The Best Video Surveillance SEO Spam Ever - Videosurveillance.com

Chesapeake & Midlantic

Rogue Community College linking back and profiling VideoSurveillance.com

Please tell me they play an annual bowl game against their bitter crosstown rivals, Paladin Community College.

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(3)

Brian Rhodes

IPVMU Certified

In reply to Ari Erenthal

All those people that got goldenpalace.com forehead tattoos are totally ticked off all they needed to do was name drop a few times in a selfie video.

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(1)

Michael Miller

What Avigilon is to intimidation and Avigilon is to customer abuse, VideoSurveillance.com is to SEO Spam.

Wow... you have no shame using Avigilon's name for IPVM's benefit.

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John Honovich

In reply to Michael Miller

IPVM

Actually, the second reference was intended for Arecont, as the links shows. Fixed.

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

Well, at least they offer a "See the Details" challenge on their home page:

One minor detail would be that those 'cameras' are certainly not 'capturing' any video, considering that those well-known brackets have no cable-thru capability, as I'm sure everyone knows. Most likely they're just enclosures anyway.

Also, the surface mount pan-heads fasteners into stone seems implausible to me, but I would prefer Brian's critique here. Note the bottom one looks to have a little 'play'.

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Jon Dillabaugh

Pro Focus LLC

You could simply use plastic anchors with those screws in the masonry wall.

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to Jon Dillabaugh

IPVMU Certified

I defer to your experience in the matter. I was thinking that was architectural rock or stone and would need a mounting plate and stainless bushings, like this:

But I've never had the pleasure so I don't know.

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Undisclosed Integrator #3

Obviously, these are wireless cameras with a solar panel on the top of the housing for powering the camera. They probably reinforced the mounting with gorilla glue.

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Brian Rhodes

IPVMU Certified

That's funny. Good eye.

I have no idea how/why mounting that housing with one non-masonry screw passed muster, but the fact no cameras appear installed is the bigger issue...

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Undisclosed #1

•May 05, 2016

IPVMU Certified

In reply to Brian Rhodes

No worries, it appears that Panasonic upgraded the site later that very same day, as shown in the last page of their catalog:

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Undisclosed #2

See the details of HD video seems to be a copy of Bosch

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Vasiles Kiosses

Let put our trust in the cloud. Its super secure....

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David Raske

IPVMU Certified

As Director of Marketing for VideoSurveillance.com I would like to address issues raised above to set the record straight.

Business Legitimacy

As profiled in IPVM’s own 2011 report on “Online Surveillance Sales,” VideoSurveillance.com is far from a “scheme business” or “peddling” cameras online. Since inception in 2008 we have served thousands of end-user and dealer clients in more than 60 countries with custom-designed surveillance camera systems and trained technical support.

Scholarship Program

Corporate-sponsored scholarship programs are commonplace and offered by many leading firms like GE, Coca-Cola, and Dell.

Through 2014, we have donated $2000 in scholarship funds and will donate $1000 again this year to the 2015 winner. The donation to support last year’s winner helped defray tuition expenses at Washington University in St Louis, a top 25 university.

We fail to see how these types of scholarship programs are anything but positive for students.

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John Honovich

IPVM

In reply to David Raske

David, thanks for responding.

"We fail to see how these types of scholarship programs are anything but positive for students."

Perhaps then you should watch the videos embedded above. They are essentially doing free marketing work for your company in exchange for the hope of a small payout.

In other words, you run marketing for a multi-million dollar company using high school seniors as props.

It's obvious that the $1,000 scholarship is being used as a hook for a back link campaign.

As you know, and allude to, IPVM has been following VideoSurveillance.com various SEO schemes for years. Those interested, can check our 2012 analysis and explanation.

Scholarship SEO schemes are on the rise. VideoSurveillance.com did not invent it but they are excellent at adopting them. For more on scholarship SEO schemes, see:

Are Scholarship Links Considered Unnatural by Google?
Creating A Scholarship for SEO
What Link Building Tactic Is Going To Get Flamed Out Next? (Hint: Scholarship SEO)

Your company is literally the best in video surveillance at manipulating search engine rankings. As I said above, ethics aside, it is quite an accomplishment.

