Advertising Angels

There are plenty of companies out there that are willing to take your money and give you nothing in return. The hard part is being able to tell the good from the bad BEFORE you sign up. One thing you can try is to look the business up on the Better Business Bureau’s website. The challenge there is that their search feature really stinks.

Here’s an easy way to get the info you need by using Google instead:

1. Go to Google
2. Search for “company name site:bbb.org” (use the real company name, and no quotes)

You should get a list of results with the top one being the detail page for that company in the BBB’s site. Of course, if the company is not a BBB member, you won’t find this but that should tell you something about that company in and of itself.

Here’s an example – eLocal Listing. I’ve had countless tales told to me from customers of bad experiences with these guys, so I decided to look them up. I went to Google and typed in “elocal site:bbb.org” and found a link to this page all about elocal’s BBB info.

Not surprisingly, they get a pretty low score. Next time you want to do business with a company, do a quick search in Google with that “site:” modifier and see what you can pull up!