{"id":757,"date":"2012-03-05T23:19:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T23:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dpscomputing.com\/wordpress\/?p=757"},"modified":"2012-03-05T23:35:50","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T23:35:50","slug":"breaking-news-visual-paradigm-dirty-tricks-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/05\/breaking-news-visual-paradigm-dirty-tricks-exposed\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING NEWS! – Visual Paradigm Dirty Tricks Exposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"World<\/p>\n

DPS Computing has today exposed part of a suspected dirty tricks and misdirection\u00a0campaign by the developers of popular systems modelling software Visual Paradigm which seems to be\u00a0designed to mislead users into mistaking the Visual Paradigm product for the rival product ArgoUML.<\/p>\n

As can be\u00a0seen 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.\u00a0 From the way the ad is described\u00a0in the title, with ‘Free ArgoUML’ this could easily decieve\u00a0some users into thinking that Visual Paradigm is ArgoUML, that they are both the same product or that they are in some way linked.<\/p>\n

\"VP<\/a><\/p>\n

There does not seem to be\u00a0any legitimate reason for\u00a0the developers of Visual Pardigm\u00a0to be\u00a0using the name of rival\u00a0piece of software ‘ArgoUML’ within their advertising.\u00a0 That leaves\u00a0the only logical conclusion that is\u00a0a effort\u00a0to ‘poach’ users away from ArgoUML\u00a0by having\u00a0adverts for Visual Paradigm appear on ArgoUML related searches.<\/p>\n

In the past, websites which have\u00a0attempted 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Visual Paradigm is a legitimate tool for UML modelling.<\/p>\n

Similar practices in web design used to be\u00a0used 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\u00a0on these popular search terms.\u00a0 This has been seen\u00a0for a number of\u00a0years now\u00a0as 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.\u00a0 Now evidence has been found so far to suggest that the Visual Paradigm websites are using these tactics.<\/p>\n

The outrage to tactics such as these is only likely to be\u00a0amplified by the fact that Visual Paradigm is developed\u00a0by a commercial company while ArgoUML\u00a0is developed by\u00a0a community based not for profit organisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DPS Computing has today exposed part of a suspected dirty tricks and misdirection\u00a0campaign by the developers of popular systems modelling software Visual Paradigm which seems to be\u00a0designed to mislead users into mistaking the Visual...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[199,186,197,30,187,200,198],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-advertising-deception","tag-argouml","tag-breaking-news","tag-dps-computing","tag-uml-modelling","tag-user-misdirection","tag-visual-paradigm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsfA-cd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":769,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}