the blog worth counting on for your blog to boost its status, and thus should be removed from your list.

Identifying Genuinity Of The Blog/Website
To check the Technorati rankings, authorities and votes, visit Technorati and navigate to the Technorati Search Bar, type the URL of that website or blog, and then click on the search button. The actual ranking of the website will display for you to spot whether the ranking tallies with the one shown in the website itself, or there is a difference in the ranking.

To check for Google Page Rank, there are several free sites that you can visit. Enter the URL of the website through the free page rank checker, and it display the actual ranking of the website itself. This can also allow you to compare and contrast the ranking shown in Google Page Rank and the one shown in the website.

Below are the recommended page rank checker.

Official PageRank Checker
Blogflux Page Rank
PR Checker Info

To check for Alexa Ranking, visit Alexa and use the Alexa Search Bar provided. It works just like Technorati search bar, whereby you can type the URL of the website and then click on the URL link. From there, you can identify if there is any difference in the rankings shown in both the Alexa Ranking page and the website.

As long as you can spot a difference in the ranking, you can be assured that it is one of the Internet scams that you ought to avoid.

A True Account
Internet scams can come knocking at anyone’s door at any point in time. Just recently, one of our blogging friends had to face the music caused by an Internet scam, which really caught us by surprise. The site was perceived as an established and reputable site, but after the incident, it would surely be a site that one would have second thoughts of visiting and signing up for.

The blogging friend of ours we were referring to was Bobby from Revellian.com. He had recently expose the Ezine.org link scam. Find out more on his Ezine.org Link Scam Exposed post for more information.

In case you have never visited his blog, the blog consists of valuable information that would always serve a purpose for all bloggers out there, such as tips on excellent blogging and methods and updates on how bloggers can boost traffic ranking, blogging ethics, and how to monetize their blogs effectively. Bobby is also one of the bloggers who achieve high ranking in both Technorati and Alexa. See his Technorati ranking here and Alexa ranking here.

Some of his interesting articles which are our personal favourites include SEO Keywords For Beginners, Optimizing Your Site By Decreasing It's Size, Blogging Without an Ego, Seven Surefire Ways To Avoid Looking Like A Pro Blogger.


Bobby Author Of reveillian.com

He has been such a resourceful person to us and many others in the blogosphere when it comes to useful information on blogging, and is always generous in helping his blogging friends have a good blogging experience.

We are deeply sorry for what he has to endure due to the scam that hit him, and hope that he will continue to pick himself up and take it positively. Please read his post to view the full story.

A Valuable Lesson
To all our readers, we all can learn the most valuable lesson from this incident, which is not to be gullible towards enticing and eye-catching sites that claim to be able to change our lives drastically in such a short period of time.

The assurance of getting something is more important than the speed of getting it. As the saying goes, slowly but surely.