| LED Digest 2012: Filtering Email, Meta Tags, and more |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. August 18, 2005 Issue #2012 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Email Filtering ==-- ~ Kory Hellmer "I would be interested in hearing from Eudora users..." ~ John Brumage "We use a third party service called Postini..." --== Meta Tags Count! ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "Meta-tag content, unfortunately, is rarely used for relevancy purposes due to past abuse." ~ Donald Nelson "...the much maligned keywords tag still has some value." --== E-book Options ==-- ~ Martha Retallick "I would strongly suggest that you automate your purchasing process..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Script to Read Meta Tags? ==-- ~ Mike Seaton --== Security, Open Source & MS ==-- ~ John Smart ~ Michael Linehan ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Kory Hellmer Subject: Email filters > I prefer to take control of my own filtering, using the > features available in the latest version of Eudora. - Allan Gardyne, LED 2011 Adding Spamnix to Eudora has made it possible for me to accept and filter 4,000 + emails a day, my penalty for having a public email address for 9 years and for naming my business This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Except... When I was on vacation for 10 days recently, Eudora neglected to poll my email server every 12 minutes as usual. There are now 45,000+ messages on one of my email servers that I have not been able to reach yet. I would be interested in hearing from Eudora users who have experienced this problem. As usual, thanks in advance! Great list. Kory Hellmer ------- new post - same topic -------- From: John "Zeke" Brumage Subject: Email filters We use a third party service called POSTINI to scan email before it gets to our POP3 machine. our customers can go online to their deleted message folder and forward wanted mail to their POP mailbox. I don't know exactly what percentage of mail is mis-filed as spam, a very tiny percentage, but, as allen says, it is critical to be able to retrieve them. At this time we are under a dictionary attack, for the 30 days ending monday, my personal inbox stats: incoming messages: 440,078 delivered messages: 44,982 almost 90% spam, viruses, and the aforementioned dictionary attack. For all my 450 users the server had: 609,064 messages, of which 65,567 were delivered we do not have free email, it is bundled with dialup, tech support, and accellerator for our $19.95 package. the issue of spam is a serious one, the filtering packages in your inbox are a great help, but all ISP customers are not as savvy as you, so we feel obligated to provide filtering for them. John Brumage ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Meta Tags Count > MSN for instance, uses meta keywords, meta description, > and top text for their listings. I offer as proof the search > "stereoviews" which brings up my site stereoviews.com > at #1 showing both meta keywords and meta description > with no top text. - David L. Spahr, LED 2010 Hi all- This is in response to David Spahr's "incontrovertible proof" regarding meta-tag content. I think it's important to differentiate what text is used to determine relevancy, and text that is displayed in search results. Text can be used displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs) that has nothing to do with relevancy. An example of text that is used for both relevancy and SERP display is the HTML title-tag content. Meta-tag content, unfortunately, is rarely used for relevancy purposes due to past abuse. I create a lot of SERPs for clients who have site search engines. You can put any information you want in a search result. You can highlight anything you want in search results. Whenever you see "bold-faced" keywords in a SERP, it's called term highlighting. It's something that programmers can do to call attention to search results. Just because something is bold-faced in a search result doesn't mean that it's used to determine relevancy. It's a search usability tactic that has been tested and measured throughout the years. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Donald Nelson Subject: Meta tags Dear All, I agree with Bob Gladstein's (LED 2011) finding that Yahoo uses the meta keywords tag. I was looking in my referrer logs and saw that I was getting referrals from Yahoo for a mispelled word on one of my sites. I searched the visible text of the site and could not find any mispelling, and then when I reexamined the keywords meta tag I found the only instance of the mispelling (wieght instead of weight). So, the much maligned keywords tag still has some value. Sincerely, Donald Nelson www.a1-optimization.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: Ebooks In a recent LED, Brian Rotsztein raised three concerns about e-book publishing. He first asked, "What is the best way to sell these books? For example, should we set up a payment form such as paypal and once it is paid, re-direct them to a page where they can download the file? Is there a way to email it to the purchaser as an attachment? What would be the pros and cons of these approaches and others? What service should we use based on your past experiences?" My answer to the above: Speaking as someone who has been in the e-book publishing field since 2001, I would strongly suggest that you automate your purchasing process as much as possible. Here's how I've done this: 1. I work with a topnotch SEO specialist (Will Johnson at Net Profit Now, www.netprofitnow.com) to ensure that my two publications sites rank well in the search engines. This brings me qualified buyers more or less automatically, which means that I don't have to take major amounts of time away from my web and graphic design business to promote my e-books. 