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Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#21

Post by fleitz »

Talk to a lawyer, practicing medicine with out a license comes immediately to mind.

It looks like it might be covered under identity fraud: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story....

May want to reach out to your local prosecutor and avoid those legal fees :)

Section 403 CCC: 403. (1) Everyone commits an offence who fraudulently personates another person, living or dead,

(a) with intent to gain advantage for themselves or another person;

(b) with intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property;

(c) with intent to cause disadvantage to the person being personated or another person; or

(d) with intent to avoid arrest or prosecution or to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice.

Clarification

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), personating a person includes pretending to be the person or using the person’s identity information — whether by itself or in combination with identity information pertaining to any person — as if it pertains to the person using it.

Punishment

(3) Everyone who commits an offence under subsection (1)

(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years; or

(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#22

Post by mod »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #15
wesleytodd wrote: post #11

Agreed that you should have your lawyer contact them with a threatening email. Also, you could have a friend "hire" them for some small service just to get their information. Then provide that to your lawyer to pursue more substantial legal measures. My experience with SEO companies has been horrible. I worked for one for a month, have worked with them in the past at agencies I have worked at, and was given a list of…

SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people, it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

I previously worked for a small design/development shop that ended up doing a ton of SEO work and eventually pivoted to selling those ongoing services as a large part of what they did.

It was in no way scummy, nor intended to break search engines.

Our approach to SEO was, in a nutshell: "write quality blog articles relevant to related search terms, include a CTA at the end."

We posted lots and lots of articles. We started ranking very well for long-tail keywords, which we should have--we had the best content available for them.

Nothing scummy about that.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#23

Post by varsketiz »

hdevalence wrote: post #14
varsketiz wrote: post #9

I remember meeting some French guys in one of SF's startup accelerators who had a similar startup - to create websites for small businesses from crawled data and do serious SEO for these websites, then once customers inquiry or try to register for appointments online or whatnot, they would send the original business an email saying something along the lines of "claim your website - you have customers waiting". While…

It does not sound like a decent idea. 'Decent' is not a word that fits with 'deceptive practices', 'impersonation', or 'extortion'.

Well, sorry for choosing a word you don't agree with. I could have chosen "interesting" instead of decent - it does not change my point.

"'deceptive practices', 'impersonation', or 'extortion'" - this, however, is your interpretation and it is taking it pretty far.

'deceptive practices' - that I can agree with. No matter how you do it, it is deceptive. Then again, a lot of businesses were built with (oh, say Airbnb or Youtube) / use (every cheap airline website) shady practices.

'impersonation' - does not have to be. What if they clearly list that this is not an official X site? If your data is public and crawlable, is it illegal for people to use that information?

'extortion' - does not have to be. Isn't this an equivalent of going to the same business and saying, I did a bit of research on you, then I told 3 people about you and they would love to buy your services. I'll refer them to you if you give me $5. Is this illegal?

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#24

Post by sharkweek »

wesleytodd wrote: post #19
BrainInAJar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people, it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

@sharkweek The problem here is that SEO companies are usually not equipped to solve those problems. Their developers are usually secondary roles in the company, and might even be second-rate themselves. Also, good/real SEO usually requires content writers. Which is an ongoing process, and is probably not worth the cost to most small businesses.

I should clarify by saying I wouldn't bother hiring an SEO agency anymore - definitely not worth their billable rates. BUT, if I were a smaller company growing a marketing team I would definitely look for someone with a legitimate understanding of this as a marketing tactic, it's getting better but it is still the wild west in a lot of ways as well, so at least being able to monitor and interpret what is going on is ridiculously important. And if I'm a bigger company, I would hire at least two strict SEOs, one technical, one content.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#25

Post by normloman »

wesleytodd wrote: post #19
BrainInAJar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people, it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

@sharkweek The problem here is that SEO companies are usually not equipped to solve those problems. Their developers are usually secondary roles in the company, and might even be second-rate themselves. Also, good/real SEO usually requires content writers. Which is an ongoing process, and is probably not worth the cost to most small businesses.

If all they do is write interesting content and promote it, why do we call it SEO? Last time I checked, that matches the job description of public relations writer.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#26

Post by mod »

hdevalence wrote: post #14
varsketiz wrote: post #9

I remember meeting some French guys in one of SF's startup accelerators who had a similar startup - to create websites for small businesses from crawled data and do serious SEO for these websites, then once customers inquiry or try to register for appointments online or whatnot, they would send the original business an email saying something along the lines of "claim your website - you have customers waiting". While…

It does not sound like a decent idea. 'Decent' is not a word that fits with 'deceptive practices', 'impersonation', or 'extortion'.

He probably meant "profitable."

If you want to be a dirtbag, you might as well build one of those "stress tester" sites or something. Sounds easier.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#27

Post by [deleted] »

mod wrote: post #22
BrainInAJar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people, it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

I previously worked for a small design/development shop that ended up doing a ton of SEO work and eventually pivoted to selling those ongoing services as a large part of what they did. It was in no way scummy, nor intended to break search engines. Our approach to SEO was, in a nutshell: "write quality blog articles relevant to related search terms, include a CTA at the end." We posted lots and lots of articles. We st…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#28

Post by wesleytodd »

sharkweek wrote: post #24
wesleytodd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@sharkweek The problem here is that SEO companies are usually not equipped to solve those problems. Their developers are usually secondary roles in the company, and might even be second-rate themselves. Also, good/real SEO usually requires content writers. Which is an ongoing process, and is probably not worth the cost to most small businesses.

I should clarify by saying I wouldn't bother hiring an SEO agency anymore - definitely not worth their billable rates. BUT, if I were a smaller company growing a marketing team I would definitely look for someone with a legitimate understanding of this as a marketing tactic, it's getting better but it is still the wild west in a lot of ways as well, so at least being able to monitor and interpret what is going on is…

Yeah, that is probably a good suggestions. But in relation to a small doctors office as in the OP's case, probably not worth doing anything beyond getting a decent front-end developer to make a brochure site.

Re: Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do?

#29

Post by iharris »

sharkweek wrote: post #24
wesleytodd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@sharkweek The problem here is that SEO companies are usually not equipped to solve those problems. Their developers are usually secondary roles in the company, and might even be second-rate themselves. Also, good/real SEO usually requires content writers. Which is an ongoing process, and is probably not worth the cost to most small businesses.

I should clarify by saying I wouldn't bother hiring an SEO agency anymore - definitely not worth their billable rates. BUT, if I were a smaller company growing a marketing team I would definitely look for someone with a legitimate understanding of this as a marketing tactic, it's getting better but it is still the wild west in a lot of ways as well, so at least being able to monitor and interpret what is going on is…

Totally agree with you. In the case of this clinic, they get almost all of their referrals by word-of-mouth these days. However, they've noted that the new generation of twentysomethings will generally do their homework on Google before calling in. Might be useful for the clinic to prepare for the eventual shift to millennials as their primary clientele.

With that said, most of the SEO companies that cold-call them are quite shady. Other clinics in the city have had their search rankings drop after hiring SEO services who use scummy tactics. The new "snake oil" perhaps?

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