In Wohl Opticals Terms And Conditions page located here:
http://www.wohloptics.com/terms.htm#external
External Links to the Site:
All links to the Site must be approved in writing by Wohl Optics, except that Wohl Optics consents to links in which: (i) the link is a text-only link containing only the name “Wohl Optics”; (ii) the link “points” only to www.WohlOptics.com and not to deeper pages;(iii) the link, when activated by a user, displays that page full-screen in a fully operable and navigable browser window and not within a “frame” on the linked website; and (iv) the appearance, position, and other aspects of the link may neither create the false appearance that an entity or its activities or products are associated with or sponsored by Wohl Optics nor be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with the name and trademarks of Wohl Optics or its Affiliates. Wohl Optics reserves the right to revoke this consent to link at any time in its sole discretion.
How in the hell could they possibly enforce this?
What would happen if everyone linked to this post with Wohl Optics as the anchor text =P.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2414 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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Wow, that would make me rebel from linking to them.
Shoe, I know you got approval in writing before posting that link.
wow that’s advanced seo right there. Or just really lame link strategy. Note to self never link to Wohl Opticals.
haha, me too
Wohl Optics: We Own Hyper Linkings
Shoe, did you get permission to post that link? It’s not to the home page.
lolz
How clever of them to use reverse psychology! Get everyone to “fight back” by linking, Digging, Stumbling Upon, and blogging their site.
They must have had trouble with someone to get all lawyered up. I do not see how they can enforce it though. Links will happen.
that is great stuff. i was going quote individual sections and lol them, but i would have to quote the whole thing.
haha, how cute
Seeing as I’m an old, old man (IOW, I’ve been doing this about ten years now) … this used to be very common. Wohl is just being old school about it (or more likely, they haven’t updated their site for years).
I used to run a content portal site for the Time Warner cable franchise in Minneapolis when they first started selling RoadRunner cable modem service. I remember having to go through corporate legal channels sometimes in order to link to certain media sites … and Time Warner owned the damn things in many cases … Time, CNN, Money, etc, etc. And heaven forbid you wanted to “deep link” to anything but the front page.
So yes, this is completely insane … but let me tell ya, you young whippersnappers, back when the Internet was powered by steam and we had to carve html on stone tablets, this is how it was! And we liked it like that!
Kids today, don’t know they’ve been born, tsk tsk … and stay off my lawn, you dang varmints!
These guys are hilarious. Next they will say that if you don’t pronounce their name correctly, you must quit looking at the site.
hahaha. This is great. 1) It’s great that they actually put this garbage in their TOS 2) if this post would outrank them for their own name 3) That shoe is using the idiocy of this company, along with the eagerness for this company to get smoked, to get linsk to his own blog. Brilliant I say!
The work of a misguided lawyer who charged a large fee for a paragraph that people will laugh at.
Want to see something really funny. Visit their homepage then scroll all the way to the bottom. See those dots?? Run your mouse over them………… hhhhhhhhhh What do you think??
This is bizarre. I’ve never heard of such a thing. How do you find this stuff???
Excuse me while I engage in some illegal actions:
Wohl Newsletter
Online Catalog
TOC
LOLZ~!
Can I Use a New Frame?
I guess that means they don’t want to show up Google, Yahoo and MSN if their SERPS don’t appear in compliance with the above.
The search engines oughta take ‘em up on that.
WTF is that?! is the first time when I knew about this, Weird!
Working in retail, I’ve actually seen a number of companies that require you to agree not to optimize for certain words if you become one of their retailers – and not just trademarked stuff, either. I’ve seen documents that say you can’t use certain phrases on your product page, your meta tags, your Google AdWords…
…but this is easily the most obnoxious search-related policy I’ve ever seen, given that it appears to apply to anyone who happens upon their site.
It looks like there server could not handle the load. It is down as of 4:48 pm Eastern.
Everybody reading this comment is allowed to send me money; however, it must be in cash (large bills only), in a sealed yellow envelope with my first, middle, and last name on it, and delivered to me at home on Tues only between 2:45-3:00 pm.
Paypal, checks, money orders, wire transfers, and credit cards will not be accepted. I appreciate your business.
A great way to get bloggers talking about them, and maybe just linking to them “because”. Interesting strategy.
