| LED Digest 2096: AdWords Abuse |
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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 .............................................. February 14, 2006 Issue #2096 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ===================== --== Google AdWords / AdSense Spam ==-- ~ Jim Berry "...we've noticed a huge increase in the number of sites that have no real content..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== AOL & Yahoo to Charge for Email? ==-- ~ Ken Evoy "Relax. It is the way the world works. Nothing stays the same." ~ Rob Forker "Another take from Paul Myers' TalkBiz newsletter." --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Sunil Bahl "...there are lot of web guys out here in India." --== Shopping Cart Abandonment ==-- ~ Rick Gortatowsky "...stored shopping carts are a different matter." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Phish Spam ==-- ~ Tom Aman =========== NEW ================================== From: Jim Berry Subject: Google AdWords / AdSense Spam Over the past year, we've noticed a huge increase in the number of sites that have no real content other than Google AdWords / AdSense. Even the "Sponsored Links" on Google often contain pages with nothing but Google AdWords. As one of the only Directory businesses that does not list Google Ads or use DMOZ listings - 100% of our content is original - we are a frequent target of those who grab our content for creating a quick site to host Google Ads. We've read numerous discussions regarding "click-fraud", but have yet to see any major media report on AdWords Spam. One wonders how much real revenue is being generated by Google, and how much is nothing more than regurgitated content for the sole purpose of making a few dollars a month listing Google AdWords. It seems that this could be a house-of-cards that Google has not yet addressed, or won't due to the potential shock awaiting their bottom line if all these sites were pulled down. I'm also surprised that their supposedly superior technology can't (or won't) ferret out these obvious TOS violators. Jim Berry www.bookkeepinghelp.com jim, bookkeepinghelp.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Ken Evoy Subject: Email charging > What are the ramifications going to be if charging > for "superior" access to e-mail boxes happens? - Ronni Rhodes, LED 2095 The Internet is the greatest enabler of capitalism and libertarianism in the history of the world. Without a vote being "cast" in elections (a wonderful process hijacked by politicians long ago) and without a shot being fired, the Net leads the revolution to freedom. Part of that is allowing and congratulating those who know how to make money online, whether that be AOL and Yahoo! or the sole proprietor who is just starting out. They do not need to justify themselves, but they spend exorbitant amounts on spam. This won't eliminate the "free" sending of e-mail, simply guarantee arrival of e-mail by those who pay. It will, of course, not happen UNLESS their primary customers, their subscribers, object. If they do not, then the service must be of value, especially since they'll be glad NOT to pay for it. To those who object to others making money online, I say... Relax. It is the way the world works. Nothing stays the same. Of course, we will suddenly have a large expense ourselves. But we can adjust, accelerate our move to RSS for example. And beyond adjusting... Spot a market opportunity that this development opens up. Several come to mind for us. All the best, Ken Evoy http://webmaster.sitesell.com/ ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Rob Forker Subject: Email charging Another take on the charging subject. Copied from Paul Myers' TalkBiz newsletter. ----------------------- As published in TalkBiz News: http://www.talkbiznews.com There's been a lot of smoke and heat (but very little light) about the recent announcement that AOL and Yahoo will be rolling out Goodmail's CertifiedEmail system for their networks. I've been getting questions on it from all over, and heard some outrageous claims and fears. Everything from "All email is going to be charged for" to "This is going to kill small publishers" to "This is just a 'pay to spam' system!" Ummm... No. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: Don't Panic! The basic point that needs to be made is simple: For the moment, nothing changes for anyone who chooses not to pay for Goodmail's certification. First, let's be clear: CertifiedEmail is not in any way, shape or form, an attempt to reduce spam. It's a system that allows end users to immediately recognize legitimate email from paying senders whose identities have been checked and verified. The mechanism is more involved than that but, to the end user, that's the whole effect in a nutshell. The thing that makes it so attractive to ISPs is that it's much more effective in making that identification reliably than other systems have been in the past. If you're on a system that uses CertifiedEmail and get a message with Goodmail's stamp on it, a little emblem shows on your mailer's interface that tells you it's really what it claims to be. Doesn't matter whether you call it accreditation, certification, email ID or green jell-o. That's all it does. As published in TalkBiz News: http://www.talkbiznews.com ----------------------- Rob Forker ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Sunil Bahl Subject: Outsourcing Hi Currey, Your comments are quiet interesting. My comments are given below: > I have been working with offshore programmers > mainly from India for almost 10 years... IMO any > 'savings' are short term... While pleasant and courteous > in general the results from the programmers are > not high. Typically