2. I use 1ShoppingCart.com, which is a service that integrates a shopping cart, credit card payment gateway, and product downloading. This allows the customer to pay and download automatically, without involving me in the process. For the customer, this means being able to get the material quickly, rather than waiting for Martha to approve the transaction and e-mail the e-books. Brian's second concern relates to fraud and copyright infringement. Unfortunately, there is no 100% surefire way to prevent these things. But you can use the security settings in Adobe Acrobat to make it impossible for people to copy the text out of your PDF e-books. You can also prevent printing and annotating. His third concern relates to pricing. The best advice I can give is to search around, see what your competitors are charging, then charge more. Why? Because you're putting out a better product that offers more than they do. And, better yet, people are willing to pay top dollar for good information. Take advantage of that fact. Martha Retallick Western Sky Communications Web & Graphic Design http://www.westernskycommunications.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Mike Seaton Subject: Reading Header Tags using VB Script Does anybody know a neat and easy way to read a page's <.title> and <.meta name="description"> tags using VB Script ? We offer free links to adverts existing on other sites (i.e. similar to a search engine) - click http://www.internationalboatsales.com/ and then "Browse Adverts" to see what I mean - and would like to be able to display the Title and Description of these Link Ads alongside the URL already displayed. Thanks in anticipation. Mike Seaton http://www.netsoftgb.com/ Everything for the aspiring millionaire! ------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Open Source I agree with a lot of what Paul Baugher says [issue LED 2010]. Up to a point: >Just for the record, I have nothing against open-source, > its great if you're a communist (or just a starving artist). > Just remember that more often then not, you get what you pay for. What? Please! Okay Paul, we run open-source servers. Yes there is an inherent risk when the source is publicly available, but the uptime report on our oldest server is 241 days. (241 days ago, I updated the email program - another open source utility) lets see a heavily worked Windows server match that! I program with PHP and MySQL - two wonderful open source programs. I am not a communist, and I am not a starving artist (I fail on both of these - I cannot draw to save my life, and I need to lose quite a few pounds). Open source is not the answer for everything, but by mocking it and turning your back, you are missing out on a lot of great stuff. Of course, you can pay a LOT of money for your MSSQL server - or even follow that 'Access' path. Don't get me wrong - I am not a Microsoft hater - all our servers are Linux / Free BSD, but all of our office machines are XP (with a Mac stuck in a corner for testing). Microsoft have a lot going for them (please don't flame me!!) but they have a lot against them also. If I migrated to a non-open source database (MS, Oracle, etc) my costs would go through the roof - something that would upset my clients. (Which would leave me starving. If I could learn how to draw, using Microsoft (in this instance) would make me a starving artist!) Perhaps staying away from sweeping statements would be best. After all, you would never catch me suggesting that people who stay away from open source are capitalistic materialistic sheep following the Microsoft leader. :) John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Viruses, general security It does not matter what browser or email software you are running or how strict your security settings within the software may be...... OK. Not sitting on my hands any longer. Sorry, yes it does matter. As the Wall Street journal said (roughly), "Tired of the crashes, viruses and spyware. Maybe it's time you tried a Mac." And please don't anyone reply with the old saw, "Windows has the majority of viruses because they have most of the market." Apache has three times the market share of Windows server, and has almost no viruses or hacking. The key problem is Microsoft software. Even John Dvorak, who is normally at the rabid, mouth-frothing end of the pro-Microsoft/anti-Mac spectrum, recently wrote: "As readers know, Microsoft has announced the name of its new operating system, which was followed by a collective yawn from the computing community. Vista? As in "Hasta la Vista, baby?" That name might be appropriate as a symbolic goodbye since it might be the end of the line for Microsoft's dominance in the OS business." and... "Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. So - if you're REALLY fed up with having to hassle with all that.... Michael Linehan www.marketing-alchemy.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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