Astroturfing Update

Today I was suffering from post-Christmas-pre-New Year malaise and I needed something to snap me out of it. I decided it might be fun to poke around on Technorati a bit and see who has been astroturfing recently.

XPEED is the quintessential astroturfer. In a single post he mentions: American Consumer Opinion Panel, Surveysavvy, Ciao Surveys, Greenfield online(Gozing), Pinecone Research, Globaltestmarket, Opinion Outpost, NFO Mysurvey and Lightspeed Research, Synovate, NPD Research, NOP World (Surveys.com), ECN Research and Nielsen Netratings. He even advertises his services with "Hire me! Have me blog about you on this site" and "Buy reviews on leading blogs" links prominently displayed next to the post. 

Shane Dolby calls himself the Internet Business Expert, but he's just reposting XPEED's stuff ... or is it the other way around?

Sydney Hazelton is a big fan of GlobalTestMarket, but after reading one of her earlier posts where she explains how to get paid for writing reviews, I'm no longer convinced her praise is genuine.

SandynPaul from bigbigforums.com really loves the Ipsos i-Say Panel. i-Say must really love her back, because the affiliate ID in the link she posted would suggest they're paying her.

Surveyline is astroturfing for TNS mysurvey.com, Opinion Outpost, Ipsos i-Say, and several others.

Realm of Prosperity isn't even trying to come across as legitimate. Every single post is about how much money American Consumer Opinion Panel, Opinion Outpost, GlobalTestMarket, Pinecone Research, or one of their other sponsors might pay you for taking surveys. They also accidentally confess to astroturfing in one of their posts.

The Flash Advancer, UltraPing, Tradtional & Contemporary Marketing (no that's not a typo), EigenDecomposition, The Transmission Outfit, The Content Blender, and I'm sure many others I missed, all posted the exact same content on the same day promoting top-paidsurveys.org. Turns out top-paidsurveys.org is a front for several of the usual suspects: Ipsos i-Say, Synovate Global Opinion Panels, ECN Research, etc.

Astroturfing seems to be on the rise as email becomes less and less productive for lead gen companies. I hope astroturfing will not be as damaging to the blogosphere as spam was to email, but only time will tell. I will continue to post periodic updates as long as there is MR-related astroturfing to expose.