SEO Specialist Questioned by Police over Website SEO Review

I realise the title sounds sensational, like a clickbait newspaper headline, but sadly it’s an accurate title for this article, I had two police officers question me due to an SEO review! Updated April 11th, 2020.

On a cold Sunday night in December 2019, two Skegness police officers questioned me about harassing a Stephen Hall from Middlesbrough!

Before I get to the police questioning, a little history first, it’s complicated and spans a 5 year period!

An Unsolicited SPAM Email = Website SEO Review

On August 21st 2014 I received an unsolicited SPAM email to a @stallion-theme.co.uk email address (I own the domain). This wasn’t the only unsolicited SPAM email I received from this business.

The email SPAM was from a Middlesbrough Web Design Company by the name DLH Web Consultancy Ltd (https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08239559) located at Boho One – F05, Bridge Street West, Middlesbrough, England TS2 1AE: owner Stephen Hall.

Note: The limited business DLH Web Consultancy Ltd has since closed.

I decided to share the unsolicited bulk SPAM email from DLH Web Consultancy Ltd as a single WordPress Comment in the form of an SEO review. I shared the SPAM email on September 10th, 2014 at 03:25.

I gave my thoughts and quickly reviewed their business domain from an SEO perspective.

How I Knew This Was Unsolicited Bulk SPAM Email?

There’s plenty of definitions of what unsolicited bulk SPAM email is, a good definition is found at https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

The word “Spam” as applied to Email means “Unsolicited Bulk Email”.
Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.
A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.
Unsolicited Email is normal email
(examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)
Bulk Email is normal email
(examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)
Technical Definition of Spam
An electronic message is “spam” if (A) the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (B) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.

1. The email I received from DLH Web Consultancy was unsolicited, I did NOT give them permission to send me email.
2. There is no past customer/client relationship between me and DLH Web Consultancy, they had no reason to send me a generic marketing email.
3. There was nothing specific within the email about my websites needs, the generic email could have been sent to tens of thousands of email addresses. It even mentions generic emails “I suspect you receive many generic emails offering business services, but at Web Consultancy, we stand out”.
4. It was a bulk email, it included the Precedence Bulk Header.

The Precedence Bulk Header is added to reduce automated email replies (autoresponders) which can be a real problem for unsolicited bulk email SPAMMERS. Consider all the automated replies some people send out like “I’m on Holiday Until…”, the precedence bulk header when respected tells the mail servers receiving the bulk email to NOT send automated replies like the “I’m on Holiday Until…” type emails.

Why would DLH Web Consultancy add the bulk header if it wasn’t a bulk email?

Note: I still have a copy of the unsolicited bulk email dated Thu, 21 Aug 2014 14:56:13 which I plan to send to the police.

The email was a clear cut Unsolicited Bulk Email, it was SPAM so I reviewed it as a comment.

Reviewing SPAM and websites is not unusual behaviour from me, I’ve reviewed plenty of websites, sometimes due to unsolicited email SPAM, others Blog comment SPAM (where a comment on a site is clearly SPAM) and for others just because it’s interesting and I see an SEO teaching moment. Below is over a dozen Blog posts reviewing one website or where I’ve included one or more reviewed websites as part of the article.

I was trying to land an SEO job with the above screenshot which was part of a website review.

A Single WordPress Comment = Google Review SERPs = One Triggered Email SPAMMER

I’ve built a set of WordPress SEO features which means larger comments are indexable by Google and other search engines in their own right, they are treated like any other webpage, but they are still only comments.

The SEO comments output have a unique title tag so can be ranked for relevant Google SERPs and that’s what quickly happened with this simple review comment, it ranked for “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd Review” type SERPs.

I didn’t do anything special with the review comment, just so happened the business I reviewed is so rubbish at search engine optimization it was really easy to rank in Google for those search phrases.

On December 11th 2014 Elizabeth Mulligan (the unsolicited email SPAMMER) made a comment on my website which I approved: I believe in a right to reply and rarely delete a real users comments. You can find the original comment (archived) at http://web.archive.org/web/20141215082044/http://stallion-theme.co.uk:80/google-consultant/, it’s currently located at DLH Web Consultancy Ltd Review Response.

