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The next time you google for a Digital SLR Camera (like the new Canon 40D or Nikon 200D) or a LCD hi-def TV,  beware of fraudulent websites being shown in the Google sponsored links on the top and to your right of the browser search results! Some of these sites, promote with a price match that is 50% less than popular sites like amazon.com, ebay or B&H. Once you click the link, you are transferred to a stripped down look-a-like of a pricegrabber comparison shopping cart with a zillion “Hacker-Safe”, “Verified by Visa” dummy jpgs. You would see most of your digital cameras offered for much cheaper prices and yes all of them have shopping carts, 1-800 numbers, cheap looking yet snazzy comparison, reviews, product description pages etc. You’ll now be tempted to go ahead without using your head much and poor you, you will realize only later, that you’ve been duped like many others. Read here, here and here for existing complaints from hundreds or who knows even thousands of customers. Thanks to the internet, it’s simple to find out a fraud comparison website like lowpricedigital.com or a fraud site like bwayphoto.com.

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I was trying to find a good deal on Canon 40D, it usually costs around 1299 from stores like Amazon. Ebay has the best offer of 1099$. But as you see in the above, I had four deals from the sponsored links – one right on the top which says – $519. The rest four as highlited, from the right sponsored results (all offering between $500-800$). There are probably many other products as I had similar results from using keywords like “Canon 40D”, “Nikon 200D”, “Samsung LNT4661″ (the no 1 selling hdtv). Here are the standard list of of Fraud websites, Fraud internet shopping sites for digital cameras, picked up from Google Sponsored links,

www.shopcartusa.com fraud site
http://www.bwayphoto.com fraud site
www.thecameraprofessionals.com fraud website
www.lowpricedigital.com fraud comparison site
www.everyprice.com fraud website
www.expresscameras.com fraud website

As a simple test, if you ever come across such an unbelievable offer, simply call their customer service number. Remember DO NOT GIVE your credit card info or buy from the site yet. If you get a continuous waiting message, try again. In my case, I called 8 companies, all of them had been listed on the fraud website lowpricedigital.com. Though different 1-800 numbers, they all had the same exact waiting message (some christmas carol), half of them never picked up inspite of waiting for 10 minutes.  And then, one guy picked up. He was so arrogant, a lot of noise hissing in the background. The guy said something like “It’s all sold out” and hung up on me! That’s it. Three seconds. “Wow”, I thought. I called the other and after nearly twelve minutes, someone picks up and says. “It’s all sold out Sir. We have’nt yet updated our website stock information”. I couldnt help but imagine the dude from the movie, Knocked Up, specially when it’s so easy to setup a shopping cart website these days.

Internet fraud is not uncommon these days but what’s shocking and devastating is that these sites appear on Google search results in their Sponsored links area right on the top. I wouldn’t have bothered if it was the general search results, as filtering them is far more uncontrollable. Google strives for innovation and certainly cares for it’s users like no one else and a lot of us respect that. But in this case, it looks like they’ve been quite callous to verify the integrity of the contents in these sponsored links.Â

What does this mean to the millions of users who trust Google? Doesn’t Google care enough to verify these sponsored links? Doesn’t Google like to take a little more responsibility on it’s premium content? If more people get duped everyday using Google’s search results, do they sue the website or the search engine which indirectly ‘helped’ them to buy the product. It’s not surprising to see that this is not the first time someone has reported about Google Sponsored Links Fraud Scam content. As one of them said rightly -

“In my opinion, if it comes to Google’s attention that they have a scam website for which folks use their search engine to locate vendors, and if they (Google) do nothing about deleting a scam site, then they should be held liable.”

It shouldn’t be that difficult to implement a remedy for this. Adding a “Report this link” button under each sponsored link to collect user’s feedback would certainly help. Once a certain number of reports are registered. Google can take a look at this for investigation and report the same/remove the links. I just hope someone isn’t frustrated to a point where, Google is sued and make bad press out of it but if you’re a user like me, spread this message, let THEM know, that we care about Google and everyone else.