| LED Digest 1904: Natural Search Results & Google Policy |
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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 ............................................... December 2, 2004 Issue #1904 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Natural Search Results & Google Policy ==-- ~ Sarah Hayes "...a SEO company claimed that...Google is allowing them preferential positioning in the free listings..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Advertising on Blogs ==-- ~ Alex Hughart "Am I being paranoid here?" --== New ICANN Transfer Policy ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix "There may be some lack of consensus on this topic." --== The PayPal vs Merchant Accounts Debate ==-- ~ Todd Sumrall "If paypal knew you were doing this, they would shut your account down and freeze your funds." ~ Tom Aman "I quote from the PayPal Integration Manual..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --= Surge in Bandwidth Usage ==-- ~ Charles Bennett --== Why Firefox? ==-- ~ John Barendrecht ~ Veronica Yuill ======== NEW ==================================== From: Sarah Hayes Subject: Google accepting money for natural search result positioning? I know that Google have always stated that they never take money for search engine placement (free listings), but is this still the case? One of my clients had a telephone call from a SEO company, who claimed that because they spend so much money on pay per click, Google is now allowing them preferential positioning in the free listings from their clients. The cost -- only 400.00 UK pounds set-up then 19.95 per month, which includes a doorway site. I've told my client that this was a lie as Google never take money for free listing positioning. Now the SEO company say that was true until a few weeks ago (around the time that AOL UK left Overture for Google), but now Google have changed their policy. The SEO company, whose main business is Internet / computer security, appears to be a fair size and claims to have lots of big names, or could that be another lie. I told my client not to agree to anything or part with any money, but I just wanted confirmation from other readers that I am correct in saying Google only take money for PPC and not the free listings / natural search results. Sarah Hayes ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Alex Hughart Subject: Blogs > When advertising on blogs, it's useful to think of customers > like starlings. They flock to a tree, make a racket for a while, > and then [fly away]... - Sandy Galvin, LED 1902 I'm noticing a growing traffic from a blog place called www.livejournal.com and some other blog sites (and I'm talking about some substantial traffic, right behind Google numbers this month!). We never advertised in any of these places. I couldn't find where exactly the clicks are coming from but, it looks like from a journal of a college kid not at least interested in fine soaps that we sell. Now, I'm confused. On one hand, who cares where the traffic is coming from as long as it's coming, on the other, it makes me think of possible click fraud and who-knows-what. Am I being paranoid here? Alex Hughart www.bonsavon.com --------- new post - new topic --------- From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Domain transfers > ... the new ICANN Transfer Policy [states that] if you > have a domain name, and you don't lock it someone > could transfer it without your approval! - Dejan Bizinger, LED 1902 There may be some lack of consensus on this topic. When I read the post, I sent a copy of it to my domain registrar for comment. I found them on this LED digest some years ago. I was naturally concerned both for myself and for my clients. This was their reply: ---------------------- "The article is not accurate. Locking a domain makes it not transferrable so its harder to hijack. However, even if a domain name is not locked it can only be transferred if a transfer confirmation email sent to the Administrative email address on record is approved. "Keep in mind that while a domain is locked, you cannot change the DNS nameservers info. To be able to change the nameservers for your domain you have to unlock the domain first, then change the dns, then lock back the domain." Johnny Lee, Technical Support 123cheapdomains.com ---------------------- If other domain registrars have differing takes on this, I think we would all be interested Peter D'Aprix http://peterdaprix.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Todd Sumrall Subject: PayPal vs other > Another big dis-advantage with Paypal is that I as > a seller can't do a transaction on behalf of the buyer. - Lennart Svanberg, LED 1902 > Not true. I can process a phone order > transaction by going to my own site and > pretending to be the customer. - Lorelle Smith, LED 1903 I hate to be the bearer of bad news. If paypal knew you were doing this, they would shut your account down and freeze your funds. It violates their TOS. It violates V/MC regulations as well. It's considered fraud. However, having your own real merchant account, you can do manual entry orders without fear of getting shut down. Todd Sumrall Merchant Accounts totalprocessing.net ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: PayPal vs other > Paypal no longer requires shoppers to set > up a membership to use a credit card. - Lorelle Smith, LED 1903 This is only true if you a a US based merchant - I quote from the PayPal Integration Manual: ----------------------- "PayPal Account Optional is currently available only to U.S. merchants for transactions generated by PayPal Website Payments Buttons." ----------------------- If you want to provide the PayPal