I replied to the comment on the 12th of December 2014 and moved on: I hadn’t seen the Facebook negative SEO threat from Stephen Hall on the 12th December 2014 and didn’t take the Blog post http://www.webconsultancy.uk/a-response-to-seo-dave/ on Stephen Hall’s business Blog with my name, home address and phone number seriously enough: my mistake, it was the start of a series of negative SEO attacks!

You should note the December 11th 2014 comment from Elizabeth Mulligan included a link to http://www.webconsultancy.uk/a-response-to-seo-dave/ which at the time (December 11th, 2014) attacked me (I sometimes use the nickname SEO Dave) and included my name (David Law), full home address and home telephone number.

They had started to carry out the negative SEO attack her boss threatened me with via Facebook!

I didn’t screenshot the relevant webpage, (I didn’t take the threat of harassment and follow through seriously at the time) but you can see here http://web.archive.org/web/20141227090843/http://www.webconsultancy.co.uk/blog/ it was on their site on 27th of December 2014, over 2 weeks after they carried out the first negative SEO threat on the 11th of December 2014.

That’s 4 days before I shared the screenshot (correction: I didn’t share a screenshot in 2014, I only shared the text of the email, it was years later I took a screenshot) of the negative SEO attack threats via Facebook (see below) and 12 days after Stephen Hall had sent me a Facebook message on the 15th of December 2014 where he said “I will help anyone if I can as I really am a nice guy” and “I do appogise for my rant the other day but I was very upset / angry as I’m sure you understand…”.

Seems Stephen Hall made the threat over Facebook and carried out the threat on his business Blog the same day (11th of December 2014), then apologised for the “rant” on the 15th December 2014 (via Facebook), but left the negative SEO Blog post with my name, home address and telephone number for all to see for at least another 12 days (so much for being sorry)! Sadly the archive site hasn’t archived the relevant negative SEO Blog post or any other webpages to indicate how long it was on the site: could have been live for 13 days or a year plus, there’s no way to know for sure (I didn’t check again until October 2016 and it was gone then).

Good Review SERPs = One Triggered Stephen Hall

On the 15th of December I noticed 5 Facebook direct messages from Stephen Hall (the owner of DLH Web Consultancy Ltd) dated 11th December 2014, the 5 Facebook messages were sent over a 32 minute time frame (first message 14:58, last message 15:30). Since Stephen Hall and I aren’t Facebook friends his messages where semi-hidden by Facebook under “Message Requests”, pure luck I found them just 4 days after he sent them: could have been 4 months.

I shared a copy of the Facebook messages as a comment with title “Threatened with a Negative SEO Attack” including my reply. I made the comment on December 15th, 2014 at 13:48.

I made a single reply via Facebook on the 15th of December 2014.

Stephen Hall replied via Facebook around 5 hours later (his reply is included in the Facebook screenshot below) which I did NOT reply to. In the following 5 years I haven’t contacted Stephen Hall and he hasn’t contact me via Facebook (a screenshot today would look like it did 5 years ago).

Note: that’s the ONLY ‘direct’ contact I’ve had with Stephen Hall over the past 5 years, this is very important. I’ve had no other contact via Facebook, no email, no phone calls, no snail mail letters and have never met Stephen Hall in person.

Unethical: Stephen Hall Negative SEO Threat

Correction: I thought I took the screenshot of the above Facebook negative SEO threat by Stephen Hall in December 2014 to share with the comment I made on December 15th, 2014. I thought I added the screenshot on the same day I shared the text, I didn’t take the screenshot in December 2014, it wasn’t until May 26th 2017 AFTER another negative SEO attack in the form of a Google defamation claim. You can see the archive version of the comment on February 2017 http://web.archive.org/web/20170214075731/http://stallion-theme.co.uk:80/google-consultant/ didn’t have a screenshot, I added it much later.

One Honest Mistake = Google Removing Review SERPs

Christmas 2014 came and went and I pretty much forgot about DLH Web Consultancy Ltd until in I believe October 2016 I noticed the domain owned by DLH Web Consultancy Ltd had changed it’s name: it had pretty much dropped the DLH part.

I WRONGLY assumed the owner had simply changed the name of the business from “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” to “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” to avoid the negative SEO reviews related to the DLH part of the business name.

I’ve never owned a ltd business, but I’m aware the owner can change there name easily: for example “WEB CONSULTANCY GROUP LIMITED” was originally called “DATA SUPPLY SERVICES (UK) LTD” (name was changed on 14th October 2014), see https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07924238.

