DPS Computing has today exposed part of a suspected dirty tricks and misdirection campaign by the developers of popular systems modelling software Visual Paradigm which seems to be designed to mislead users into mistaking the Visual Paradigm product for the rival product ArgoUML.
As can be seen in the image below, taken today by DPS Computing it clearly shows that the developers of Visual Paradigm are paying for advertisements on the name of the rival product ArgoUML. From the way the ad is described in the title, with ‘Free ArgoUML’ this could easily decieve some users into thinking that Visual Paradigm is ArgoUML, that they are both the same product or that they are in some way linked.
There does not seem to be any legitimate reason for the developers of Visual Pardigm to be using the name of rival piece of software ‘ArgoUML’ within their advertising. That leaves the only logical conclusion that is a effort to ‘poach’ users away from ArgoUML by having adverts for Visual Paradigm appear on ArgoUML related searches.
In the past, websites which have attempted to lure users to their website by misdirection or confusion by using the names of other (usually rivals) software have been flagged by security software and safe search systems. However it should also be noted that these websites have usually used the name of a legitimate piece of software and offered downloads of different software or the same software but bundled with adware / spyware – which VP is not doing. Visual Paradigm is a legitimate tool for UML modelling.
Similar practices in web design used to be used by some web designers where popular keywords would be ‘hidden’ in a pages content (only viewable by search engine spiders) and meta tags which would not directly relate to the website in question but would, hopefully for them, boost traffic to their sites by capatilising on these popular search terms. This has been seen for a number of years now as poor practice in web design and is generally considered by SEO experts to now harm search engine ranking, with most search engines now penalising web designers for employing these tactics. Now evidence has been found so far to suggest that the Visual Paradigm websites are using these tactics.
The outrage to tactics such as these is only likely to be amplified by the fact that Visual Paradigm is developed by a commercial company while ArgoUML is developed by a community based not for profit organisation.
View Comments (2)
Switch to Bing! ;)
Google is a more superior search engine though ;).