| LED Digest 2405: Shopping Carts & Sub-domains |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 8, 2007 Issue no. 2405 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Shopping Carts, Sub-Domains & SEO ==-- ~ M. Williams "Does anyone have any experience with this?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Recommended Spam Filters ==-- ~ Reid Neubert "...the best spam filtering solutions are server-based..." ~ Gordon Moe "I have been using spamsoap.com for the past two months and thoroughly love it!" ~ Dale DeHart "I have been referred by a knowledgeable source that I trust to Blackspider..." ~ Peggy Deras "I have a free way to filter my emails that is working very well for me." --== Headaches & Eyestrain ==-- ~ Bob Cavanagh "Graduated bifocals...reduce the strain of working with computer monitors." --== Vertical Search Engines ==-- ~ David Yancey "...the only way to play the web game 2.0 is to build companies that Google will buy..." ~ Mike Valentine "I've created three of them myself using Google Co-op..." =========== NEW ================================== From: M. Williams Subject: Search Engines & Shopping Carts on a Different Domain Greetings, Are there any downsides, in terms of search engine results and visibility, integrating a hosted shopping cart as a sub domain, on a website hosted by another web site provider? If this can be done without ill effect, what is the best implementation? For example, if the main site is www.mystuff.com, should we use as the url, for the shopping cart home page, something of the form "shop.mystuff.com" or "www.mystuff.com/shop"? Please share your experience and or knowledge with regard to SEO in this matter. We are considering this because the provider of the main website offers lots of bandwidth, storage, and powerful tools, but the accompanying shopping cart is unsatisfactory. We would like to use these resources to offer potentially high bandwidth content in addition to the ecommerce. On the other hand, we could easily exhaust our resources, from the preferred shopping cart provider, by using too much bandwidth or storage space. The goal is to offer a "life style" web site and integrated shopping under a single domain name. We think this approach helps us build a brand as well as drive sales. However, we are concerned about the effect this has on search engine ranking. The shopping cart provider says it can be done but is not recommended because the shopping cart pages will not rank high despite any SEO. They say the search engines prefer a single domain for the shopping cart pages rather than an alias or sub domain. Does anyone have any experience with this? Please share your experience and knowledge. Thanks, M. Williams Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Reid Neubert Subject: Spam filters > So LED'ers - do you use any 3rd party spam filters? > Can you name a good one? Please? - John Smart, LED Digest 2402 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1805/55/ My Web host, aplus.net provides incredibly effective and automatic spam filtering, and it is included in their shared hosting package (so it's free). I went from around 400 spam emails per day to a handful, and I've never had any indication that I haven't received a real contact's email. To me the best spam filtering solutions are server-based like their's is, so you don't have to download all of the spam before filtering. The only downside to Aplus' system is that there can be up to a 20 minute delay receiving email from a new-to-you sender, but this has never been a big issue. Check it out. Best regards, Reid Neubert www.neubertweb.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Gordon Moe Subject: Spam filters Admittedly, I did not research the spam filter options very long, but have been using spamsoap.com for the past two months and thoroughly love it! It was recommended by a colleague. http://www.spamsoap.com Set up is simple, just change your MX records for your domain. It is a dream to maintain as it auto-discovers legit email addresses and one account can be used for multiple domains. In terms of cost? You know what you bill per hour, now ask yourself how much time you spend in a week managing spam. Gordon Moe http://eBirdseed.com/blog/ Your birds deserve the quality, you deserve the convenience. Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dale DeHart Subject: Spam Filters I have been referred by a knowledgeable source that I trust to Blackspider from Surfcontrol (now owned by Websense). I have not used them yet, though. Dale DeHart, President www.sohoprospecting.