So I updated my comments to reflect what I honestly thought was a simple business name change: see archived copies at http://web.archive.org/web/20161028023743/http://stallion-theme.co.uk:80/google-consultant/. At this point it was just a handful of comments.

I’d made the mistake of saying “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” and “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” are the same business, they aren’t, they are in fact two separate limited businesses: this is very important. I think a reasonable person would accept this is an honest mistake, the two business names “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” and “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” are similar.

What had actually happened was Stephen Hall had closed “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” and renamed another limited business to “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” and had started trading web design services etc… under the new name.

Since legally “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” isn’t “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” my updated comments were technically defaming “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” (used to be called “Data Supply Services (UK) Ltd”). Doh!

To be clear legally I was (accidentally) defaming the legal entity “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” (a limited business), I did NOT defame Stephen Hall or any of his employees.

In November 2016 Stephen Hall made a successful Google defamation claim: though he did apparently lie, I never received any emails from him. Stephen Hall said he sent three emails in the defamation claim, maybe Middlesbrough/Skegness police should ask to see the evidence he sent them, because I didn’t receive anything!

If he’s telling the truth he must have sent the three emails sometime in October 2016 or early November 2016: I’d bet he can’t prove he sent them. If he can I’ll happily admit I’m wrong, maybe my email software put them in the junk folder with the rest of the unsolicited SPAM email his two unethical businesses kept illegally sending me!

Update: I contacted Fasthosts support and they have no record of anyone ever contacting them for my contact email address, so it would appear whoever from Web Consultancy made the Google defamation complaint lied to Google!

Successful Defamation Claim = A Triggered SEO Expert

I was annoyed to say the least, a scumbag email SPAMMING business had managed to remove an honest negative website review.

Free speech is at stake, I was finally triggered.

I fixed my mistake by making it clear legally “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” isn’t “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd”, they are two separate businesses owned by Stephen Hall.

For the record it took me a while to realise the mistake I’d made, it wasn’t obvious. I thought Google had made a mistake so quickly copied the DHL Web Consultancy Review to another (not very important) website I own REPEATING the same mistakes! This allowed Stephen Hall to make a second successful Google Defamation claim: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/14396616 and so that review was also removed from Google. The information included in the defamation report (pasted below) finally was enough to figure out my error.

As Web Consultancy Group Limited is a legal eternity the information on these pages wire Liable… Now you have removed those pages, the person has now written an article about the removal and then pasted all the same content on the new pages.. Given my business “Web Consultancy Group Limited” is a separate legal entity this site is breaking the law claiming we are “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd” when in fact we are different companies..

A week or so later I’d removed the offending content and Google has been indexing/ranking the content ever since.

Web Consultancy Group Ltd SPAM

I received MORE unsolicited email SPAM from “Web Consultancy Group Ltd”, that meant I could legitimately review the new business “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” as an unsolicited SPAM emailer, so I did.

Interestingly had Stephen Hall not made the Google defamation claim removing my one comment about unsolicited SPAM email from DLH Web Consultancy I probably wouldn’t have reviewed the new businesses unsolicited SPAM email and there would still be just the one comment.

I normally delete SPAM emails, even the ones I review. Fortunately I kept the original emails for 4 of the unsolicited SPAM emails sent by employees of “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” and the one unsolicited SPAM email sent for “DLH Web Consultancy Ltd”.

The 4 SPAM emails from “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” were sent to a defunct website google-adsense-templates.co.uk between 27th March 2017 and 6th June 2017. They all refer to the business “Web Consultancy Group”, one of the unsolicited SPAM emails were sent by Elizabeth Mulligan who also sent the original SPAM email I reviewed in 2014.

They might have changed their business name etc…, but they were still sending out unsolicited email SPAM in June 2017.

At the time of the new SPAM the domain google-adsense-templates.co.uk hadn’t had content on it for years. I used to use it for selling and giving away free AdSense themes. I moved the content to another domain in 2014, this is the last valid archived version of the domain http://web.archive.org/web/20140801031523/http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/ (August 1st 2014). Go to later dates and it 301 redirects to another domain. I’ve since allowed the domain to expire (I no longer own it) and someone else bought it, currently it looks like no one owns it (no website).

If “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” were visiting websites who might be interested in using their services in 2017, how did they manage to find my old email address to SPAM me at least 4 times?