payment option and are based anywhere else, then the buyer still needs to have (or create) a PayPal account Tom Aman Aman Software ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Charles Bennett Subject: Surge in bandwidth useage My normal web bandwidth is under 400 million bytes of transfer per day. I had a surge on Friday November 19 to almost 1400 million bytes. Would anyone have any theories why. I was afraid the site had been hacked and notified the host who immediately looked at it and shut down the password. Everything was intact and normal. It is a small retail site and I feared triple the sales and was a bit nervous. The weekend and Monday proved to be busier than normal, but not triple. Traffic is up slightly, but that was to be expected due to holiday sales. I didn't know if MS's new engine would use that much or? The logs had a LOT of SE activity, but nothing points to that much. Just wondering if anyone had a clue. Thanks Charles Bennett ------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Firefox > Why design for anything else besides IE? Because we > now have not only IE, but Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, > etc. that don't have the security holes that Microsoft seems > unable to completely plug. - Theresa Mesa, LED 1902 She seems to imply that Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox have no security holes. Facts state otherwise. I searched the US-CERT site (http://www.us-cert.gov/) for "Firefox". For week of October 27 through November 2, 2004, we see the following Bugs, Holes, & Patches: Microsoft IE: 4 Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox: 8 Microsoft OS: 15 Unix/Linux: 51 A search for Opera also showed security issues. Perhaps IE has more security issues or may be they are more widely publicized. Given the choice, I would rather use a browser with no security issues. However, failing that, I would rather use a browser with known issues as opposed to unknown security flaws. I have IE, Mozilla and Firefox on the same computer. I like the fact that IE warns you before it starts downloading a file, both Mozilla and Firefox don't warn and you see the first indication when the Save As dialog appears. Personally, I hate the tabbed browsing and find it slower than separate windows. IE appears to start showing a page faster than Mozilla or Firefox but I think the time to completely load a page is almost the same. IE has more bells, whistles and functionality out of the box. I am not too keen on adding 3rd party add-ins that may be untested. Regardless of my personal preference for browsers, I like to test websites in all 3. Microsoft may have 90% of the browsers, but I can't afford to ignore that 10%. I only wish I could test Mac browsers without having to buy a Mac. John Barendrecht http://www.iefit.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Firefox > ... develop websites for IE because it's still the most > widely used browser, by far. I'm not defending IE as > the best browser... If developers don't take the time to > make web sites compatible with all browsers that > shifts the burden of compatibility back to the browser > maker. - Mark Whitman, LED 1903 Sounds like common sense, but what Mark is suggesting boils down to: "Let Microsoft set the standards, and other browser makers will have to comply." Doesn't sound like a healthy situation to me -- especially as Microsoft has done no significant development on IE for several years. At one time IE was clearly the "best" (of two ;-)) browsers around but that's no longer the case. During that time, other browser makers have introduced a host of useful additional features that personally I wouldn't be without. Thank goodness they didn't decide to be IE-lookalikes -- that would have got them nowhere, as no-one would have any incentive to use them. Believe it or not, we use these browsers because we like them better than IE! In addition, there already *is* a set of common standards for browsers, set by the W3C -- and IE is the least compliant browser of the lot! > Obviously if websites don't look good in Firefox for > instance, then Firefox users aren't going to be very > happy with the browser and won't use it for long. On the other hand, they could just blame the websites for being broken, and take their custom elsewhere ;-) > Firefox could and would make compatibility > happen if necessary. Somehow though, I doubt the FF team would want to "break" their browser (as far as web standards are concerned) to work in the same quirky way as IE, and then forever play catchup with IE, instead of sticking to published standards. > I suggest that website developers force the browser > makers to deal with compatibility issues. Wasp http://www.webstandards.org has already achieved a great deal in that direction -- by asking browser makers to comply with open, published W3C standards. IMHO, that is the answer to the problem in the long run. I live in hope that increased competition from other browsers will cause Microsoft to pull its socks up, and fix its broken browser ;-) And finally, a nifty quote from the Wasp site: "Back when WaSP was formed, we heard one question over and over from Microsoft developers, team leads and product managers: show us even one site that breaks because IE doesn't support X. This drove some of us into french-fried fits because of course we couldn't show them any broken sites -- we were all spending 20% of our time working around those very bugs so our sites wouldn't break, and we were tired of it. That was the whole point!" Regards, Veronica Yuill Archetype Information Technology Ltd http://www.archetype-it.com/english/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin." - Hermann Hesse |