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to John Honovich

IPVMU Certified

It's obvious that the $1,000 scholarship is being used as a hook for a back link campaign.

Assuming what you say is true, what is unethical about any of this? Students need to write an essay that answers the following question.

"How would you use video surveillance to make a school campus safer?"

It is clear that there is only one $1,000 award. The students enter on their own volition. The universities create backlinks of their own volition.

As you say it's obvious, Everyone knows how it works.

Would it be more ethical if the prize was $10,000, or if there were only one entry?

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John Honovich

IPVM

The ethical issue is manipulating search engine rankings as it undermines a core function in modern society - finding relevant information online.

Google 'ethics SEO' for lots of discussion on the topic.

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to John Honovich

IPVMU Certified

I take it that you have changed your position?

Given how poor Google's search results have become, its near monopoly on search traffic and the terrible conflict of interest it has from selling ads vs showing organic results, I do not fault any retailer for these practices. If you want to play in Google's rigged game, this is what you need to do.

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John Honovich

IPVM

Two things: One, my statement there was overstated. I can understand and even sympathize somewhat why companies are driven to do that, but most companies, including us, do not resort to responding in kind.

And the reality is that companies that do that, harm the rest that do not.

Secondly, and funny enough, though, videosurveillance.com search position seems to have dropped a lot over the past few years. They used to be top ranked in many important key words but it would appear that Google's more recent search / SEO improvements have undermined videosurveillance.com's tactics.

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Undisclosed #4

We have been a competitor for this company for a few years now, and we use only organic and ppc google ads. At last count, i think we do on average 2 email campaigns a year. At least video surveillance charges decent pricing and has value added services. The worst are the stores setup by a few dealers who sell the equipment at 3-4% above their partner cost and flood the market and provide no support. Since they provide no support, there is literally almost zero cost beyond the advertising cost since they usually drop ship from ingram or scansource. Due to basically no margins, we have dropped 90% of our security vendors and focus more on 1-2 brands and higher end industrial electronics.

With Amazon business growing legs, honestly I dont see many online cctv companies lasting long term, and if we had a choice would exit the industry tommorow if the right replacement came up. Amazon aside, this is 100% the fault of manufacturers channel management and for years not understanding the impact of Ecommerce and how to incorporate it into their channels.

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John Honovich

In reply to Undisclosed #4

IPVM

"The worst are the stores setup by a few dealers who sell the equipment at 3-4% above their partner cost and flood the market and provide no support. Since they provide no support, there is literally almost zero cost beyond the advertising cost since they usually drop ship from ingram or scansource."

Thanks for the feedback.

Given this pattern, does this show that many buyers just do not highly value re-seller support?

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Ari Erenthal

In reply to John Honovich

Chesapeake & Midlantic

No one values support until they need it. Most consumers expect surveillance equipment to be on the same level of complexity as, say, a router or a printer or a particularly complex home theater server. The kind of person who most often buys surveillance equipment online is, I've found, a moderately techy person with a high level of confidence in his- usually his- ability to figure this stuff out on their own. And then they get mad when they discover that the Hikvision rebranded stuff they got barely has a manual and has an illogical and needlesly complicated user interface riddled with spelling errors and Chinglishisms, all indicators of low quality dreck when buying other categories of consumer electronics. And then they get even madder when tech support is nonexistent or might as well be.

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Undisclosed #4

In reply to Undisclosed #4

Many people looking online want the lowest price. If they know what they want or have a general idea, price wins. They may skip over a low quality website with the lowest price due to trust issues though. We do less then 500k a year in cctv and only get the customers who want to know they have support, ask presales questions, or we have items they cant find anywhere else. We have tracked inventory levels, sku and item descriptions for places like bh photo, surveillent, a1 and the other low ball sites and almost all are dop shipping the major brands from scansource. Sometimes if you see 8 sellers on google and a few on amazon selling an item, they are all selling the same exact items being drop shipped. You could create an ecosystem where you have online sales and margins for integrators, but many brands dont know how to do it, and their channel managers are still basing things on the old days. Even simple dmar programs would fix 90% of the non grey market problems.

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Jon Dillabaugh