Learn to Find the Top 10 Web Hosts Scam Lists
Mention “top ten web hosts” lists in any hosting insider circle and you are bound to get a few girly giggles. You know why? 95% of the lists you find out there claiming to be a top ten list of the greatest web hosting providers known to man are crap. There are nothing more than a 2-bit scam to build up the webmaster in question’s affiliate account. So how can you tell the difference between the real top ten lists and the ones that are bought and paid for?
Look for Affiliate Codes
The first thing to look for is affiliate codes in the links. When you hover over the link for the web host on the top of the list, you should just see their domain name right? Say I am hovering over a link for Host Monster, I should see in my browser’s status bar that is is going to http://www.hostmonster.com. You know there is an affiliate code there when you see something trailing that address such as http://www.hostmonster.com/coupons/tophosts.php or something to that effect.
Sneaky Links!
Some top ten lists are getting sneaky though. They will link you to a page that looks like it belongs to them, but really they are hiding the affiliate code when redirecting you to the web host you are interested in. Very tricky indeed.
Ugly Web Site Design and Layout
Another sign that you are looking at top ten web host list gone wrong is the web site design and layout is ugly as sin. Need an example for that one? Check out web-hosting-top.com. Visually the layout here is bad enough to make any CSS guru die a little ‘bit on the inside. There is no color scheme, everything is too close together, you have random caps all over the place and different colored text. This page was not designed to be useful, it was designed to be at the top of Google. You want to know the sad truth? type in “top 10 hosts” into Google and you will find this guy is the third result down.
Prices for List Position
You can also keep an eye out for the obvious mention on their contact us or about us pages of how to get yourself on this list. Some places out there will go as far as putting up prices for position on the list they provide.
As you can see these people can get rather tricky when it comes to trying to make a buck out of your need for web hosting.
Related Hosting Posts & Podcasts:
Let’s be serious, web-hosting-top.com is most respected hosting reviews out there.
I personally like the colors ..
I personally agree with you. And for web-hosting-top.com, i think the content insides are probably ok, but the color is really very bad.