| LED Digest 1529: Artificial Traffic Inflation |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. March 3, 2003 Issue #1529 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= --== Artificial Traffic and LinkExchange ==-- ~ Jochen Savelberg "...my accounts were suddenly terminated because of...artificial inflation of traffic." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Site Revamps and Outsourcing ==-- ~ Anne McKay "...do yourself a favor and shop around." ~ Debra Sawyers "...it would be much better to use .htaccess..." ~ Merrilyn Romen "Most of us have had to charge rock bottom prices to even try to compete with offshore labor." --== International Fraud Protection ==-- ~ Joe Taylor "...what if every merchant reported each time a fraudulent order crossed their desk." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Web Statistics Software ==-- ~ Steve Knilans ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Godaddy Gone? ==-- ~ William Ernest Waites ====== NEW ====================================== From: Joe Savelberg Subject: Artificial inflation of traffic and LinkExchange Hi Adam; I've got a question for long time LE members on your list. I've been a member of LinkExchange since June 23, 1996 (X007990) and experienced some serious trouble with the banner network for the very first time. I was wondering if any other members experienced the same during the past couple of days. After having used the same LE setup for years, my accounts were suddenly terminated because of a violation of the terms (artificial inflation of traffic). The support staff was unable to tell me which of my accounts were affected and when this happened. They refused to reactive my old (and cherished) account ID's although I reassured them that nothing had changed on my side of the equation. It's still unclear what happens to my 1.2 million pending credits. On a normal day, I generate around 200,000 banner impressions for LinkExchange. To cut a long story short, I don't know why traffic was artificially inflated (February is always a big month for me because of Valentine's day -- one of my sites is love-related). However the support staff indicated that the automatic device / software discovered the inflation which could be caused either by my server or a second / third party. This means that if there is some sort of misbehaving robot going around on the web, it could shut down many of banner network accounts. Any members who experienced the same could contact me, so that we start investigating and comparing our log files to see when / why we've been shut down. Thanks, Jochen Savelberg, Online Producer The EasyScopes Entertainment Network http://www.easyscopes.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Anne McKay Subject: Site revamps / outsourcing Hi Group! Okay - I have personally about had it with the recent comments that US design = expensive while outsourced overseas = reasonable. The most recent comment from Charles Oertel was: > Sounds like a question of outsourcing ;-) I would've > done it for a tenth of the price from South Africa. I'm located in the US, and I probably would have been able to make a bid at about a tenth of the cost, too. People in the market for web work need to look at several factors when getting bids. 1) Location - This applies both in the US and overseas and is a fairly simple concept. Cheaper cost of living generally means that the developer / designer will be able to charge less. 2) Large company or free-lance - Large companies have a great number of advantages - more people working on your project, larger talent pool, etc. The drawbacks? Paying for office space, employee benefits, non-critical personnel (accountants, receptionists, executives) will jack up the cost of your site. I'm not saying that those employees are non-critical to the company - they are necessary. However, those people will probably never even see your site, let alone work on it. But you're paying their salary, too. Free-lancers, on the other hand, are often cheaper. They only have to worry about paying their direct overhead - rent, power, software / computer upgrades, benefits and taxes before they start to turn a profit. The down-side to free-lancers is that it will often take them longer to complete a project (depending on their current workload) or there will be a limit on the number of new sites they are working on at a time. For myself, I have been on both sides of the fence. I have done free-lance work for a number of years and I have also worked for a large .com developer. Personally, I think the "big boys" - large companies with a good amount of cashflow - do better with the large developers while the small businesses do better with the free-lancers. I will step off of my soapbox now, but please, if you are looking for a new site to be designed or a site reface - do yourself a favor and shop around. Anne McKay Divinity Design ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Debra Sawyers Subject: Site revamps > ... also put in a redirect to the new page, and set > the robots meta-tag to "noindex,follow"... - Charles Oertel, LED 1528 I see this advice given all too often, and while it does work to most of the time, if your site is hosted on a Unix / Apache server, it would be much better to use .htaccess to create the redirect. This is much less likely to be picked up by SE's as a spamming technique, it's seemless to the end user, and it takes up little room on your server. You can also set a default 404 page for missing files. Make sure your new site includes a sitemap not only to help your visitors get around the new site and find what they're looking for, but also it benefits the bots crawling your site. Alternately on an NT server, some hosts will setup the custom 404 page for you that can direct visitors to a sitemap. I do hope you shopped around for additional quotes. Without knowing your full specifications for the new site and what's being provided, that sounds quite high to me as well. Debra Sawyers TamaGraphics.