| LED Digest 2347: Email Harvesters Defeated! |
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================================================== 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 .............................................. February 14, 2007 Issue no. 2347 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Web Log Analysis Software ==-- ~ Niall Kennedy "At the moment the software needs to be free..." --== Harvester-Proof Email ==-- ~ Will Bontrager "The system is harvester-proof. No doubt." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Bad SEO ==-- ~ Lee Odden "Filtering out the real experts from the 'self proclaimed' experts can be difficult..." ~ Phil Nadel "Which SEO firm were you working with?" ~ Michael Linehan "I am a strong advocate of partnership between business owners and specialists." --== Domain Parking & Valuation ==-- ~ Adam Audette "Today I stumbled across a domain parking service from Google." --== Sitemaps for Established Sites? ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "But it seems Google doesn't always get it right." --== Best Practices for Testimonials ==-- ~ Shel Horowitz "If you get a generic testimonial, use a *brief* oral or email interview..." --== Down on Designers ==-- ~ Kathy Wilson "I find that when [clients] take over the updates the design falls apart." ========== NEW =================================== From: Niall Kennedy Subject: Web Log Analysis Software Can anyone recommend web log analysis software, to analyse my raw server log files. At the moment the software needs to be free until I can produce reports that will show the benefit of the software. Kind of a chicken and egg situation I know. Thanks in advance Niall Kennedy http://www.europc.co.uk -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Spam Harvest Proof Email! > [regarding mailto: links] There must be a fool-proof way > to implement one-click email without the danger of the > address being harvested. There's gotta be. This is an > intense wish. - Me :), LED Digest 2310 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1406/55/ The wish has come true, folks. While in the hospital a short time ago (urgent abdominal surgery), I had a lot of time to meditate and imagine without the pressures of day-to-day business intruding. And I figured out how to do it. The system is harvester-proof. No doubt. The email address can not even be harvested by manually clicking on the link. The system never discloses the real destination email address to any party, robot or human. Click this link to try it: http://flow-to.com/email/w.u1171228517w.mth The link can be on web pages, in emails, used in news groups, even published off-line in newspapers or on highway billboards, just like any other URL. When the link is clicked, two things happen; (i) your email program opens a new email form or window with the "To" and possibly other fields pre-filled and (ii) your browser opens a web page. Depending on your browser, the web page will be blank or it will contain normal web page content. When the email is sent, it will be routed to the correct destination. No JavaScript required. Nothing fancy. Site owners simply replace their current mailto: links with their harvester-proof email link. Then they're good to go. For site visitors, their email program works just like expected. They can specify Cc and Bcc destinations. They can even send attachments. But they won't see your real email address. Currently, the system has a 512k email size limit. The limit may change in the future. I realize stating this system is harvester-proof may be setting myself up for apparent contradiction. Although the system itself is harvester-proof, there are many ways an email address can be compromised. When that happens, the owner of the address may tend to think it was the fault of this system. Sometime soon, I hope, I'll have time to write an article about some of the many ways an address can end up on spammers' lists. Maybe an LEDer or several would like to list ways it can happen. The system is beta and is free to use. There is nothing like a live installation to see where improvements can be made. http://flow-to.com/ Give it a whirl. And, please, I am open to hearing any and all suggestions for improvement and possible vulnerabilities to be alert for. Oh, and tell your friends. Let's take a big byte out of spammer hiney. Will Bontrager http://willmaster.com Email: http://flow-to.com/email/w.u1171228517w.mth ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Lee Odden Subject: Bad SEO > I have had the experience of dealing with an > optimization outfit and it turned out to be a > nightmare... I totally dropped out of site on the > search engines... My advice is to stay away > from the optimization people unless you > have *no other choice*. - Thomas Hyde, LED Digest 2346 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1743/55/ Hi Thomas, The situation you describe is very unfortunate but it's difficult to see the reasoning in your logic: A purportedly well known SEO consultant does what sounds like bad SEO, therefore all SEO consultants are bad. Am I missing something? If I hire a well known accountant (because she tells me she's well known) who screws up my taxes (been there) does it make sense to say all accountants are to be avoided except as a last resort? It's perfectly reasonable for web site owners to be frustrated with SEO consultants that are heavy on the selling and light on the delivery as it would for any kind of consultant or vendor. This may not be your situation exactly, but SEO projects can go bad quickly when the client hasn't done due diligence and the SEO consultant doesn't manage expectations or have the promised skills. Filtering out the real experts from the "self proclaimed" experts can be difficult, but resources like SEOConsultants.com and the Marketing Sherpa's guide to SEO firms can be helpful. Lee Odden TopRank Online Marketing http://www.toprankresults.com Online Marketing Blog http://www.toprankblog.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Phil Nadel Subject: Bad SEO Thomas, > After getting my site optimized for better placement > and keyword usage by a well known firm, I totally > dropped out of site on the search engines. - Thomas Hyde Which SEO firm were you working with? Phil Nadel -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Bad SEO Low-end operators are not only found on the Internet. Just a few examples in other fields are yoga "teachers" who've been practicing for a year, "healers" who did a weekend certification, "builders" who have never done more than some renovations on their own house. It's the same in every field of human endeavor. But you only do yourself a massive disservice if you conclude that the existence of low-end "optimizers" means all are bad. I'd like to suggest that what a business owner needs to do is not to stay away from "optimization people", but rather to become an educated consumer so they can tell the difference between the low end and the high end. (In fact, we could propose that becoming such an educated consumer is pretty much required when purchasing any type of service or product in the world today. Opportunities to get burned abound.) > When dealing with them, NEVER let them make a change > unless you have personally reviewed the changes... - Thomas Hyde Again, I would suggest this is not an answer, either. Consider using other professional services. I doubt you would be hanging on the shoulder of the wedding photographer, scrutinizing, critiquing and approving every proposed shot - or asking an excellent yoga teacher to explain and justify every suggested posture - or asking a highly trained and respected physiotherapist to have you personally review and OK any exercises they are recommending. In these fields too, you educate yourself. You find a professional you can trust. You dialogue with them --- and then you trust them to get on with it and do their job. There are people of extraordinary ability in web design, marketing, optimization and development. Find them. Then, absolutely, dialogue with them --- plan, interact, discuss; I am a strong advocate of partnership between business owners and specialists. But, at some point, if you want the best results, you need to trust them to do their work, their side of the partnership. