Why 'top Hosting' Lists Are So Often A Fallacy
Because the web hosting industry has become more and more competitive
, customers have started relying on various web hosting review sites and top ten rankings to help them find good web hosting companies. But, if you are looking for a web hosting company and are thinking of going through the web hosting review sites or top ten web hosting lists, make sure you know that most of them are biased, paid for, and contain lies.
There are a lot of secrets that top ten web hosting lists and web hosting review sites do not want customers to know:
Most Web Hosting Review Sites Are Run For Profit
There is nothing wrong with running a website to make a profit. However, this becomes highly questionable for any web site that promotes ratings, top ten lists or rankings because of bias. Most top ten web hosting sites accept money to write reviews. Such rankings then become worthless as there is no way of knowing its validity.
A web hosting company that has paid a top ten ranking site to have its company ranked within the top ten is highly dubious as there is no correlation between the amount of money paid and the quality of the service that web hosting company provides its customers.
There are even high-traffic top ten rating sites that demand more money as payment to have a web hosting company ranked. It is almost like prime time television wherein the highly watched tv shows can demand higher advertising rates from companies who want to advertise on these shows. Just because a company can pay for an ad does not mean the product it is selling is of excellent quality.
Most Top Ten Ranking Sites Run Affiliate or Sponsored Exchange Programs
If you are browsing on the internet and come in contact with a top ten hosting site with the words "link to us", "referral", "affiliate" or "advertise with us" it means they are most probably accepting payment to manipulate their lists and their ratings cannot be trusted.
There are top ten hosting sites that negotiate a certain amount of "referral" credit, from any of the companies ranked on their site, for new customers that have been referred by them. This means that the web hosting company that is willing to spend more to the top ten ranking site will be ranked highest.
Web Hosting Companies Host Top Ten Ranking Sites And Rate Themselves
This is a very common thing. Many web hosting companies host top ten ranking sites and then rank themselves as the highest. For a top ten rank to be valid or acceptable there has to be real and honest customer feedback. But, if the web hosting company is writing its own feedback, how honest and reliable can that be?
Remember that these web hosting companies are not charities and they have expensive equipment and operating costs to maintain. They also have employees to pay. It is impossible to believe that they will rank their services out of the goodness of their hearts. They are in it to get as many customers as they can so they can make as much profit as they can.
Most Top Ten Ranking Sites Contain Reviews That They Edit Selectively
It is logical to assume that top ten ranking sites that are hosted by web hosting companies themselves would love nothing more than have rave reviews written for their web hosting company parents. And, with the prospect of earning even more money by accepting "affiliate" credit or cash for ranking other web hosting companies, they are very motivated to be selective about the reviews they publish on their top ten ranking site.
Most of them then write rotten reviews for web hosting companies that are their direct competitors. With this practice, they are able to manipulate other web hosting companies to pay them to have those web companies' name appear on the rankings.
The lesson here is, to make sure that you read the top ten rankings or reviews of more than one ranking site and take all the information you glean with a grain of salt. It would be better to read the reviews or rankings featured on well-known and reputed computer or technology magazines.
by: Shane Stafford
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