| LED Digest 2273: Favorite SEO Tools? + Spamhaus Litigation |
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An SEO intern asks about your favorite SEO tools and resources. The Spamhaus litigation - new developments? Some more great advice and tricks to foil contact form spam bots, and setting up Outlook filter rules. ================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration 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 .............................................. October 24, 2006 Issue no. 2273 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Blog Experiments ==-- ~ James Miller "The post appeared in the search after only 56 seconds." --== Spamhaus Litigation ==-- ~ John Smart "We all have coocoo clients - you know, the one(s) you did everything for..." --== New to SEO - Favorite Tools? ==-- ~ Natalie Sheer "I'm currently newly hired to a firm as an intern (don't laugh)..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== AdWords Arbitrage - How it Works ==-- ~ Waitman Gobble "I use this to track content scraping..." --== Tracking Clicks ==-- ~ Dejan Bizinger "I can suggest you AdButler hosted service..." --== Junk Mail from Contact Forms ==-- ~ Al Toman "I threw together some very informative web pages on this subject..." ~ Rich Dudley "More sophisticated bots can crack the CAPTCHA..." ~ Ed Clark "...if you have 10 or more [sites] like I do, it becomes a real problem." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Filtering Rules in Outlook ==-- ~ Roger Hass ========== NEW =================================== From: James Miller Subject: The Integrated Blog and other Experiments I've been running a blog alongside my book, Making the Most of the Internet, for some time. Over the weekend, I experimented with my Blogger template and was able to change it, so that the blog appears to be a completely integrated part of the web site. It was not difficult and took me about four hours, which included moving the blog pages to my web site, adding a header to the blog template and adjusting widths and colours to fit and match. I put up a post and then searched for it using the Blogger search facility. The post appeared in the search after only 56 seconds. I tried it again and it took longer, but it still appeared very quickly. This must be because every time you post, Blogger searches and indexes your post. I've also checked and Blogger doesn't add these results to Google. But how long before it adds them immediately to the main Google index? And the other results it gets from posts and searches in YouTube! It is much quicker to index something that is presented to you on a plate, rather than search pages and pages of information that may not have changed. So it would appear that if you want a quick reaction to news and updates you post on your web site, then you should use something like Blogger and integrate it fully into your web site. There is also the fact that if the blog is stored on your web site, that every time it is updated, then Google itself, will find more pages to integrate, with new words describing your products and services. Will this take you to a higher position in Google? James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk --------- new post - new topic --------- From: John Smart Subject: Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me! * I have read with interest the legal actions between a spammer, and a black list filter company with interest, and the potential implications are cause for concern. Mr. David Linhardt acting as E360Insight has been accused of sending out UCE in very large amounts. Spamhaus has added him to their black lists, and he appears to be quite upset by this. In court in Illinois, he managed to get a restraining order placed against Spamhaus. Given that Spamhaus is based in the United Kingdom, and has no staff / offices / agent in the USA let alone in Illinois, the restraining order has no worth. But it appears that the restraining order is just a piece of the puzzle. Mr. Linhardt is now persuing ICANN and Tucows Open SRS to have the domain name deactivated. This is an interesting development. Let us assume for the moment that this works. Most readers here, I think, are like me -- small to mid sized businesses. We all have coocoo clients -- you know, the one(s) you did everything for, bent over backwards for, then out of no where you get legal papers served against you for no apparent reason. Suppose you mention some of this in your blog. Potentially the person who is out to get you could deactivate your domain. Suppose you own an ISP -- let's take AOL. And then in AOL someone posts their web sites saying the Red Sox are no good cheats. (This is not a commentary by me -- I know nothing about American sports!) If the site got a huge amount of traffic, and if AOL said they had no desire to take away the First Amendment rights of their user (AOL taking the side of the user? This is a 'what if' scenario!) then could the domain name AOL be placed in jeopardy? Normally this sort of thing should not be a concern -- don't get me wrong, I love my adopted country and am very happy to be here. That said, the legal answers this country comes up with are not always logical, reasonable, sensible or even fair. * A quote from Kenneth Williams in Carry on Cleo -- no e-Mail can match that genius's delivery! John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World --------- new post - new topic --------- From: Natalie V. Sheer Subject: New to SEO - Tools Hi, I'm new to this list and actually pretty