| LED Digest 2013: The Yahoo Mosquito |
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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 23, 2005 Issue #2013 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Yahoo Directory Listings Worthwhile? ==-- ~ Chris Allen "...most people these days...never actually get down to Yahoo's legacy directory..." --== Email Filtering ==-- ~ Wes Hopper "I use another address now for business which I carefully protect." ~ Dejan Bizinger "...my email client has a very useful option called Mail Dispatch..." --== Meta Tags Count! ==-- ~ Bob Gladstein "Just to clarify, so that no one will label me as a meta keywords true believer..." ~ Joel Anderson "Here is some evidence that Meta-tags do count." ~ David Spahr "I showed actual proof for my argument." --== E-book Options ==-- ~ Brian Rotsztein "Thank you to everyone who has written regarding my e-book questions." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Open Source & Microsoft ==-- ~ John "zeke" Brumage ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Chris Allen Subject: Yahoo Listing In LED 2006 Clint Whitsett (memorably) writes: > Every year the Yahoo mosquito wonders back looking for an > easy [vein] and we willingly [bare] some flesh without any real > way of knowing if the resulting welt and itching sensation is > worth the pain. I help to run a small online store (www.gentlemansemporium.com), and over the last year we've used Google Adwords and Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing) as well as a paid listing in the "legacy" Yahoo directory we first purchased last summer. We just received the same extortionary email from Yahoo, and a quick set of stats from our logfile analyzer answered the question for us: Of some 11,500 visitors referred from Yahoo in the past six months, only 95 (0.8%) came directly from our listing in the legacy Yahoo directory. The vast majority of Yahoo referrals came from our PPC campaign in Overture, natural search results, and links to our site from groups within Yahoo. A very distant fourth was the legacy directory listing. My read is that most people these days use the main ("modern") search engine at the yahoo main page, and never actually get down to Yahoo's legacy directory very often. Yahoo has hundreds of subdirectories, so it took a little bit to tease out those that are referrals from the legacy listing and those that come from search results and other sources within Yahoo. Short crib sheet: //yahoo/search/... -- PPC or natural search //yahoo/business_and_economy/shopping& -- legacy directory //yahoo/group/& -- yahoo user groups Paying $1.50 per click didn't meet our ROI threshold, and we really didn't like the self-serving spin Yahoo put on this service in the first place, so we were glad to let it expire. Your mileage will vary, of course, but breaking it out like this might help in Craig's situation. Good luck! Chris Allen, CoFounder Gentleman's Emporium Online ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Wes Hopper 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. - John Brumage, LED 2012 I too have been online since 1995 and my original email address draws tons of junk. I'm a Eudora user, but I don't use their filtering because I'm still using version 5. First, I use another address now for business which I carefully protect. Unfortunately it is now drawing a few junk mails after a year of use. For the old address I do three things - first, the default mailbox on the server is set to "discard" which dumps the dictionary attacks. Second, my ISP provides SpamArrest, which I have set to medium high. It marks the suspect mail as Junk in the subject line. Third, I have cheap utility called the A+Email Sp'am Filter which I can configure for From, Subject and To which deletes the mail at the server. When I set up SpamArrest I observed it for 6 weeks and white listed the false positives, and then set the desktop utility to delete all the junk SA marked. This cuts 400 mail a day down to 50, 30 of which I actually want. I have a problem with Postini, because I occasionally get a message from aweber that a delivery of one of the newsletters that I write has been blocked by Postini. This happens even though the issue scored zero on Spamarrest. I have no idea what criteria they use but the false positives must be high. I'm glad to hear that at least they are not being automatically deleted. Since I'm not a customer I have no way of taking the issue up with Postini. Wes Hopper http://www.createsuccessseminars.