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Merrilyn Romen Subject: Site Revamps and offshore competitors > I was recently asked for over US$17,000 to change > the design and revamp my long established website. - Dirk Vanderwerff, LED 1525 > Sounds like a question of outsourcing ;-) I would've > done it for a tenth of the price from South Africa. - Charles Oertel, LED 1528 I'm curious about your website redesign, Dirk, and even more curious how someone (Charles) can offer you a 90% discount without even asking how much work is involved, whether or not there will be database reconfiguration, multimedia to be added, footage to be edited, sound to be designed, new photography that has to be shot, or illustrations to be requisitioned, etc., etc., etc. Furthermore, offshore contractors who offer below minimum wage offers (I've heard bids that boast $1 /hour) on American companies' projects AND the Americans who will pay that do an injustice to their fellow Americans who are well-trained and (many of them) unemployed just to "line their pockets" as someone said awhile ago. Don't we shun the practice of slave labor in the garmet industry? Should the web industry be exempt from such standards? Most of us have had to charge rock bottom prices to even try to compete with offshore labor. There are tons of us willing and able to work for a very fair price. Give fellow American designers another try. You might even feel patriotic while you save money! Sincerely, Merrilyn Romen, Creative Director HyperSpace New Media www.hyperspacenewmedia.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Joseph Taylor Subject: Fraud protection Hi Adam and Everyone, I have watching this discussion about fraud protection, its in's and out's. We sell software via an ecommerce site, took the position of reporting every single fraud event. When an order was placed, and a software license requested, we collected the IP of the computer used and the email address the software was to be emailed to. All orders are manually approved before acceptance. (Note: We never, never shipped software to a "freebie" email address or domain.) When a fraudulent order was detected, we would immediately contact the issuing bank (MC/Visa) or credit card company (AMEX), we resolved the IP and contacted their ISP with a copy of our log files on the transaction, we contacted where they received their email (if different from their ISP) and finally, we would attempt to contact the cardholder. It's a lot of work to do, so why do it? Because instantly the card number would become in a "bad" card and this would stop the thief from placing orders "dead in their tracks". Once I had a phone conversation with an AMEX Rep reporting a fraudulent card and was told that the card number I was reporting had been used over a dozen times in the days leading up to us intercepting it. The owner never knew it... Getting the techical details right is important for sure, but think about it, what if every merchant reported each time a fraudulent order crossed their desk. I think there would be less bad orders for others to deal with. Joe Taylor ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Miracle Wanzo Subject: Fraud protection > The first six numbers of a card can give the issuing > bank details, but obtaining this information is either > hugely expensive or impossible. - Roy Williams, LED 1528 Usually most processors provide this information to their merchants. Ours has an online database for looking this information up. Visa and Mastercard also provide this information to merchants as well, using the following toll-free numbers 800-228-1122 for Mastercard and 800-847-2750 or 800-847-2911 for Visa. Miracle Wanzo ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Steve Knilans Subject: Web stats > I do not have access to the server the website > is hosted on other than through FTP... - D.Diehl, LED 1527 If you have CGI access, and Perl (or other scripting support), you can use a compatible webstat package. It is just harder to install / test. Otherwise, you have 2 choices: 1. Remote script hosting driving by a reference on the page (via remote CGI execution via SHTML, page access through a frame, or accessed as a graphic.) Look at www.hitboxcentral.com/index.php?sid=services&cntid=hbpersonal for an example of this method. 2. Download the log files to your system, and analyze them there. As for the items reported? You are limited by what is in the logs. They don't necessarily contain everything. Steve Knilans ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: William Ernest Waites Subject: Godaddy > ... what's up [with Godaddy] that you wouldn't > recommend them for hosting? - Mark Van Patten, LED 1528 I use GoDaddy for both domain name registration, at a "fraction" of other registrars, and hosting. In both cases I have been completely satisfied. My only concern is that their low price for 50MB, jumps dramatically when that limit is exceeded. It would be helpful to have an interim level that is less than the whole works. To their credit, however, they did warn me when my storage exceeded the limit and gave me some time to revise the site to bring it down under 50MB. I am a big GoDaddy fan and a satisfied client - with no other connection to the company. William Ernest Waites http://www.zunilink.com ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful." - Joshua J. Marine |