It is obvious they either harvested the email address prior to August 2014 or bought a list of email addresses to send unsolicited SPAM email to. Either way if they were only sending emails to businesses who might use their services, why didn’t they check if the domain had a website?

Note in 2017 Web Consultancy was linked with a domain selling large email lists for unsolicited email SPAMMING.

At the time there was a copyright notice: Web Consultancy Group trading as b2b-data.co.uk. Web Consultancy owned this domain.

They not only sent out unsolicited SPAM emails, they sold the ability to send unsolicited SPAM emails to others. At the bottom of their unsolicited SPAM emails is an unsubscribe link to b2b-data.co.uk.

Quick Tip: NEVER unsubscribe from an email SPAM database via a link within the SPAM emails, if you do you have confirmed your email address is valid and it has more value to the email SPAMMERS: a confirmed email address is more valuable. They know you read their email and don’t know this is a way to confirm you received it and read it: they see those people as gullible targets! It’s highly unlikely they’ll remove you from the database, they are unsolicited email SPAMMERS after all.

See my full Web Consultancy Group Ltd Review.

Middlesbrough Web Design Company Unsolicited SPAM Email

This time I didn’t limit the Web Consultancy Group Ltd Review to a simple WordPress comment, I upgraded my SEO, I moved to a full WordPress Post with relevant optimized images and full on SEO. Since I was concerned about Stephen Hall making a new defamation claim, I created two backup reviews on other sites.

I easily dominated their business review SERPs and some non-review SERPs, it’s been that way since May 2017.

Since employees of Stephen Hall has sent me multiple unsolicited SPAM emails I also reported Web Consultancy Group Ltd to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who deal with SPAM email: see Reporting Web Consultancy Group Ltd to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for Email SPAM.

I’ve reviewed plenty of businesses which have ‘wronged’ me in some way, treat me badly and I’ll review your business. If you don’t want an honest review, treat your customers etc better. This is the first time a business has truly ‘fought back’, every time Stephen Hall tried to damage my website or me, I put more effort into my SEO reviews.

Had he completely ignored the original comment I’d have forgotten about it, it was just a SPAM email after all, but he’s making it personal sending the police to my home in December 2019, he is exhibiting a pattern of harassment just to remove a review of his unethical business practices!

IMHO Stephen Hall is harassing me, multiple messages via Facebook including a negative SEO threat, posting my name, home address and phone number on his business sites Blog, multiple unsolicited SPAM emails from his employees, misleading Google that he’d sent me three emails related to defamation and now wasting Middlesbrough police and Skegness police time in following up a spurious harassment claim! Update February 16th 2020: another defamation report at https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/20095391/ with misleading information: I have NOT received “a warning for harassment and stalking” from the police.

I cannot understand why the police would be pursuing me when they should be protecting vulnerable website owners who are being sent unsolicited email SPAM by Stephen Hall’s businesses!

I Know Visibility Group Ltd Exists

Visibility Group Ltd Owned by Stephen Hall

For the record I made the above screenshot of the Visibility Group Ltd Company House webpage on December 5th, 2019, four days after the police visit. Prior to December 5th none of my WordPress Posts (see later about a WordPress comment by a Mr Wednesday) included anything about Visibility Group Ltd: I wasn’t planning on adding information about Visibility Group unless they SPAM emailed me or Stephen Hall (who owns all Visibility Group Ltd ordinary shares) harassed me again.

In August 2019 Stephen Hall started to trade web design services etc… under the business name “Visibility Group Ltd” (another separate limited business). I noticed this quite quickly, what I believe is a staff member called “Beth Web” had contacted me via Facebook on August 21st 2019.

Good morning David,
My name is Beth and I work at Web Consultancy. I’m writing hoping we can discuss the issue we have had in the past and your comments about us on – https://stallion-theme.co.uk/web-consultancy-ltd-review/
Looking over the whole situation, I can see how it escalated but I don’t think an issue several years in the past should continue to tarnish the present and future. I would really appreciate it if you could give me a little time so we can talk about it and hopefully agree a resolution.
Thank you – I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
Beth

I’ve no idea if Beth Web actually works for Web Consultancy, but it got me checking the business out again and found that it looked like “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” is in the process of being closed (made dormant) and Stephen Hall looked set to trade under the new name “Visibility Group Ltd”.

I didn’t respond to Beth Web and did nothing, didn’t add anything about Visibility Group to my websites: I was very busy rebuilding the SEO Gold site to restart my SEO services business which I closed over 5 years ago.