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Peggy Deras Subject: Spam filters I have a free way to filter my emails that is working very well for me. I started forwarding all my emails though my Google Gmail account a few months ago and cut my spam getting through down to a very manageable trickle. Before that I was inundated every day with hundreds of spam emails. Being a business person who has to have my email address "out there", I was afraid to use the filters available to me though my ISP or even Eudora. I found that too many legitimate emails got caught up in them and I could not review what was being discarded. Gmail saves them in a spam folder and I can quickly go over them to make sure no good stuff is discarded. I have it pretty well trained now and my Eudora In-Box is the best I've seen it in years. Free isn't bad either. I sent them a suggestion a few months ago to group emails alphabetically rather than by date. Since so much spam is duplicated, alphabetizing would make it that much easier to scan quickly. So far they haven't done it. Maybe if others ask they would be influenced ;>D Peggy Deras, CKD, CID Kitchen Artworks www.kitchenartworks.com blog: http://kitchen-exchange.blogspot.com/ Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Have you sat down and read your website lately? What your site says is crucial in converting surfers into customers and meeting search engine mandates for fresh, unique copy. Our all-pro writers have Fortune 500 experience. For top-quality, customized, cost-effective copy, visit GetWebContent.com today. http://GetWebContent.com/LED ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Bob Cavanagh Subject: Headaches > Since first going computerized in 1984, I've had fatigue > issues involving the computer. Recently they've been > much worse. headaches and eyestrain start after only > a few minutes sometimes... - Shel Horowitz, LED Digest 2403 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1806/55/ I am one of the generation who experienced 25 Hz power in Ontario that Tom Aman referred to in LED 2404 [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1808/55/ ]. Being of that age I am definitely in the bifocal generation. Fortunately when it came time to move to bifocals my optician, who knew I worked with computers, recommended graduated bifocals. Most people get graduated bifocals for vanity reasons, to hide the line which signals that you have reached "that age". But they also provide a mid-range of magnification simply by slightly tilting your head. This makes them ideal for use with monitors where you are focusing on something somewhat further away than normal reading material. Graduated bifocals take some time to get used to but they definitely reduce the strain of working with computer monitors. But stress of all kinds will play havoc with your eyes. So make sure you deal with your physical (ergonomic) and emotional stress before your trip to the optician. Bob Cavanagh, Director of Technology Queen's School of Business Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: David Yancey Subject: Vertical Search Engines? > I keep seeing chatter about VSE's [Vertical > Search Engines] in articles and blog posts > but can someone actually give me a few > URLs... - Dave Mead, LED Digest 2404 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1808/55/ "Vertical Search Engine" means a search "engine" (or directory or the equivalent) which attempts to aggregate all relevant sites and web pages that pertain to one of the following: - a specific *topic*, such as, say, US politics, or evolution - a specific (and frequently recurring) *activity* such as, say, investing, or parenting - a specific *class of goods, items, or services* such as, say automobiles, or books - a specific *locale*, such as, say, Tuscany, or French Polynesia For several reasons, "vertical search" has yet to emerge as a set of four focused-interest categories along the lines defined above that advertisers and website publishers can point to as candidates for SEO or SEM-type activities. Most of these reasons are only of interest to interactive economists, a small number of visionary VCs, and the planners at Google or Yahoo, etc, and hence are not worth discussing in any detail this limited space. But I will enumerate what I see as the main reasons "verticals" have yet to have a general impact, if only to help LEDers understand why this type of search site is not yet ready for prime time -- and why they nonetheless need to be tracking its gradual emergence. 1 Conventional web-crawling (spidering) technologies are not adequate to gather all the truly relevant links for the 20-30 most economically most important "vertical search" opportunity areas. I won't detail here why spidering web content is relatively useless for vertical searching applications. I'll just state the obvious, namely, that as "vertical search" takes hold with the users, the vast investments made by Google and its me-too followers will quickly lose 85% to 95% of their economic and market value. This in turn will open up the search field like a fat ripe melon for, easily, many dozens of "search"-based competitors not now on the horizon. 