LED Digest 2198: Faith and Trust and Doubting Google

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List Moderator: Published by:

Adam Audette LED Digest

adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com

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July 7, 2006 Issue no. 2198

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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....

==== CONTINUING =================

--== Google "Miserable Failure" Search ==--

~ Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian

"Spin masters - that's what they need! ;) ..."

~ Maty Matyszak

"I intend to list George W. Bush's most triumphant

successes in foreign and domestic policy."

~ John Smart

"Here we are talking about Google again. Brilliance!"

~ Mark Roberts

"This is NOT a political issue. It is a search engine issue..."

--== Selling on Amazon ==--

~ Scott Marino

"I stand by my statement that *business is not

about being fair*."

==== BILLBOARD ===================

--== Email Pirates ==--

~ Tom Aman

~ Reg Charie

~ John "zeke" Brumage

======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian
Subject: Failure search

> My son came over for dinner last night and during idle
> conversation about George Bush, he told me that if you
> do a Google Search on "Failure" it will pull up George
> W. Bush, Biography of the 43rd President of the United States.
        - Bob Sheridan, LED 2196

If it were my site that search results for 'miserable failure' were
pointing to, here's how I'd spin it...

My webpage would have the headline:

"A Miserable Failure... That's What I MIGHT Have Been!"

"But in reality, I'm a GRAND success. And you can be one too."

And then lead on to a list of achievements to support that position
:)

Spin masters - that's what they need! ;)

All success

Dr. Mani

33 Blog Profit Ideas - Exposed
http://www.blogprofits.com

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Maty Matyszak
Subject: Failure search

> To say I'm flabbergasted is rather an understatement.
        - Mekhong Kurt, LED 2197

Hear, hear

How annoying to hear netizens mocking the 43rd President of the USA
in this way. As web citizens, we need to fight back, so I propose to
open on my site a web page called 'Glorious Success' and on this
page I intend to list George W. Bush's most triumphant successes in
foreign and domestic policy.

err ... suggestions anyone?

Maty Matyszak

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: John Smart
Subject: Failure search

I love this story -- it is first so if you hit the "I'm feeling
lucky" button you go straight there.

As far as I can tell, this is anti-political, not anti-bush -- it
was in effect before Bush was in power. It seems to me to be a
harmless piece of fun.

Let's face it -- if Google had a political agenda, I think results
would be corrupted in a much more subtle way. I am sure that Google
has many of these 'Easter Eggs' -- what good marketing! Here we are
talking about Google again. Brilliance!

John Smart
InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Mark Roberts
Subject: Failure search

> Does anyone out there know how this type
> of keyword search misdirection can occur?
        - Bob Sheridan, LED 2196

I have to jump in on this one....

Most of the responses on this particular subject seem to be ringing
in on a political note. This is NOT a political issue. It is a
search engine issue that is starting to concern me.

I have noticed recently that while doing some research on some
topics on Google (I cannot give specific examples, there were just
too many), some of the results that I got were way off topic from
what I was searching for. I even did a search on the source code of
the pages and could not get hits on the search arguments that I was
searching on... even on some of the results from the first couple of
pages.

I just kind of shrugged it off in a frustrated fashion and continued
on. I hadn't given it much thought until I saw this thread. A number
of things concern me with this.

1. If I search on "Dogs", I expect to get pages referring to "Dogs"
not cats, not hampsters or horses, but Dogs. You are wasting my time
and your server power when you give me pages that have nothing to do
with dogs.

2. I don't care if you hate dogs, If I request a search on dogs, I
expect to have pages referring to dogs to be returned to me.

3. If there are 100 pages on the internet referring to dogs and 80%
of them refer to a common page, I would expect that to have a higher
page rank than the other pages referring to dogs. Should have
nothing to do with pages referring to cats.

4. If someone links to a dog page with the text "cats", I would
expect that it would add ranking to the page that it was linked to,
in the category of which that page fell into (dogs, not cats).

When I seach for something, I want information for what I am
searching for, not someone elses intrepretation of what I might be
looking for. If I wanted that, I would search for that.

This incident, coupled with my previous experiences with Google is
causing me to doubt my faith and trust in Google. Apparently, in
some cases at least, I am only seeing what they want me to see, or
what they think I want to see other than what might actually be
available. And, what I do see, may or may not have anything to do
with what I am searching for, which at the very least is wasting my
time.

