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Washington Attorney General Goes After Iffy SEO Firm


Lawsuit called a matter of consumer protection

The Washington Attorney General's Office is less than happy with a Redmond-based SEO firm.  The business and its owner, who have operated through sites including Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com, now face a lawsuit.

Washington state accuses Visible.net and Gilbert Walker of a few slippery-sounding acts: not registering as a commercial telephone solicitor, misrepresenting the company's ability to attract traffic, and being quite difficult to contact.

Visible Screen
 Visible.net

Things begin to look more even serious as the accusations move on to Visible.net claiming corporate affiliations that don't exist and charging customers' credit cards after they'd attempted to cancel the service.  Also, it seems that the Attorney General's Office and Better Business Bureau received about 90 complaints.

As a result, the lawsuit seeks restitution, "a permanent injunction enjoining and restraining defendants," and "civil penalties . . . of up to two thousand dollars ($2,000) per violation against the defendants for each and every violation."  Plus court costs.

SEO specialists may want to think about the possible problem of guilt by association, and address their customers' concerns as needed.  On the brighter side, if Visible.net has done everything it's been accused of, its removal will make the industry cleaner, and Visible.net's customers may seek other SEO companies to meet their needs.

No court dates appear to have been set just yet.

News Tags: SEO, Legal, Visible.net
About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

5 Comments

if this correct than they must pay for this

If Visible.net is guilty than they must pay for that as SEO Professional i personally feel that cheating with customer not tolerable.

tiffany jewellery

good

Interesting

I dont know anything about this SEO firm so I certainly would not judge whether they are innocent or guilty but from an abstract point of view cleaning up the landscape of so many underhanded SEO companies is not such a bad thing. Will be interesting to see where this goes and if any other SEO companies pay attention. My guess is they wont.

Official Company Stance

Read our official response to the AG Release here...

http://www.visible.net/visiblog/visiblenet-is-serious-about-customer-service-support/

 lol I'd say they're more

 lol I'd say they're more con-artists than actual SEO's.  

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