| LED Digest 1740: Email Address Verification? |
|
|
|
================================================== 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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ February 3, 2004 Issue #1740 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Email Address Verification ==-- ~ Andy Johnson "Is there a method of verifying the email address on the fly..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Use of Sub-domains for Rankings ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "Where there's a will to cheat the system - someone will find a way." ~ Shari Thurow "I wish there were better answers to this." --== Ad Blocking Software ==-- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "...it's not always up to us, as marketers, what our market sees..." ~ Becky Neilson "I would never want to entice someone to leave my website with popups." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Viewing Source Code Disabled? ==-- ~ Paul J. Kulhavy ~ Bryan W. Shea --== Brightmail Filtering Service ==-- ~ John Arrowsmith ======= NEW ====================================== From: Andy Johnson Subject: Email Address Verification LEDers, I have gotten a lot of good helpful information over the years I have been a subscriber. Thank you for that. I am hoping one or more of you can solve a problem for me regarding a form on our web site. We sell our own software and have demo and trial versions plus product brochures, etc. Before you are allowed to download any of the information, demos, etc. you have to fill out a short form consisting of first name, last name, telephone number, email address and country. We get a lot of people typing in fake names, etc. including bogus email addresses. We check the email address for format, but do not know of a quick method of verifying that the email address actually exists. Is there a method of verifying the email address on the fly, as we would like to prohibit the download if the prospective customer has not entered a legitimate email address? Our web pages are in asp as we are hosted on a dedicated Windows 2003 server. Thank you in advance for your suggestions and solutions, if any. Best regards, Andy Johnson, Technical Sales Manager sysFire, LLC www.GreenleafSoft.com andy [at] sysfire [dot] com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Marty Milette Subject: Sub-domain rankings > We have noticed an increasing use of subdomains > with the intent of dominating the search results, > especially on Google... The concern is obvious and > we are surprised that this issue hasn't received > more attention by Google... - Jim Berry, LED 1738 There are actually quite a few very legitimate reasons why a webmaster may wish to use sub-domains: 1. To break a large site into categories. Something like, beer-caps.beer-store.com, beer-cans.beer-store.com, etc. In this case the desired result is not to duplicate content, but to better organize it and develop sub-sites with tighter themes. 2. To facilitate the creation of multiple language versions of your site -- for example: de.whatever.com, fr.whatever.com etc. The benefit is ease of translation and duplication of existing site structure, layout, etc. 3. Some hosting companies and domain registrars (mostly regional) sell sub-domains. For example, whatever.co.uk or arcadia.spb.ru. 4. Some affiliate programs set up co-brand sites on sub-domains. For example, russian-lady.wwdl.net. In any of these cases EXCEPT the fourth one (which generally IS a duplication of content), there is absolutely no reason why search engines shouldn't spider and rank all versions of the sites. I'm less worried about subdomain spamming and more worried about vendors who just register a pile of domains and create hundreds of slightly modified versions of the same site. It seems that even if the sites are reported, they aren't removed. They are also much more difficult to detect automatically because the spammers change the sites enough to 'appear' different, use different registrars, hosting companies, IP addresses, registration information -- you name it. There have been several highly publicized cases of this where the same company grabbed virtually all of the first and second page search results for specific popular keywords. Where there's a will to cheat the system -- someone will find a way. Let's hope that the legitimate users of subdomains won't get blasted with the spammers. Marty R. Milette http://www.custom-toolbars.com marty [at] milette [dot] com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Google and subdomains Regarding Google and subdomains, I understand that people misuse subdomains for the purposes of ranking better in the search engines. Well, people purchase multiple domains to rank better, and they create subdirectories to rank better. I wish there were better answers to this. Saying that "all subdomains are bad" is not the answer. A site like About.com does an excellent job at creating and maintaining subdomains. Interestingly, when subdomain spammers argue that they are doing nothing wrong with subdomains, they state,"Well About.com does it. Therefore, it's okay if we do it." False analogy. About.com does not spam. Domain spammers are... well? Spammers. Also, compare the industries. About.com is an online publication. A lot of subdomain spammers are