new to SEO too. I'm currently newly hired to a firm as an intern (don't laugh) and trying to learn as much as I can quickly. Part of my "homework" is to join resources like this and work my way up the learning curve. Okay, I'm starting pretty low down the curve. I'm probably being pushy as a new subscriber, but can I ask a question? I'm wondering what tools you SEO / SEM's are using. Desktop, Web-based apps that can quickly find the crucial data for client sites, like exactly how far a listing is buried in Google SERP. (I'm getting the lingo down!) Keyword research stuff - is Wordtracker still pretty much the way to go? What other tools and sites are really important to you? Help me impress my boss! :-) thanks Natalie Sheer ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Waitman Gobble Subject: AdWords arbitrage Re: Scraper Sites I use this to track content scraping. http://www.linkkarma.com/ Basically you put a serial number on your pages, it makes it easy to spot scrapers. Take care, Waitman Gobble Los Altos, California -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Dejan Bizinger Subject: Tracking clicks > I have a non-commercial web site that someone > wants to [advertise] on... How can I track how many > people click on his banner / link to his web site? - Rob Forker, LED Digest 2271 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1261/55/ I agree with others that PHPAdsNew is a good open source software. I can suggest you AdButler hosted service for tracking clicks. They offer free and fee-based option. Free version is also full of nice features and only thing is that they put 7.5% of your banner rotation inventory with their ads. AdButler (both versions) supports tracking Flash banners, all standard banner formats, campaign management... You can find more info at: http://www.adbutler.com Please note that I'm not affiliated with AdButler in any other way than being a client. We use that service on our very visited web site for clients who ask click-thru tracking. HTH, Best regards, Dejan Bizinger http://www.emarketingblog.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Al Toman Subject: Form junk > ... someone has come up with a piece of software > that automatically fills out my contact us forms online > and submits them. Now I get emails coming through > my CGI script that are full of ads. - Mark Frank, LED Digest 2270 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1257/55/ The Adam guy was kind enough to post my email on scripting contact forms in a previous issue of the LED Digest [see issue 2258: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1092/55/]. I admire LED Digesters who are taking notice that spammers are making money off of either your email address and/or your web site. I don't know about all y'all, but that really p*#sses me off, royally! I'm not ready to publish my articles on blocker spam for the HTML mailto tag or contact forms, however, I threw together some very informative RAW web pages on this subject specifically for the LED Digesters viewing. You can start by going to http://studio9.ws/scripts/email-me.php or contact me and I will call you. Firstly, you'll find thousands of band-aids, fixes, radical scripts, and what-nots to address bits and pieces of the problem. Much of this information is published on the W.W.W. simply to market "their" web sites, nothing else. Many scripts give false protection and may even further encourage spammin' crackers. The victims, of course, being the webmasters who implement these what-nots and the millions of us who receive email cr4p as a result of it. Here, in the United States, the FCC is spending our money and doing nothing. Their Can-the-Spam law is about as useful as hunting down a polar bear with nothing more then a piece of raw meat hanging from your mouth (God bless, in advance. Do you prefer Lillies of Daisies?). However, the problem is more easily addressed by 1) learning HTML, valid web design, good web design practices 2) with that, implement proper form validation 3) study the spammer's technique and methodology specific to your web page's contact form (generally, the fix is, again, simple easy) Without studying your particular issue, Mr. Mark, it is difficult to assess accurately what is and what isn't. I replaced the use of CGI scripts years ago with PHP because PHP gives me 132% control. ALL my web clients have these scripts in place for no charge (if they paid for their web site). In summary, I offer 5 (for now) very simple sure-fire ways to hunt polar bears. Two address how-to the mailto tag safely using javascript. The other three demonstrate the basic PHP script upon which they all can be built for more comprehensive blocker spam. This is because some web sites require more aggressive script than others probably because of their social popularity!?! The typical fix for header injection is to eliminate the line spacing (\n\r) in your form's input text fields (such as name, company, email, etc). Spammers will use your supposedly single-line text fields to CC and BCC a whole bunch of email addresses, including yours, by writing in all the chapters of "WAR & PEACE" into your single-line text field. Well, you can use simple valid, web-compliant html to eliminate the problem. Firstly, "maxlength" the input field, appropriately. Secondly, your PHP validation script can either -- 1) strip unwanted characters (such as "backslashes", "commas", "@", "<", ">" etc) or 2) strip unwanted strings (such as "CC", "BCC", ".com", ".net", "http", etc) or 3) accept only those characters