{"id":1798,"date":"2008-12-17T19:23:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T23:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2008-12-17T19:32:14","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T23:32:14","slug":"merchant-circle-has-trouble-getting-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/17\/merchant-circle-has-trouble-getting-it-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Merchant Circle has trouble getting it right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have in the past criticized Merchant Circle&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/06\/merchantcirclefud-marketing-and-these-guys-get-10-mil\/\">marketing tactics<\/a>. However, my recent <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/16\/in-the-trenches-the-reality-of-smb-marketing-bruces-sew-handy-interview\/#comments\">interview<\/a> with Chuck Bruce of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brucessewhandy.com\/\">Central Valley Vacuum and Sewing Center<\/a>,\u00a0allowed me to see them from the merchant&#8217;s point of view and, for a moment anyways, allowed me to see them in a different light. I figured that if they could make Chuck happy and help him in his retail struggle, they couldn&#8217;t be all bad, despite the many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smallbusinesssem.com\/strange-goings-on-with-merchant-circle\/236\/\">Merchant Circle complaints<\/a> amongst search professionals. If Chuck said that they were a stand up company than who was I to proclaim otherwise. Maybe I just needed to adjust my point of view.<\/p>\n<p>That attitude didn&#8217;t last long. I had re-judged them too soon. They are in fact tacky marketers. They have been actively posting stealth comments in my recent <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/16\/in-the-trenches-the-reality-of-smb-marketing-bruces-sew-handy-interview\/#comments\">In The Trenches interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>New comment on your post #1750 &#8220;In the Trenches: the reality of SMB Marketing- Bruce&#8217;s Sew Handy Interview&#8221;<br \/>\nAuthor : Local User (IP: 64.105.141.242 , <strong>mx.merchantcircle.com<\/strong>)<br \/>\nE-mail : tom.johnson64@yahoo.com<br \/>\nURL    : http:\/\/www.merchantcircle.com\/business\/Bruces.Sew.Handy.559-641-7300<br \/>\nWhois  : http:\/\/ws.arin.net\/cgi-bin\/whois.pl?queryinput=64.105.141.242<br \/>\nComment:<br \/>\n182 Page Views a Month from the MerchantCircle listing.  Clearly generating some traffic from there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They didn&#8217;t just post once but have done so 3 times with three different identities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>My note to Merchant Circle: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You are welcome to come and discuss the issues in Local on my blog. You probably have a lot to contribute. But when you come, come as you are, don&#8217;t be skulking around. I can accept warts, I have a few myself. I just can&#8217;t abide you using my blog to\u00a0surreptitiously\u00a0promote your services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have in the past criticized Merchant Circle&#8217;s marketing tactics. However, my recent interview with Chuck Bruce of\u00a0Central Valley Vacuum and Sewing Center,\u00a0allowed me to see them from the merchant&#8217;s point of view and, for a moment anyways, allowed me to see them in a different light. I figured that if they could make Chuck &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}