| LED Digest 1757: SEO Company Guarantees |
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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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ February 27, 2004 Issue #1757 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Search Engine Marketing Company Guarantees ==-- ~ Jim Berry "Any experience with this type of company is appreciated." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Unrelated, Unsavory & Unwanted Links ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "The technique of putting what 'looks' like referrer traffic into web logs is called 'Log Spamming'." --== Mozilla vs Internet Explorer ==-- ~ Veronica Yuill "...as a security-conscious web developer I'd rather *not* risk using IE except when I have to!" ~ Ann Richmond "...IE is certainly the dominant browser because most people have an MS based desk top." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Merchant Accounts for Non-US Residents ==-- ~ John "zeke" Brumage ======= NEW ===================================== From: Jim Berry Subject: Search Engine Marketing Company Guarantees We were recently contacted by a company who claims to have exclusive contracts with "the major search engines" and are the only company who can GUARANTEE (or your money back) top placement for your website in the preferred / sponsored area of the search engines for a 'small' monthly fee. Of course, we challenged the 'salesperson' who continued reading from her script, but the question was raised: Do any of these so-called Search Engine Marketing companies have contracts with the Yahoos of the world, or are they simply shilling to the uninformed? For reference, their address is globalinet.net Any experience with this type of company is appreciated. For the record, we had no interest in their methods, but found their approach to be way amateurish as they failed to adequately research our website's placement and began their pitch with "I was searching the Internet and wasn't able to find your site....) Best regards Jim Berry, Director of Sales & Marketing www.bookkeepinghelp.com jim [at] bookkeepinghelp [dot] com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Unsavory links > When viewing my referrer information for the past weeks, > I see that I am getting visits to my site that were referred > by some very strange sites... - Donald Nelson, LED 1856 The technique of putting what 'looks' like referrer traffic into web logs is called "Log Spamming". In addition to fake 'referrer' entries being made, some packages may write fake 'user agent' entries. It is usually a trick (and a fairly effective one) to get webmasters to follow the links back to investigate. Unfortunately, usually resulting in no legitimate link being found, and a lot of wasted time. Several software packages and browsers use this method as a normal part of their operation -- other software packages are designed explicitely for log spamming purposes. Unfortunately, it is dead-easy to create software that does log spamming. I could create a visual basic program to do it in less than 5 minutes. (NO, I won't do it for you! :) There are legitimate reasons why a non-spammer WOULD want to do it -- for example, we have clients who want to know all of the traffic that is referred to their site from custom toolbars we develop -- so we have the toolbar set a custom referrer and/or user agent for them. They can then simply use their normal statistics to monitor the toolbar traffic. Another purpose we use it for is where the toolbar needs to 'simulate' the data as being sent from a form on the client's site -- a search form, for example. As many form processors check the referrer to ensure that some 'external' force isn't maliciously using their server script, the ability to emulate the referrer allows the client's normal search script to work the same way as it would with their regular search form. (Guess this also shows just how easily server-side script CAN be tricked...) Marty R. Milette http://www.custom-toolbars.com marty [at] milette [dot] com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Mozilla > MS continues to update and fix [IE] as it is found to be > lacking as well as adding new improvements. I am > happy with that, so are my users. - Dale Kay, LED 1756 I find that a little bit arguable. IE has remained essentially unchanged in functionality for something like two years, while other browsers have been racing ahead with new features that really are useful (notably tabbed browsing and popup blocking). And MS have officially said they won't be developing standalone IE any longer -- if you want new versions you'll have to upgrade your OS (whenever the next version of Windows eventually comes out -- 2006? 2007??). And if you have a Mac, well, MS isn't interested in you any more. As for fixes, IE is renowned for its security holes, and MS often takes an unacceptably long time to fix them. Take the recent address-bar spoofing trick used by "phishers" to persuade you that after clicking on a disguised link in an email you were visiting (say) the Paypal site when you were really somewhere else entirely -- see: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113831,00.asp This spoof only worked in IE -- other browsers would display a warning. MS's suggested fix when it was discovered? "Type addresses into the address bar manually"! They eventually released a patch weeks later -- unfortunately it broke many installations of IE, so they had to release a patch for the patch: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS04-004.asp This is only one example. Other browsers no doubt have security issues as well, but a) they are less targeted by hackers than IE because of their smaller user base and b) because they are not tightly tied into the operating system itself, any security holes that exist are likely to do less damage. > I will check out other browsers. I have not seen one > yet I would risk my company on that surpasses IE. Personally, as a security-conscious web developer I'd rather *not* risk using IE except when I have to! Of course that doesn't mean to say we don't test all the sites we develop in IE to make sure they work properly, since that's still what 90% of people are using. I'm not naive enough to believe that the whole world will choose to install Opera, my browser of choice. But it *is* naive to think that because you are using IE you are safe! Regards Veronica Yuill, Moderator I-Design http://www.marketingwonk.com/lists/idesign/35363/ ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ann Richmond Subject: Mozilla The only comment about Mozilla is that currently IE is certainly the dominant browser because most people have an MS based desk top. But I believe that as Linux becomes more prevalent as a server environment, which it is rapidly becoming, Linux on the desktop will not be far behind. That means Mozilla as the dominant browser on most Linux environments. So just like Netscape used to be #1 and IE edged it out. I think the same will happen with Mozilla over IE. Just can't predict the time frame on this, but I would suggest the next 3 years we will see a dramatic shift, less in the US then elsewhere. Ann Richmond www.randrinc.com ann [at] randrinc [dot] com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: John Brumage Subject: PayPal > I moved my business to USA from South Africa last month. > Securing credit card merchant facilities has been arduous > because most US banks and other businesses are not > interested in credit references from abroad. - Dudley Dix, LED 1755 We got a Nova account through Costco. If you have not already tried this, you might want to join Costco. I am very happy with both my shopping experience at Costco, and the level of service I got from Nova - they seem to be pretty internet savvy, they provided a well documented software billing program. John "zeke" Brumage, President WorldWide TELecommunications NETwork, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." - Napoleon |
