| LED Digest 2128: Image Theft, also Starving Harvesters |
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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 .............................................. March 30, 2006 Issue #2128 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Protecting Images ==-- ~ Nancy Cardinali "I inadvertently discovered a half baked cure." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Good Books for Web Developers ==-- ~ Tom Anson "...one book that I found helpful was Shari Thurow's Search Engine Visibility." --== Duplicate Content ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...you could use 'client-pull' to redirect visitors to the new domain..." --== Verifying Site Traffic Claims ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "...as a research tool [Alexa] certainly has value in my opinion." --== To Bounce or Not To Bounce ==-- ~ Lee Roberts "...still the question looms regarding whether to bounce or not." ~ Steven Birk "The only real way to kill these harvesters off is to starve them!" ~ Bill Davison "Will Bontrager has an excellent free script..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Reciprocal Linking ==-- ~ Michael Linehan =========== NEW ================================== From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: Protecting images? Hi All, The subject of preventing images from being stolen from web sites has oft been tossed around this group. And we all know you can not 100% prevent theft. However, I inadvertently discovered a half baked cure. Using CSS, I placed the logo on a web page. When the client tried to print the page, the logo did not print. I was, at first, baffled. I now realize the logo (or any art work that would be similarly displayed) is not really sitting on the page we view, but is one layer deeper, therefore unavailable to the casual thief. Of course, the experienced thief will simply go to the image file and snag it. But at least it would be some protection. For those who are new to web design, here's the site: (I sure hope my code is good! I put that up rather quickly!) www.rainbowfabrics.net You would be able to find my image file at: www.rainbowfabrics.net/images It doesn't solve the problem, but maybe will help some... and maybe will inspire other convoluted 'solutions'! I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I read this digest EVERY morning and feel like something is missing when I can't! Great work, Adam - thank you. Nancy Cardinali Written a good book? No time for self-publishing? Let Taylor-Dth Publishing help! www.taylor-dth.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Tom Anson Subject: Good books > Can you recommend a good, yet easy to > understand book for webmasters? - AE Brantley, LED 2127 There are a lot of different aspects to being a webmaster, so this question is a little broad to answer very well. However, one book that I found helpful was Shari Thurow's Search Engine Visibility. It's been a while since I've read it, but it seemed to pull together a lot of pieces of what makes a website good -- and not just for search engines. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Duplicate content > ... we need to move our website to a new domain > name hosted elsewhere... we run the risk of the old > site and the new site being in Google's index at > the same time. How likely is it that we'll be judged > to have duplicate content in this scenario? - Melissa Rood, LED 2126 If your old domain does not contain too many pages, you could use "client-pull" to redirect visitors to the new domain: Replace every page on the old domain with a page that contains, between the <.HEAD> and <./HEAD>, the tag: <.META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="x; URL=http://foo.bar/blatz.html"> The URL value would be the appropriate page on the new site, "x" represents a delay time in seconds. This causes the browser to get the page at the URL location after "x" seconds. For visual reference, to call the attention of visitors to the old domain that you have moved, in the body of the page on the old site place some text such as: We have a new domain, "foo.bar". You will be redirected to the new location in a few seconds or <.a xhref="http://foo.bar/blatz.html">click here<./a> to go there now. This lets visitors know that you have moved, gets them painlessly to the new location, and avoids any Google problems. Presumably, the old site will just disappear after a month or two. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Verifying claims > Alexa figures won't tell you much, since they > only count users with the Alexa toolbar enabled. - Bob Gladstein, LED 2127 While Alexa can not give you an exact, comprehensive report on a particular site's traffic (no third party resource can really), as a research tool it certainly has value in my opinion. Yes, there are anomalies - a client's site of mine gets almost twice as much traffic as my own site yet her site has a lower Alexa ranking, but generally it is a good indicator of a site's standing. If a site has a ranking of under 100,000 you can be pretty sure it receives a significant amount of traffic. If it has a ranking of over 1 million or returns a "no data found" response it COULD be a high traffic site but PROBABLY isn't. I'd be doubtful of any high traffic claims made for it, or at least want to see some verifiable statistics. The ground between 100,000 and 1 million is where most websites lie - good to average traffic. Certainly a high Alexa ranking is no guarantee that a site is returning a profit or achieving whatever goals the owner set for it. But it does indicate that significant numbers of people are visiting it, and surely that's half the battle. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Lee Roberts Subject: Bouncing Many people have chimed in on the subject of spam and how it affects business functions, but still the question looms regarding whether to bounce or not. I've seen too many times where clients have set up failed attempts to bounce back to the send in hopes that the sender will realize that sending an email to a particular non-existent email address is futile. The sad fact is the spammer doesn't care. They could be using someone else's email address or domain which in turn only swamps an innocent party with bounces from your server responses. Then if the innocent party has their email set to autorespond you begin to play ping pong. As the two email servers bounce back responses the situation doesn't cease until someone stops the bouncing and lets all the responses come through. Unfortunately, this can cause a server to get into extremely high loads requiring rebooting. If the bouncing isn't stopped before the server is rebooted the situation will only continue to worsen. So, is it better to bounce or not? Technology says it's better to not bounce. Respect of the other sites on your shared server demands that you not bounce because you affect their business as well as yours when the server goes down. While some may disagree, I have found obfuscating the email address using any method referenced by this page (http://www.u.arizona.edu/~trw/spam/) very helpful. I prefer to not use the JavaScript solutions and merely use the _simpler method_. In all the years of using that option, the obfuscated email addresses have never been harvested. If you wish to use a form you can have someone build one for you, but using any of the open source applications leads to professional spammers finding ways to use them without your knowledge. The only formmail script we allow clients to use is NMS Formmail which aids in hiding the email address, preventing spam relays and a few other nice little helpers. Sincerely, Lee Roberts http://www.roserockdesign.com http://www.applepiecart.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steven Birk Subject: Bouncing > And - sorry - once again we're having > a spam discussion with contributors whose > emails addresses are completely exposed > in their text or in the HTML code. - Michael Linehan, LED 2127 Michael, This LED Digest in my opinion has some very 'cream-of-the-crop' members that I have learned a lot from. But you correct in saying (and you don't have to say "sorry") that those who contribute to a discussion with spam reducing methods should NOT have their email address there for the taking. Seems counter-productive. I would think that the #1 PRIORITY **meaning something to do right NOW** for anyone that has a web site and especially those that are doing some sort of business with their web site is to get your email address protected from spam-bots (at least as much as possible!). When I see some of the per day spam numbers that other people are getting in the range of 10,000 - 20,000 a day, that is absolutely unreal. I have one contact page with a contact form on my site at http://medicalcenternews.com that I use. It is a SiteSell SBI Site and SBI has an Anti-Spam Form Build-It Module that automatically hides how the information is sent to me. Absolutely zero spam and I am very satisfied... I am a SBI customer / user for life! I did a little searching around and I found out a few things that may help those who are trying to eliminate spam (I guess that's pretty much everyone :-)) Some of what I found, in a nutshell... Number 1: http://willmaster.com/possibilities/demo/RetrieveEmails.cgi and enter your page URL and see if a Spam-bot has the possibility to find your address. If you have an email address on the page you search and this finds it, for sure a Spam-bot will find it. Not saying its 100% accurate, but it's a start... Number 2: Look at http://www.automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform This looks like it has quite a robust way of encrypting your email address and its free. It does encrypt it inside of JavaScript so there may be some who don't want to use it for that reason. I tested it on a page and used the url in #1 above as a test and it did not find it. Not saying that's 100% fool proof, but it's something... Number 3: You can also use: http://www.golivecentral.com/pages/txttut/scramble.shtml This will ASCII encoded your email address, but you MUST embed it inside JavaScript to hide it from the Spam-bots. Do not just encode the mailto: link in ASCII and use it as an ordinary HTML link, the Spam-bots find this. Number 4: Another option is at: http://accessfp.net/protect-your-email-address.htm Look about 1/2 way down the page under the "Solution for Stopping Spam-Bots from Obtaining your Email Address from your Website" section. This produces a non-clickable link, but a copy and paste-able email address that your visitor can easily use to paste your email address into their email program, but which is undetectable by a Spam-bot. I have no affiliation with the above links; I just found them and included the actual links as a possible solution. I also found that you should never put just your email address as text on your web page as a Spam-bot will find that also. Use 'Number 4' above if you want to produce a non-clickable text email address on your web page. The only real way to kill these harvesters off is to starve them! Do what ever you can TODAY to protect your email address(s) on your web sites. I hope this may help. Regards, Steven Birk http://medicalcenternews.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bill Davison Subject: Bouncing Will Bontrager has an excellent free script (Master Spambot Buster) to disguise email addresses with a control panel. http://www.willmaster.com/master/spambotbuster/index.shtml Can you believe it, it's also free. Guess Will really doesn't think too highly of email harvesters and bulk emailing spammers. Will is one of the good guys! Bill Davison bizwebpage.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Michael Linehan Subject: Recip linking I have many examples, but this is a good one. Fiona Raven - fionaraven.com. When we started, I got her to number 1 out of 4 million in Google for the words book designer (non-specific, 'all these words' search). We went through all the Google updates. Sites screamed into the basement. New sites shot up the rankings. At each phase of the Google Dance, we heard bitter complaints. And Fiona Raven just sat there, bouncing up and down slightly between number 1 and number 4. Tens of millions more results appeared. She just sat there at the top. This went on and on until today there are 89 MILLION pages returned. She is still number three. So my point -- How was this done? Plenty of thematically related content, good, basic white-hat SEO, and... a healthy dose of inbound links. I did my own experiment on linking - a site created with LOTS of quality, thematically-related content and well optimized, but with no inbound linking. It got NOWHERE, while a couple of client sites, similarly optimized by me, got page one results for the same search. Each of them had a moderate amount of inbound linking. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.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. "I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle - so all is peace." - Edward Lear |