commerce sites. As a designer who practices usability principles, I would never create the same site architecture for a commerce site and a publication site. Just my 2 cents. Best wishes, Shari Thurow http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ivan Jimenez Subject: Ad Blockers > ... it is imperative that you keep a prospective buyer on > your website, right? Then why would anyone want pop-ups, > etc on their website which are essentially nothing more > than an exit door...? - Jim Winters, LED 1739 Jim, I get your point but it's not always up to us, as marketers, what our market sees. If I had it my way, visitors would only leave my site after making a purchase -- but I cannot control visitor navigation, I can only persuade. In most cases, if a visitor leaves your site to click on one of those evil pop-up ads, then your site probably doesn't do a good enough job at keeping your audience interested. Think about it... pop-ups only annoy us when they interrupt something we're interested in (i.e., completing a sales, reading an article, posting a comment, etc.) thus most web surfers wouldn't leave your interesting site to go to an annoying one. Don't get me wrong Jim, competitive pop-up ads will take away some of the revenue you may have otherwise earned and this isn't necessarily good for marketers like us but taking a step back and looking at the big picture, these ads are raising the bar and in the long run will improve overall web content. What I do have a problem with is throwing around the term "opted"... If you've tricked your network into opting for your service, they haven't REALLY chosen to receive your information. If your program is bundled in with other programs and you never really detail what you're offering to prospective down-loaders, you're not giving anyone a choice. If you don't offer a simple way to "opt-out", you're forcing people to use a service they may or may not want -- this goes for e-mail campaigns as well. Finally, if you don't allow people to pick and choose the programs they want without penalizing them for NOT taking the entire "bundle", you're offering unwanted material and clogging user resources as well as wasting your company's time, money and efforts on people that will likely ignore your product. All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez http://cosmicbreath.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Becky Neilson Subject: Ad blockers I totally agree with you. I have no pop ups on my web site. I want those that make it to my site to stay and shop around for products not be redirected somewhere else to spend their money. And popups don't won't pay me a salary that sales from my website will. If you want to share information on other sites that provide something you don't then just have a links page. But I would never want to entice someone to leave my website with popups. Becky Neilson H.L. Supply Co. www.hansons.net ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Paul Kulhavy Subject: Viewing source > For some reason I can no longer view HTML > source code in either Outlook or Explorer. - Charles Hiatt, LED 1739 Charles, I do this a lot as one of the methods for creating tables on my site (I use a homemade script to auto generate the table and then right-click / view source / copy / paste) .. anyway I digress ... I found a similar problem ... which occurs about once a week ... probably due to the way I build me pages ... and the fix for me is to do the following. If you are using Windows XP then ... 1) Click on Start Programs / Control Panel / Internet Options 2) Then choose Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section. I'm not sure why it works ... but it does for me ... every time. Give it a try. ;-) Cheers, Paul J. Kulhavy http://goonersguide.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bryan W. Shea Subject: Viewing source This is usually due to your browser cache being full. Go to Tools -> Internet Options in internet explorer and click the Delete Files button. This should take care of your problem. Bryan W. Shea ------- new post - new topic ------- From: John Arrowsmith Subject: Brightmail filtering service Hello :) Here in the UK, the ISP I'm signed up to (Demon) finally - after I believe a fair degree of soul-searching on their part - introduced the Brightmail spam filtering service to all incoming emails to their subscribers. I've been running SpamPal on my little old laptop for some time now. Demon Internet's "Brightmail" filtering was first turned on sometime last Thursday (though I think it then went off for a few hours again to allow for some more tinkering with it) and the Saturday to Saturday SpamPal daily log of numbers of spam emails detected at my end of the service says it all :))) Sat Jan 24 - 283 Sun Jan 25 - 226 Mon Jan 26 - 266 Tue Jan 27 - 295 Wed Jan 28 - 291 Thu Jan 29 - 182 Fri Jan 30 - 033 Sat Jan 31 - 000 And it's been pretty much like that since Saturday ... 2 or 3 inexplicably get through (and of course it's not virus- detection / deletion so MyDoom emails still arrive - though not necessarily as many as I'd feared) but "2 or 3" after "200 to 300" puts me into a "Wahey - who cares !!" mood :)) John - a much happier / more relaxed emailer ! http://www.rockchallenge.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Where there's a will there's a way." |
