| LED Digest 2410: Domain Extensions & Age |
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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 15, 2007 Issue no. 2410 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Gatekeeper Mentality ==-- ~ Nancy Hayes "Gatekeepers are usually individuals who feel threatened..." ~ Dirk Johnson "...we can get the gatekeeper to reveal their real issues, and sort it all out." --== Blocked by Hotmail ==-- ~ Shaun Dixon "...in the wake of the US government clampdown on [gambling] many US ISPs are filtering emails." ~ Ron Coble "It is doubtful any one person or business can get hotmail to remove their restrictions..." --== Domain Extensions & Age ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "There is absolutely no evidence...that Google's algorithm intentionally favors older domains." ~ John Smart "Years ago, British Gas decided to try an experiment..." ~ Chris Nielsen "I have not seen that a domain extension makes a difference..." --== Do Macs Need Virus Protection Now? ==-- ~ Valerie Beeby "No trojans or other black-hat nasties." ~ Gordon Moe "I can surf any Russian gambling site I want." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Nancy Hayes Subject: Gatekeepers > The Gatekeeper relishes the opportunity to dangle his > access keys in front of you, or threaten to take your keys > away. S/he loves to guard access to things and make > your life difficult. - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2409 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1813/55/ Adam, I don't respond to many of the topics - I mainly lurk and learn. This topic, however, I feel is one that we face in more areas of our lives than our work. Gatekeepers are usually individuals who feel threatened at any suggestion of loss of control, power, prestige, etc. (You can name any number of intangible - or tangible - losses that they might imagine.) The most important thing that I've found out about dealing with them is this: Never "back them into a corner." Always leave them a graceful exit from whatever position / opinion that they've placed themselves into. You have to be quite tactful when dealing with them. Maybe let them think that it's their idea. Better to gain their support than their enmity. And - don't forget - someone higher up made them the Gatekeeper, so their prestige is also at risk. I'll go back to lurking now. Nancy Hayes Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Gatekeepers Hi Adam, In our business (reciprocal link management services) we encounter our fair share of gatekeepers. They are usually an advisor that assumes a larger role that what they were hired to do. Some of them simply don't like what we do, while others want to tell us how to do what we do, based on what they've casually read somewhere. At other times, we simply encounter the type who take a more combative, defensive approach, similar to the one you've encountered. Usually, when I hit a gatekeeper roadblock, I start with an email to them that graciously says, in effect, "Thanks for you help. We're not quite on the same page. There might be some miscommunication. Let's talk". Then I go straight to the phone, since a reliance on email can fail to convey nuances. I can't say that we win every one of these battles, but in most cases, we can get the gatekeeper to reveal their real issues, and sort it all out. If that does not work, then I will explain to them what I have to do next, which is to go to the principal and explain why we can't do what we've been hired to do. That way, the gatekeeper has a heads up before that email comes down the pike. I try to write the email in a way that will save face for the gatekeeper, and convey their concerns, as well. I avoid the proverbial pissing match, which goes nowhere, even if you win short term. Explain the full consequences to the person who hired you in the first place, including additional costs, etc. and see what happens. At that point, we'll either get the principal to fix the gatekeepers attitude, or we lose the battle. Then we decide to either make do with what we have, or bail out. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Want a fresh pizza delivered? Call Domino's. Want some fresh web content? Visit GetWebContent.com. We deliver fresh, we deliver fast and, unlike Domino's, every pizza copy we bake is different. We custom write it to fill your order and then burn the recipe. After that it's all yours to use on one site or 1,000 sites. www.GetWebContent.com/LED, fresh, fast and only for you. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shaun Dixon Subject: Hotmail blocked > Does anybody know how to get the > blocking by hotmail removed? - George Miller, LED Digest 2409 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1813/55/ It seems that in the wake of the US governments clampdown on what they consider to be illegal (gambling) many US ISPs are now automatically filtering emails sent to their domain and rejecting what the machines consider improper. I regularly get sent emails from several casinos I promote and when they are sent to the US based mail server they never arrive. (returned for the same reason above) When sent to my other email address (a German server) they arrive no problem. I suggest you look at the words you use in your email and try again. Shaun Dixon http://www.jsoftconsulting.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Ron Coble Subject: Hotmail blocked It is doubtful any one person or business can get hotmail to remove their restrictions on attachments. Although it is a bit tedious, when we send an attachment to any email address, especially hotmail or yahoo, we send the attachment email then shortly thereafter a short email basically telling the person that we have just sent them an email with an attachment and if they have not received it, they should check their junk email folder. If it is not in their bulk or junk email folder then it has most likely been filtered out by their email service or ISP. If this is the case we suggest they set up a gmail account or check with their ISP about the level of their s*pam protection. This ensures your potential customer / client is aware that you have done what they have asked or paid for and that if there is a problem, they will need to take some action on their end to help you resolve it. Ron Coble Coble International Marketing Services http://www.importexporthelp.