relative to the field data (such as a-zA-Z0-9, etc.) That's it. 1) properly scripted HTML input forms 2) form field validation What you cannot stop by doing this is you personally receiving (because we already prevented the spammer from including 100's of other email addresses) what appears to be legit emails (by the form validator) but contain nasty messages. This is where the "naughty word" data files and the "suspect IP" data files come into play. Note that a suspect IP may very well be your Mom's computer that is being "used" and "abused". Until Mom's computer is "cleaned up", she can't use your contact form to contact you. Now, these files can become longer than a polar bear's ripping teeth. Therefore, it is important to study your specific attacks and build your naughty word / IP files from there. Consequently, the delay to your users will be nanoseconds and not hours (and uses less of your bandwidth). Other techniques involve 1) elimination of the rapid-fired form submission 2) testing the form submission's origin (actually from your form or from a header, an uri, etc) 3) capcha-like applications The only way that all this junk mail is going to be reduced is if ALL legit webmasters of the W.W.W. implement good web design practices and form validation. To all others, I'll gladly provide the raw fresh meat! Kind Regards, Al Toman studio9 web design http://studio9.ws -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Richard Dudley Subject: Form junk Mark, Yep, there are form bots. One way of stopping them is to use a CAPTCHA (see http://rjdudley.com/blog/CAPTCHAImagesForYourWebsite.aspx. More sophisticated bots can crack the CAPTCHA, but this will stop most. Rich Dudley www.bloomery.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Ed Clark Subject: Form junk And as [Mark] Frank points out... it tends to migrate to all your sites. And if you have 10 or more like I do, it becomes a real problem. Now let's take a look at what happens to servers that have this amount of junk occur. If for instance you use AOL for an email address as I do (not my fault, started way back when and must keep main address) AOL will block the entire server where the Junk Mail originates. And then of course you can contact them... do a few things... white list etc. and get mail moving again... but the problem is still there. I know that most LED'ers are more in tune with these problems then Frank or myself, and I also solicit help with a permanent method of dealing with these new 'bots that steal email address' and send junk. I am teaching myself though this community and others....but as I work another "job" need all the help I can get. Is the only method to rid your site of contact forms? I am looking forward to seeing contributions to this post. Ed Clark ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Roger Hass Subject: Problem Creating Filtering Rules - Outlook G'Day Folks - ("G'Day" is Australian slang = Hello in plain English, for those that have never been or heard of Australia) I need some help and advice for setting up "Create Rules... in "Microsoft Outlook" any version, particularly 2003 which I use most often. Seems I'm having problems in setting up the rules to place these e-mails when they arrive, into their designated folders. E.G. - The 1st two and others from, are supposed to go into the "Inbox 016 Woodyswatch" Folder, however as the "bounce-234...." numbers keep changing, and the Subjects keep changing, setting up the rule for these that will work on all e-mails from Woodyswatch, seems to be impossible, or I just have not worked out which combination of rules will work. 1. From: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ; on behalf of; Access Watch [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: AW #8.16 - Storing Data in Database Custom Properties 2. From: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ; on behalf of; Office Watch [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: OW #11.39 - One threat fixed, another pops up As to these (3,4 and 5), they are supposed to go into the "Inbox 017 Subs Newsletters Reports" folder and again I have a better chance of winning Lotto. 3. From: Linux Today Security [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: Your Linux Today Security Letter for October 4, 2006 4. From: SearchEngineWatch [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: SE Report #118 5. From: ScriptSearch Daily [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: ScriptSearch Daily Update: 10-04-2006 And Microsoft Newsletters and other notifications from Microsoft, I'm at the stage of un-subscribing, as no rules seem to work for these to go into the "Inbox 019 Microsoft" Folder and they just keep going into the main "Inbox" folder, as do all the others where the rules just do not work for me. From: Microsoft [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ] Subject: Microsoft Security Advisory Notification Any advice on setting up the "Create Rules... in "Microsoft Outlook" any version, particularly 2003 which I use most often, would be greatly appreciated. As I don't think I'm the only one that has some difficulty in setting up the Rules to have the e-mails we receive, go into the designated folders, your help will be most welcome to all. Ah Yes, the LED Digest e-mails are very obedient and all go to their designated eMail Folder "LedDigest" Regards Roger Hass PC-Bug Fixer www.pcbugfixer.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down resistance, sweeps away all obstacles." - Claude M. Bristol |