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: Adsense for domains > ... does [domain parking] affect the search engine > rankings and if so does this undercut the value of > the domain? ... does it make more sense to do > something with Google AdSense than use a > parking service? - Stephen P. Levin, LED Digest 2344 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1741/55/ Today I stumbled across a domain parking service from Google. I had no idea this existed, and was pretty surprised. They state their wish to work with "large domain portfolio owners." More here: http://www.google.com/domainpark/ While I can't answer the question about ranking impact, Stephen, I have a suspicion that (at least with Google) this isn't really a concern. Anyone using Google AdSense for Domains care to comment? Anxious to hear more, Adam Audette http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/40/79/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Sitemaps > Overall I get the feeling [Google] knows how > to find dupe content and deal with it... - Nathan Holley, LED Digest 2346 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1743/55/ I've always believed that to be the case as well Nathan. "Avoid dupe content" is oft given advice, and I've given it myself. Sure, I've published previously-published articles on my site but I didn't expect them to rank anywhere or even be indexed. They were just articles I felt my visitors would find interesting, even if they added nothing (but incurred no penalty) from an SEO perspective. On the Google Webmaster Central blog which Nathan mentions they state: ----------------------- "Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they're understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results." Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006...duplicate-content.html ----------------------- Agreed. But it seems Google doesn't always get it right. On a new site I've just completed - http://www.quovadis.ie - we targeted the keywords "career builder Ireland." Try searching that at Google. Now I know we all see different search results these days depending on where you search from and whether you are getting "personalized" results etc, but I get an article called "Career Resources - Work & Life - CareerBuilder - Be One" which appears multiple times across multiple domains. All of these domains appear to be cookie-cutter type sites where the only difference is the logo and the domain. The "Ireland" part appears to be a person named Ireland quoted in the article. On the third page of Google results the same article fills the entire 10 results. Hardly a "cross-section of unique content." On Yahoo, Quo Vadis is already raking #3 and the article is nowhere to be seen. MSN (Live) are yet to fully index the site. The article is showing up several times but not to the same extent as Google. Does anyone have a theory as to why this is happening? Is it a one-off or can you quote other examples? A failing of the algorithm? "Career builder Ireland" isn't a hugely competitive search expression, which is why we targeted it, so I expect that once we outrank that article once we'll do it for all. Already a directory listing at SearchSite is coming up at #5 (it's always amused me how a directory listing for a site can outrank the actual site) but it's that old Google "trust" thing. Right now they trust SearchSite more than they trust Quo Vadis. That's understandable. But why they trust umpteen other sites with exactly the same content, I'm not so sure. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Testimonials > How do you go about in encouraging such > thorough feedback? ... a lot of my feedback > is pretty generic, like this: "It looks great!" - Alicia Lane, LED Digest 2345 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1742/55/ If you get a generic testimonial, use a *brief* oral or email interview to ask very specifically for what you want by using questions such as: - How did this help you? - What goal were you trying to accomplish (or problem were you trying to solve?)? - How did my services advance this? - How did I compare with other vendors you used in the past? Then put together the testimonial, as much in their voice as possible, and run it by them for approval. Shel Horowitz, copywriter/speaker/consultant Books: Grassroots Marketing http://www.frugalmarketing.com Principled Profit http://www.principledprofit.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Kathy Wilson Subject: Down on Designers > Web designers on the whole do not know your business as > well as you do and of course they design something that is > complicated to update, so that they get the repeat business. - James Miller, LED Digest 2345 While it may be true in some instances that some website designers may design something complicated so they get the repeat business, it isn't true for all website designers. In fact, I detest doing the boring maintenance and updates and have hired someone to do that work for me. I prefer to focus on the creative aspects of designing. When my clients tell me they wish to do their own updates, I gladly recommend Contribute, a simple and easy-to-use program that was designed by Macromedia (now Adobe, mores the pity). In all cases, however, I find that when they take over the updates the design falls apart. Not because it's complicated, since I use only basic HTML and tables for design layout, but because the clients know nothing about website design. I have many examples of how the quality of the design is compromised and I offer here just a few. Typically I find they pay no attention to the font they use so there's an ugly mix of Verdana and Times New Roman (the default font). They also know nothing of other simple things, such as how paragraphs and line breaks work. They end up inadvertently creating huge amounts of blank space - not to be confused with consciously created white space. They have no knowledge of how to edit and resize images, so they'll insert a huge image but decrease the size of it on the web page, which then causes it to take forever to load. On several occasions I've received calls for help from clients who messed up their websites and wanted to me fix all their errors and take over the updates once again. They came to the realization that, while they know their business, they don't know mine. My bottom line is that while my clients may know their business better than me, I know website design better than they do. Therefore, it behooves us as professional website designers to keep the communication between us and our clients waaaaay open. This allows them to help us create a website that will best serve them and their customers / clients. Love, Kathy Wilson Under One Roof www.under-one-roof.net Website Design ~ Life Purpose Coaching ~ Vibrational Healing ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To my special Valentines, Sally and Lilly :-) |
