DrTdaxp

DirectBuy, a company that specializes in high-pressure sales tactics and suing bloggers, also creates spam pages and spam domains. I won’t link to them because these cookie-cutter websites clog up search engines, but searching for, “DirectBuy – Tulsa” and “DirectBuy – Los Angeles” will reveal exactly what I am talking about.

Each spam page appears to be identical, except for the town name and some randomly generated material. On top is a “DirectBuy” logo, followed by a horizontal menu with “Home,” Remodeling,” “Building,” and other links, ending with “Free Visitor’s Pass.” The left side menu has entries such as “Home Furnishing,” Home Improvement,” and” Kitchen Remodeling” and a link to “News Articles” (which are press releases — mainstream media news articles about best buy are less positive). There is also a “Member Testimonials” (sic) that includes an unverified quotes saying good things about the company.

The main body of the page has a sizeable flash animation, the left two-thirds of which are pictures of products you can presumably “buy direct” at DirectBuy, while the right one-third contains the text “Achieve your dream home for much less that you’d except! – Find out how at DirectBuy. Request a Visitor’s Pass.”

The rest of the body of the page has nearly identical text. The format appears to be “Direct Buy of CITY has helped people just like you save thousands of dollars since 1971. With [number of showrooms] in CITY, you too can have the power…” &c.

A word should be said about visitor’s passes, which are mentioned several times on the front page(s). The “pass” concept is part of a high pressure take-it-or-never-come-back sales approach that is described elsewhere in the blogosphere and also by Consumer Reports.