With all of this in mind, from the other side of the development
table, If I follow all the rules with correct meta tags, content,
links etc., can I really be sure this will really help me with
google? Or, am I just wasting my time.

Mark Roberts

Roberts Computing Systems
Database managment/deveopment, Web Hosting
http://www.robertscomputing.com

-------- new post - new topic ---------

From: Scott Marino
Subject: Amazon selling

> Do the bigger companies with higher sales get
> better placement? Yes. Is it fair? Maybe / Maybe Not
> - either way, BUSINESS IS NOT ABOUT BEING FAIR.
        - Scott Marino, LED 2196

> Remind me about never doing business with you.
> It is a crime to separate business from humanity.
        - Charles Oertel, LED 2197

Charles -

I think you TOTALLY missed the point of my post and I take great
offense that you publicly declare that you will never do business
with me. We run an honest business and are ethical in all our
dealings. You are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine, and it
is fine if we differ in those opinions. Posting your opinion about
my character and / or company in this list is wrong in my opinion.

Fair business dealings may exist in a socialist economy where
everyone is considered equal (I rather doubt it really happens that
way). In a capitalist society, we are not all equal. This is a not a
statement of political views as that it for other venues. This is a
discussion of business.

R Black in prior posts was bashing Amazon for giving his competition
better placement resulting in more sales for them and fewer for him.
Amazon is in business to sell products. How they determine which 3rd
party seller gets what placement on their site is their business. It
is not their job to ensure that everyone gets an equal share of the
sales.

I stand by my statement that BUSINESS IS NOT ABOUT BEING FAIR.

Regards,

Scott Marino

==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Tom Aman
Subject: Email pirates

> Lately, I have had a big problem with people
> pirating email accounts. These individuals use
> such email address' as support@(domainname)
> and send spam out using these address'.
        - Ed Clark, LED 2197

There is not really anything you can do to prevent this kind of
thing as SPAMMERS do it all the time. It is a perfect example of
why you cannot trust the From, Reply-To or Return-Path in any SPAM.
It is very often faked.

One thing you can do is learn to read the rest of the headers. For
example, the first Received header reads:

Received: from [221.157.46.79] (port=1953 helo=67.43.2.23)
by spark.dailydns.com with smtp (Exim 4.52)
id 1FxqcH-00030z-MW
for This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ; Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:31:26 -0400

This indicates that the email actually originated from 221.157.46.79
and a Whois lookup indicates that this belongs to Korea Telecom so
it is probable that it is one of their users who actually originated
the message. The Whois information also gives an Abuse Contact of
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , so you could always try reporting the problem to
them with an attachment of the complete email, including headers.

The completed headers are needed so they will have some hope of
determining the actual user (i.e. from there records of who was
assigned that IP address at the time the message was sent.

*Sometimes* the actual owner will do something about it although
there is no guarantee.

Tom Aman

Aman Software
http://www.cyberspyder.com
Home of CyberSpyder Link Test

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Reg Charie
Subject: Email pirates

This is not actually pirating the email addresses.

Usually this junk is sent by a spam bot or virus that takes a list
of domain names from an infected computer's address book and starts
sending out to "faked" addresses.

Joe@ jim@ info@ service@ get-me-the-bleep-outta-here@ or anything
before the @ could be used or made up.

If your cPanel setup is the same as mine, I have the option to set
up the main email account as a catch-all (anything before the @ gets
to the domain's main email account, or as a unique set of addresses
only.

Setting this as unique won't stop the spam bots from sending their
garbage; it just means you won't get the mails.

Thank You,

Reg Charie
www.dotcom-productions.com

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: John "Zeke" Brumage
Subject: Email pirates

Faking the return address on an email is somewhat trivial, in fact
it is a standard feature on most spamming tools.

Some spam filters verify an email address by doing a RECPT (asking
the sender's mail server if it has a valid mailbox) on each incoming
email.

If your domain has a "wild card" box, it becomes very convenient for
spammers to use arbitrary (abcxxx, abcxxy) or role (webmaster,
admin) addresses in your domains in order to sneak past the latest
filters. You can see this also when several bounces come to you.

What can you do?

1. Get rid of "wild card" acceptance.

2. If you can find out the beneficiary of the advertising being
fraudulently sent, go to small claims court. file a separate claim
for each incident. the basis of your claim is identity theft.

I have been fighting spam since the beginning of time. "If it's
free, it attracts thieves." Only by raising the cost can spam be
controlled,

John "zeke" Brumage
ANYHOO.com

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