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dejan Bizinger Subject: Email Filtering > Unfortunately, I still haven't received that confirmation e-mail. > As near as I can determine, my ISPs sh-pam filters intercepted it. - Martha Retallick, LED 2010 ISP filters can be good but sometimes certain important emails can be deleted that way. That's why I like to handle email filtering by myself. I agree with Mr. Allan Gardyne who wrote in LED 2011: > The way I see it, if you're allowing your email to be filtered > by your ISP, perhaps you're part of the problem. You know what emails you want to get so there can't be any software or service that knows it better from you. Email filtering is good because it mostly uses blacklist databases from variety anti-spam organizations so you don't have to waste your time to get thru all of your emails. However, I wouldn't suggest that people delegate everything related to email filtering to their ISP. I use similar method for filtering like Allan Gardyne although I also use From fields or Subject lines, not just email addresses in order to filter and make a classification of my emails. Also, my email client has a very useful option called Mail Dispatch where I can see my email messages while they are still on the server. Then I can un-check and delete messages on the server so I don't loose my time and bandwith in downloading all of my messages. I find these steps very useful for my email communication and getting all important emails. Best regards, Dejan Bizinger Infacta :: Your Message - Your Way http://www.infacta.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Bob Gladstein Subject: Meta tags > I agree with Bob Gladstein's (LED 2011) finding that Yahoo > uses the meta keywords tag... I was getting referrals from Yahoo > for a mispelled word on one of my sites... when I reexamined > the keywords meta tag I found the only instance of the > mispelling... - Donald Nelson, LED 2012 Just to clarify, so that no one will label me as a meta keywords true believer: if my test demonstrates anything, it's that Yahoo will use the contents of the meta keywords tag in cases involving extremely low competition. As far as I know, the word I tested with only exists on my three pages, and Donald Nelson's example involves a misspelled word. Bob Gladstein ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Joel Anderson Subject: Meta tags Here is some evidence that Meta-tags do count. I sometimes include misspelled words in my Description and Key-Word meta-tags in hopes that a bad speller will find my website. Sometimes I also include them in the text, sometimes I do not. A recent addition to my website was a page of Nevada Brothel Tokens. I included the misspelled word Brothal in the Metatags, but not in the actual text of the site. A Google search on "Brothel Tokens" gives the page the number 2 spot A Google search on "Brothal Tokens" gives the page the number 1 spot Joel Anderson Interesting World Coins & Paper Money http://www.joelscoins.com joel, joelscoins.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: David Spahr Subject: Meta Tags and Rankings > When SEOs talk about the fact that meta tags do > not count, they are saying that these tags do not > affect ones search engine rankings. - Ajeet Khurana, LED 2011 Ajeet, I did not say that meta tags are primarily what makes good rankings. I did say the search engines read them and publish them in their listings for surfers to read and that does count any way you cut it. Why would they publish that info and not count it? It doesn't make sense. It seems likely that it was published in the listing because it was perceived as relevant information. I would like to add that my rankings are probably not an accident. MSN does bring up over 23,000 results for the search "stereoviews" (Google, 58,000+, Yahoo 161,000+). Got another explanation for my rankings these past 8 years? I do have quite a few competitors. I don't do anything real tricky. Basic HTML, basic meta tags, descriptive title, excellent domain name, keyword density, truly excellent links, flat navigation, and content, content, content. That's about it. Bruce Clay is a highly respected marketer / SEO. See what he thinks is important by looking at his site and his source code. He is #2 in Google for "search engine optimization", a highly competitive term with over 33 million results. He does similar things with meta tags, title, etc. No tricks. A clean approach. I think that is all the SEO most people need. Lots of people like my site. I have close to 1,500 inbound links according to Marketleap. More than 80% of those were created without my knowledge or reciprocation. This is how that #1 MSN listing reads: Stereoviews.com - Stereoviews and Photographic Images for Sale .. auction, auktion, vintage, Paris, equipment, war, links, antique-photography.com, spahr stereoviews and 19th and 20th century photography, antique and fine art photographs for collectors, dealers ... Even though I give ten top 10 listings in the big 3 as examples I guess it could still be considered a somewhat anecdotal argument as far as rankings go. That said, I am perfectly happy to have my keywords and meta description read as shown above. If they print them and rank me #1, I certainly am not going to change what I am doing. I heartily agree that the title tag is very important since that is