Did a Users Comment Trigger Stephen Hall?

On the 16th September 2019 there was a new comment Web Consultancy Group Ltd & Visibility Group Ltd are Owned by Stephen Hall by a “Mr. Wednesday” on one of my reviews. “Mr. Wednesday” wrote:

As an addendum to my comment, Web Consultancy have, once more, changed their identity. They are now going under Visibility Group Ltd. Add this to the pile of their other monikers.

“Mr. Wednesday” had made the same mistake I’d made, “Visibility Group Ltd” is NOT the same business as “Web Consultancy Group Ltd”, they are two separate limited businesses, both owned by Stephen hall, both offering web design services etc… in Middlesbrough.

Before approving the comment, I added a legal notice making it clear “Visibility Group Ltd” is NOT the same business as “Web Consultancy Group Ltd” so that my site didn’t again fall foul of a successful defamation claim!

For the record the comment by Mr Wednesday is NOT my content, I did NOT write it and I have no idea who Mr Wednesday is.
I have an email address for Mr Wednesday which could be fake and 2 IP addresses he/she used to send the 2 comments.
Interestingly one of the IP addresses is in Middlesbrough, literally just around the corner from Visibility Group Ltd offices and it’s on what I believe (90% sure) is a static IP which links the IP to a specific customer. Looks like Mr Wednesday is from or at least visits Middlesbrough.
Don’t worry Mr Wednesday, your precise location is safe, I wouldn’t share it with anyone: pretty sure that would be a data breach resulting in a large fine anyway.

That gets us roughly up to date until December 1st 2019 when two Skegness police officers questioned me regarding the harassment via Facebook of a Stephen Hall from Middlesbrough.

The Police Question Me

My wife and I were just heading out of the house (in Skegness) at about 9:30pm on Sunday December 1st and a Police van pulled up a little down the street. As we walked by a police officer stepped out and I said something like “hey, how’s it going?” and he replied with a similar pleasantry.

A few steps later we heard the police officer say something like “excuse me, do you live there?”, he was pointing at our home. I replied “yes” and we walked back towards the two police officers to find out what they wanted.

They confirmed who I was (David Law) and asked if I had a couple of minutes to chat. I was happy to chat on the street, but they wanted to talk off the street, so we went on our property.

One of the police officers asked me if I knew a “Stephen Hall from Middlesbrough?”.

My first response was, “who?”, until I realised it was related to my Web Consultancy Group LTD Review which is owned by a Stephen Hall from Middlesbrough.

The two Skegness based police officers explained Middlesbrough police had received a complaint I’d been harassing a Stephen Hall from Middlesbrough. They explained they’d (the two Skegness police officers) weren’t part of the investigation (they knew nothing really), they were pretty much passing on a message from the Middlesbrough police force related to online harassment via Facebook.

Seems Stephen Hall has made a spurious complaint that I’m harassing him via Facebook or possibly the information passed on from the Middlesbrough police force had been misunderstood: there’s been no Facebook contact for 5 years (see earlier).

I explained roughly what had happened, but it was clear the two police officers didn’t understand much of what I was describing: for example they’d never heard of SEO. Their job was basically pass on a message from Middlesbrough police and that was it really. It’s a shame the police officers had to waste their valuable time talking to me!

I gave the two Skegness police officers my telephone number to pass on to the Middlesbrough police in case they have any questions: I have nothing to hide, I’ve done nothing wrong.

The informal chat with the police took less than 5 minutes and it didn’t concern me, I wrongly assumed that would be the end of it.

Update February 2020: I suspect the two Skegness police officers had misunderstood the harassment complaint, according to a voluntary interview under caution with a 3rd police officer (on February 14th, 2020) the spurious harassment complaint has nothing to do with Facebook. Even after a long police interview I’m still not sure why I’m being investigated for harassment.

Stephen Hall is the bad guy in this story.

His business SPAM emailed me multiple times
I reviewed a single example of the SPAM email in one comment
He threatened and carried out a negative SEO attack, posting my home address on his Blog!
I add more comments documenting the threat over Facebook
He misled Google to get a defamation claim: he NEVER emailed me!
I moved from comments to a full WordPress Blog Posts dominating his business review SERPs
His new business SPAM emailed me multiple times
I reviewed more of the new SPAM emails
He makes a spurious harassment/stalking claim to the police!
I make this WordPress Post and update other articles to include Visibility Group Ltd info
He makes another misleading Google defamation report!