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Domains > Does it make a difference in search engine > rankings what URL [extension] you have? - Sheila Moon, LED Digest 2409 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1813/55/ None whatsoever. I used to feel that Google might be giving a special boost to some top-level domains or Yahoo! directory listings. In December 2005 (after I and other people had been particularly vocal about this for some time) Matt Cutts said on his blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/) that "Yahoo links are helpful because they're high PageRank, but that's the only reason; there's no special 'Yahoo boost' or edu-boost or gov-boost. Those links just tend to be higher quality." While some people have expressed doubt about the sincerity of his statement, no one has yet shown that it's untrue. Current conspiracy theorists claim that Ickipedia articles are given special preference by Google. I have yet to see any evidence supporting that point of view (whereas Ask clearly admits to giving Ickipedia articles special significance). Ickipedia has so many external backlinks that it gets plenty of (Internal) PageRank, which in turn helps to ensure that its pages stay in the Main Web Index, which in turn helps to ensure that its internal links pass anchor text. But many Ickipedia articles are also naturally optimized simply by virtue of following their layout standards, and because the articles repeat keywords. (NOTE: I am aware that some Ickipedia "stub" articles, with minimal content, have also appeared in high positions -- but the fact many sites have lost PageRank and link anchor text over the past year tends to explain why it's easier for Ickipedia articles to creep up in the rankings better than any conspiracy theories.) > Would it be more important for search engine ranking > in the long run to keep an old domain name with a history > or to change the domain name to one which contains > keywords describing the content of the site? If you have a domain that has existing inbound links that won't change if you replace the content, you're probably better off using the existing domain. However, the reason has to do with the fact that (probably) trusted links are already pointing at the domain. There is absolutely no evidence to support the popular idea that Google's algorithm intentionally favors older domains. In fact, there is considerable evidence to show that newer domains can outrank older domains quite easily. It comes down to earning trust -- what I used to call "validating a site" -- through links from Web sites that Google trusts. Generally speaking, you want links from sites that are in Google's Main Web Index -- links from pages that have not been stripped of their ability to pass value (which Google says it will do to pages that it catches selling links). Once your site has validated it can generally achieve rankings on the basis of its own content. Obviously, for the most competitive expressions where people have invested in insane numbers of links you may need to build links that pass anchor text, but for most queries you don't need a lot of links. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Domains The 'age' of a domain name is valid, InternetDesign.com comes up 1st in most search engines (1st to 150th in Google, depending on the wind direction etc). for the keywords of 'internet design' - some of this ranking is because of my almost limitless talents in SEO (look at the source code for the pages and you will see that is sarcasm!) some of it is the domain name itself, and some of it is because the domain has been in existence for ten years. But for extensions, .com is the way to go. Despite the American view that .com is American (that may not apply to readers here, who know better, but the media needs educating!) .com is proffered. Years ago, British gas decided to try an experiment. With the domain names of britishgas.co.uk and britishgas.com pointing to the same places, they made sure every advert, every bill, every catalog had the domain www.britishgas.co.uk. Almost exactly 50% of the traffic went to the .com, even though they didn't publicize it. John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Domains I have not seen that a domain extension makes a difference, so if it does I would say it's very small. The industry in general prefers .com, but this is changing as more people make use of the more available TLDs, and I have been seeing an increase of .us domains. I think this is because after .com the .us gives a greater sense of "identity" for us in the US. Keywords use in a domain are a benefit, but there are limitations. I have seen two keyword domains like kw1kw2.com be found in the results for a search on "kw1 kw2". In Google at least, a site can be found when the domain has the keywords together in the same order. I don't see that this is try if the order is changed or other keywords are in-between the two searched for, so it seems that not all embedded keywords are found, which makes sense since there are so many possibilities with some words. I prefer domains that have hyphens to separate the keywords as some have noticed. There are more of them available and the search engines treat the hyphens as spaces, so the keywords can be easily matched and in any order giving what I think is more advantage. But given the choice of a keyword with history (and links?), I would keep the domain with the history in most cases. If there are few or no links to the site, then it might be worth a change if the client does not like the current domain. But in general the domain name factors are low enough that I don't recommend making changes and focus as you are on search engine optimization for the site as the most important factor. Chris Nielsen Postage-Meter-Machine.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Valerie Beeby Subject: Mac spam > I think it would be interesting if LED Mac users would give > [MacScan] a try and report back to LED on the results... - Tom Aman, LED Digest 2407 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1811/55/ I ran MacScan on my Mac and found 38 cookies, all harmless trackers from respectable sources. No trojans or other black-hat nasties. I've surfed daily on this computer for many months. I have only the Mac firewall activated, no extra protection. Sometimes at the end of the day I look at my surfing history, and am amazed at the number of websites I've visited! Valerie Beeby http://www.purple-owl.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Gordon Moe Subject: Mac spam Tom, I did read your post completely and multiple times. Perhaps the use of "became slaves" was too emotionally charged. I've read the replies to your initial post and we agree no Mac user has found any malware on their Mac. So, despite our small sampling, we do have a productive answer to your request. These items still remain (I won't call them truths or facts) suggesting that I am NOT 'totally incorrect.' With my 'boat anchor' I don't have to: - research the best version / flavor of adware, spyware, virusware, etc. - install the selected versions of adware, spyware, virusware, etc. - configure the selected versions of adware, spyware, virusware, etc. - register my selected adware, spyware, virusware, etc. - read Latest News emails from selected adware, spyware, virusware, companies. - use that software to scan all emails - I can surf any Russian gambling site I want Adam, please end this. I just re-read my post and it was not about PC bashing; plus we have an answer to Tom's question. Gordon Moe http://eBirdseed.com/blog/ Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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