what is shown as the title of the listing. It needs to be descriptive and "to the point". I showed actual proof for my argument. Let them show me theirs. I don't think it can't be done. Opinions are easy. Anyone can have one. David Spahr -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brian Rotsztein Subject: E-books Thank you to everyone who has written regarding my e-book questions. I have continued to read extensively on e-books and still find most of the sites describing their services to be very sketchy (as in "we promise great security" but they don't explain how, do so poorly, or fail to offer a demo or sample client). I have looked into everyone's suggestions but there are still some areas of concern. Although many people mentioned not allowing the books to be printed, that defeats the purpose. We WANT people to print the e-books because they have worksheets and stories that simply won't work with a computer screen, or a child with a disability for that matter. Next, it seems that one of the best solutions is to have the PDF document locked to the purchaser's computer. This is one of our best options right now because these are unique children's books and we believe theft (via forwarding e-books / e-mail attachments) will be an issue. Does anyone have detailed experience or advice on such matters? Again, I keep reading on it but there are never enough details. Is there a system that creates its own e-book reader which gets locked to the purchaser's computer (or allows forwarding but not opening of the book) that can take advantage of PDF files? Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Also, our books will not be very expensive and paying $100/month for e-commerce hosting + merchant account fees for supposed anti-theft shopping carts and e-book delivery systems seems a bit much at the beginning. Is there any way to use a system such as Paypal or Clickbank and still maintain some degree of control over forwarding and downloads? I truly appreciate everyone's points about not having passwords and/or making the process as easy as possible to decrease our hassles. It's the kind of thing we knew but needed a reminder on. Finally, I read that the Amazon e-docs program is being suspended but the e-books one is not. Any ideas on which our 10-50 page PDF e-books will fit into? Thanks again, Brian Rotsztein ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: John "zeke" Brumage Subject: Open source I want to say a few words about Microsoft and Bill. Many, many years ago, I was one of a handful of people that saw the possibility of building a computer small enough to be used by a single person. (I had several years experience doing customer support for a company that sold dialup for $10 an hour.) I had a long telephone conversation with Mr.Gates about the future, and he shared the vision of a computer on every desk. More importantly, he and his buddies out there in New Mexico worked their brains out to deliver a low cost product. Just to give you an idea, when windows came out for about $100 a copy, SCO UNIX was in the order of $7000. He had a product at the right price at the right time. He worked so hard, and devoted himself so diligently to the task that he missed the joys of starting a family until his mid-thirties. Sadly,the inevitable abuses took place when Microsoft grew to real power. Also he missed the boat completely on the internet. If Marc Andresson of Netscape had kept his mouth shut, they would have had at least another year before they were identified as a threat by Microsoft. Perhaps by then they would have been strong enough to withstand the counterattack: as an ISP, I was paying $25 per customer to supply Netscape and a dialer to signups, suddenly Microsoft had IEAK, which had explorer, outlook express, a dialer, and other features, and it was *free*. But actually, no software is free, you still had to spend some time learning, updating, etc. The same is true today. If you want to run a server using, for example, Red Hat Enterprise, even though the software is "free" you must pay for maintenance. In Windows server 2003, web edition, the maintenance is front-loaded, but you will end up paying about the same over the life of the product. Software count for my teeny tiny operation: 3 FreeBSD servers, pop3, SMTP, and a wonderful multiplayer game http://VargonMUD.com 1 Windows 2003 server, RADIUS and web pages. 1 Windows 2000 server with a website that refuses to migrate to the newer one. 3 Windows XP professional for bookkeeping, video editing, and the rest of the desktop type stuff. additionally I have a redhat server that I am afraid to touch because I can't afford the updates, and I am too stupid to update it myself. *sigh* John "zeke" Brumage http://anyhoo.com john, brumage.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Indecision is like a stepchild: if he does not wash his hands, he is called dirty, if he does, he is wasting water." - African Proverb |