I still have a copy of at least 5 of the unsolicited SPAM emails in their original format (experts could confirm these are from Web Consultancy Group Ltd etc…) to an email address which had NOT had content for 5+ years. I’m happy to share these emails with the police like I shared them with the ICO.

What Next?

Looks like the Skegness police officer is trying to build an harassment case against me. Since as of February 16th 2020 I haven’t been arrested/charged with anything and I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong, my plan is to carry on relatively normally and wait to see what happens next.

Since everything I wrote about Web Consultancy etc… is spread over 5+ years I’m going through any WordPress Posts and comments mentioning Web Consultancy etc… and making sure everything is clear and not misleading (adding explanations where it’s misleading, removing some of the out of date info). For example on one Post I said what I COULD do if wanted to dominate Web Consultancy SERPs, if a person reads a COULD as a will I’m making a threat, when all I’m doing is indicating my SEO skills.

Unlike Stephen Hall I don’t have a team of writers who could quickly achieve his negative SEO threat:

Stephen Hall 11/12/2014 15:24
Currently my writers (Obviously I’m not a writer) are writing many blogs, posts and articles about you, your business and everything we can find relating to 26 Wainfleet Road, Skegness, Lincs PE25 3QP United Kingdom – 01754763099… Give me a few weeks and everytime Google is searched for anything relating to the above they will find our posts… wonder how you like it big man.

I’m a one man band, it would take months to follow through on my COULD: I don’t think I ever said I would, only that I could. I was hoping Stephen Hall would be intelligent enough to realise IF I truly targeted his business SERPS I’d dominate his market and he’d be smart enough to stop harassing me to get a negative review removed from Google!

In January 2020 I started an SEO test to see how easy/hard Digital Marketing Company SERPs are, I COULD have quite easily targeted the Middlesbrough local SEO area and created a Visibility Group review. I opted to target Skegness (where I live) and London for my early SEO testing despite Visibility Group being an appropriate review target. I was trying to avoid more drama.

For feck sake, it took around 2 1/2 years before I changed from a single WordPress comment review to an actual WordPress Blog Post and that was after Google had removed my comment and associated WordPress Post from Google and I had to do something to fix it. The defamation result was the entire Blog Post lost it’s SERPs as well, wasn’t just the comment with the review. They caused enough SEO damage I deleted the WordPress Post and started again! I’m a reluctant participant in this drama, in 2014 all I wanted was for an unsolicited email SPAMMER to get a little SEO ‘slap’ to make them rethink their unethical business practices.

What you have to remember about Google is no one owns a Google search phrase.

If I want to target Visibility Group SERPs, I will target them, same as if anyone wants to target SEO Gold SERPs (my business name) they can.

There’s more than one business on the planet called SEO Gold and there’s more than one business called Web Consultancy or Visibility Group. No one ‘owns’ these words.

There’s already a business called Visibility Group https://visibility.group/ which is a digital marketing agency and they rank number 1 in Google for their business name: Visibility Group.

Is Stephen Hall doing something wrong also targeting that business name with a similar set of services? Of course not, he has a right to target any phrase he chooses, as do I.

If the police do decide to charge me with harassment I will be blogging about how the police are misusing the harassment act 1997 to silence review based content!

I’ll also be looking into contacting journalists to see if they are interested in covering a story about a Middlesbrough based business owner who has past businesses which engaged in unsolicited SPAM emails and is now using defamation and harassment (and possibly stalking!) claims to stop free speech. With recent free speech court cases it could gain some traction, I have some journalist contacts via Twitter since I own a news website. I could even describe myself as a part-time political journalist, since I write about politics and economics a fair amount.

I’d rather not spend more time on this, but I will NOT be silenced. I cannot see how a magistrate court would order me to delete honest reviews (nothing is false) including comments by other consumers who have had a bad experience with web consultancy. Many magistrates are small business owners, I’m sure they’ve experienced more than their fair share of unsolicited SPAM emails from business like Web Consultancy.

David Law

David Law : Technical SEO Expert with 20+ years Online Business, SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing experience... Creator of multiple WordPress SEO Themes and SEO Plugins. Interests: wildlife, walking, environmental issues, politics, economics, journalism, consumer rights.

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