Exactly that Beau, its brilliant.
Not sure what happened but when I go and check out their site I get a 500 server error, lol.
Great find…that’s funny!
Well what ever they have to do I guess. It is a new internet, so get with the times.
This is the anchor text of a link to a non-existent page at Wohls. Take that!
Hope I didn’t just violate some 404 law that I’m not aware of.
Maybe those jackasses are onto something… I think I’ll either start charging people $10 each to link to me, or maybe just start killing anyone that links to me. I guess it will depend on my mood at the time.
Thank you, it was new information for me
sounds like LOL Optics
Hah, this page is already number 5 in the rankings.
Who wouldn’t want link love? Weird.
Something is fishy…
If you goto the opening page of their site, and review the source code there is approx 1/2 dozen links, with the anchor text of “.”, now why would an optical website be linking to any of these sites:
http://www.LongIslandSewer.com
http://www.nassaurubbish.com
http://www.lirubbishremoval.com
Something doesn’t make sense. I’m wondering if either the site had a recent SEO overhaul and the seo company traded in some links or it was hacked by an SEO firm? None of the pages which it links to seem to have any links back to the optical site?
I hate to say it, but I wonder if this is either a paid post by the company or a publicity stunt by Shoemoney Media to promote this site as their client?
Puzzled,
Bradford Knowlton
http://x86v.com
You are right, but a little Javascript (or PHP) code on your pages can prevent people from using your content in a frame to. And with better results I guess …
I think it’s a common clause to put in TOSs. I don’t know if they still do, but Neopets’ used to say that you couldn’t link to any of their web pages except the front page. They obviously don’t enforce that though; there are dozens of help websites linking to all sorts of pages.
Haha, that’s hilarious. How can hey enforce that?
i hope you have written permision…
That’s like saying, You can’t talk about us without you telling us it’s ok.
Pretty clever on their part. For the record…none of you are allowed to link to me either. EVER. Just DON”T DO IT!
Pretty clever on their part. for the record, none of you can link to me either. EVER. I’m telling you, DON’T DO IT!
Don’t link to our deep pages. Of course not, why would they want people to do anything that might help their SEO?
Put a deep link to them on your site and find out. They’ll call you up kicking and screaming and spazing until you take it down. Trust me, I’ve done it. They scream at you until their heads pop off.
Can i put that link in my comment
Simply put, they cannot enforce it. Why? Because nothing makes me agree to those terms.
Would SEO matters so much? I had a blog which got most access from google search. But apparantly, most people did not stay for long time for the quality of contents. Since then I started to focus more on providing better contents.
http://www.marketingnavi.com
I wonder why they put up such a policy if they know that they can’t enforce it and it is almost illegal. Is it for the publicity?
No, unfortunately they are serious and at least ONE individual has successfuly enforced a ruling against someone linking to the company site (later overturned). It’s most likely a ploy to potentially defend against a competitor.
“Our prices are WAY lower than Whols” is what they don’t want.
Google would be out of business if a judge stops linking.
LMAO……OHNO!!! You just broke the TOS!!!!!!
Hehehe, that’s just hilarious!
I just wonder what they are going to do with that !
I wish them the best of luck with their absurd TOS.
Yes, me too! Weird!
Haha…
They are funny guys
It’s amazing how foolish old school companies are… to think you can enforce this is amazing.
Thats just hilarious…
:LOL:
How do you find this stuff?
A touch of linkbait here, courtesy of Jeremy. Dunno how effective this strategy will be in the long term though!
Gotta love them lawyers….the world will be such a better place without them and their expensive pieces of paper…hahahaha
I smell fish too….could it be the Rand variety….LOL
Why not? I dare you to!
Make that me three….what kind of a comment was that?
I must be honest and say that I smell a rat here….seems like choice linkbait to me. How did you across this Shoe?
this men are crazy, i think:)
The idea is that if you tell people not to do something, they do it more.
I wonder if they try to measure how many weekly emails they get and see what kind of websites want to link to them.
As for enforcing, there is not much they can do, except run a regular “link:” query on google and figure out who links to them without the “permission”.
This may be a move to just tell google “hey, why did you penalize our pagerank? Look at our TOS, they linked to us without permission.”
Srsly lame!
Pretty funny.
Only one way to find out. Lets do it!