City Waboo launches – immediately begins the positive-comment campaign.

8 May
2007

So Greg posts about City Waboo, yet another local search site.

I did comment about how it seemed a bit rough around the edges.

The next comment was from BurbankGuy with the following:

Hey what do you know, my business is listed. I looked at the packages to upgrade, seem fair enough. it says they are against the pay per click model, thank god someone is, i have waisted more money on PPC in the last 6 months then anyone.

Seems like it is still in beta, so I would expect few things not working. I would like to see it when its out of beta.

BurbankGuy’s homepage is SendFlowersFast.com. So City Waboo has them already listed – impressive right? But wait – the WHOIS shows the following owner:

Administrative Contact:
Arakelyan, Eduard

And check out Waboo’s press release:

…” said Eduard Arakelyan, co-founder of CityWaboo.com.

Well well – looks like BurbankGuy actually owns Waboo.

This of course doesn’t negate the comment after BurbankGuy (by ‘BusinessExecutive’), which is so syrupy and full of praise it just screams ‘I have a vested interest in this site.’

7 Responses to City Waboo launches – immediately begins the positive-comment campaign.

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Colin

May 8th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

Nice catch, Ahmed.

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Eduard Arakelyan

May 8th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

LOL.

Just few anxious family and friends trying to help.

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Doug

May 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Hahahahaha. Busted!

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Ahmed

May 8th, 2007 at 3:27 pm

@Eduard – I feel your anxiety. I really do. But posting anonymously about how it is so great, and having family/friends push out gushing reviews? That crosses the line.

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Kailash Nadh

May 9th, 2007 at 10:44 am

LOL :p

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Mark

May 20th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

Hi Ahmed,

I was greatly amused by this post. Since launching our site, several businesses have added/claimed a business listing listing on our site, only to review themselves a short while later!

All of these reviews exhibited the usual characteristics of a good ol’ self pat on the back in that they were excessively wordy, full of praise and of course 5/5 scores all round. Cracks me up every time ;)

Cheers,

Mark

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Ahmed

May 21st, 2007 at 10:05 am

Yep yep – we get a few of those days – you just remove them and warn them.

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