the face contacts are experienced, > good and well-versed, but from there it goes > downhill hard and fast. I am from Mumbai, India and I have been designing and developing web sites for 8 years now. And please let me tell you there are some extremely talented developers here. The issues you are having is because you may have been impressed by the servicing guy of company X, without actually knowing how sound their infrastructure is. My Uncle -- who has a company in USA -- outsourced his web site to some company here in Mumbai. I came to know about it only 2 months after the work had begun and my uncle was really struggling with this guy. So I got involved and streamlined the process flows cause all their processes were a mess and I had to teach the company quite a bit. The guy who dealt with my uncle was well educated etc, but his entire setup looked shady as he never let me visit him at his office. If my uncle had only come to me in the first place, he would have saved a lot of headache. The conclusion being that there are lot of web guys out here in India. You just need to find the ones who fits your requirement well. Safest way would be to work with people who are recomended to you by friends, family and collegues. > The total ROI... IMO is not worth it... the programmers... > are not that experienced nor good, the code that I have > seen is quick and dirty, the code is practically devoid > of in-line comments, We have companies in USA and China coming to us not because we are cheaper, but because we can give them an output that is world class. We are competitive in our costs, but that is only secondary to them. Hope my inputs were of some use. Warm Regards, Sunil Bahl www.sunmatrix.com Synergising Brands With Technology ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Rick Gortatowsky Subject: Cart abandonment > However, the number one reason I abandon shopping > carts is not one that can be fixed by any strategy that I > can think of... 90% of the time it's because I've added > numerous items and discovered that what they add > up to is far more than I'm willing to pay at the time. - Jay Everson, LED 2095 This is I believe one of the aspects I covered in this thread. People shopping and either not having the money to actually buy or when they see the total they go, "Well forget this". Many people do this, I have done this. But stored shopping carts are a different matter. These should be treated as a layaway type deal. In order for the cart to be stored a credit card need be entered. This will eliminate most of the buyers who are really not serious. The goods in the cart should be "reserved", taken off active inventory. If the customer does not come back within whatever the terms are, 10 working days perhaps then a penalty is assessed just like real layaway. One can argue that, well whats to stop people w/ a maxed out card or invalid card from still storing carts? Big difference. Once they actually enter that card data the equation changes. They then have entered into a terms of service (layaway) contract and submitted actual payment data. The vendor has reserved goods. At this point there are several options. Formal complaint to the card franchise, drawing bank, even the cops of say card data is bogus or a long expired card etc, emailing the ISP and letting them know that their service is being used as a venue for the parties activities. What good does that do? ISP's have terms of services too and most are quite serious and good about following up. They generally warn the party. There are people who browse shop and never really intend on making the purchase. Thats ok. They are not storing the shopping cart. If someone is going to store a shopping cart then the site need attempt to only allow those who are serious buyers to store them. Rick Gortatowsky ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Aman Subject: Phish spam > I believe that the number of phishing e-mails for > a particular bank does reflect that bank's security, > in that the better the security the less likely a customer > is to be fooled. Remember, by security I would > include the publicity and information that banks > send to customers to warn of on-line fraud. - James Miller, LED 2095 James, even if the phishers are sometimes successful with their scam, please explain to me how that will affect you, personally, if you have an account with one of those banks but never respond to one of these scam emails. Also, what do you suggest the banks do to stop it? They are not getting the emails so they don't directly have access to the necessary info to trace the scammers. Maybe, if every customer of those banks who received such an email, forwarded the email *with complete headers*, the banks would be able to do something. Two problems. First, most people just delete the scam email so the bank never sees it. Second, even if they do forward it, many (the majority?) do not know how to forward an email so that the complete original headers are sent with the forward. In Outlook Express, for example, if I just click "Forward", most of the original headers are stripped. Other than alerting the bank to the fact that the scam is being attempted, such forwards are of little use. To forward with complete headers from Outlook Express, the email must be forwarded as an attachment. For determining if the emails in question are coming from one group, it is a matter of looking at the "Received" headers, identifying and ignoring the faked ones, then checking the remaining. Even that may not help because a smart scammer will use a variety of originating servers so sometimes you can relate the emails, sometimes you can't. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt To my valentines: Sally and Lilly, I love you. :-) |