2 Conventional notions of presenting SERPs as in Google or Yahoo are not effective in presenting "vertical" results in a truly user-friendly way. Indeed, it is likely that there is NO "one results presentation format fits all" user interface that would be effective for all the major verticals, or even for three or four out of the thirty or so which will emerge in the next 5-10 years. Similarly, "personalization" will likely prove to be a different set of requirements from one "vertical" to the next. No surprise, then, that the present search leaders are not really interested in finding 20-30 new SERP solutions. 3 Those building and running search sites are still enchanted with the holy grail of a single site that finds everything for everybody, and a rigidly simplistic user interface that all must use, whether it fits their needs or not. This concept of "search engines" is basically an immature concept of search that was entirely appropriate for the typical web users circa 2000 to 2005, and will be seen as archaic and naive by the typical web users circa 2010-2015. 4 Truly effective "vertical search" must be accompanied by a very substantial amount of integrated "content" which is *closely related* to the vertical site's area(s) of search focus. Search sites are basically not in the content biz, right? No, wait -- what about Yahoo...? Interesting. 5 A number of powerful content-based sites, which meet my criteria of tight topical / activity / product / locale focus *could* emerge as verticals in their category, but this is unlikely. Still, most seem to think this will happen, and hence may not be investing in the messily tailored search technological solution-sets needed to be effective in *each* distinct vertical opportunity area. 6 Inherently, effective vertical search tends to be bounded by geographic, national, linguistic, and cultural constraints, to a degree the present search engine operators largely can ignore. For example, an effective US-based "vertical" for health would necessarily be only semi-useful even in a market as closely related to the US as Canada. Travel is a very different activity for most folks in, say, Europe or Asia from what Americans typically think of as being relevant to "travel search". "Entertainment" is even more profoundly differentiated across these macro divides. Could one develop a travel search vertical that all people everywhere could use? Of course, but it's doubtful all *would* use such a necessarily limited and generic tool. 7 Most vertical search includes a very strong, even dominating degree of "local" content. This localized vertical content will go *far* beyond classified shop listings and a handy map. The Big Three have (so far) failed to see local search as anything more than a technologically up to date sort of Yellow Pages -- and little wonder, given that the Yellow Page companies, with their US$15-20 billion in annual ad revenues, must appear to online search's voracious wolves like huge fat geese waiting to be plucked and roasted. In light of this economic opportunity, I suspect the managers in the Big Three would be very reluctant to risk fragmenting their expensively constructed "local" platforms across 20-30 vertically-focused search applications. 8 Search experts are fond of reminding us that search success is all about relevance. When the probable relevance of vertically-derived results is measured against the "relevance" of typically spam and affiliate-infested SERPs in today's search sites, the superiority of the former will be immediately and pleasantly evident to users. 9 Lastly, realize that the early investor Angels and VCs are doubtless persuaded that Google is unstoppable, and that the only way to play the web game 2.0 is to build companies that Google will buy, or that one of the others will buy in order to keep them out of G's ever-more grasping clutches. What is ironic is that the sorts of vertical search sites envisioned here are *precisely* what the money people, and Google itself, ought to be investing in. But this won't happen, since the G bosses would see such vertical sites as subverting and ultimately supplanting G in the eyes of users, and then advertisers, as well. And they would be right. David Yancey "See us in Amazon.com by searching on the keyword 'tootoographic' " Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mike Valentine Subject: VSE I've created three of them myself using Google Co-op and thought they were called CSE's because it is a "Customized Search Engine" but perhaps that's a minor difference. Privacy Search Engine http://Privacynotes.com SEO Job Search http://realityseo.com/seo-job-search.html SEO Guru Commentary http://searchengineoptimism.com/SEO-Search-Marketing-Commentary.html If you are looking for a directory of CSE's you can find one at: http://www.customsearchguide.com/ Google also has a list of examples at: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/examples/GooglePicks Build one yourself: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ Hope that helps. Mike Valentine http://realityseo.com Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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