JimWorld Gazette Issue #28 11/14/1997

Gazette - Issue #28 - November 14, 1997

-- Extremis Logicus Eruptum
-- A Few Favors For Jim
-- Scumbag Watch
-- The Other Side
-- Under Construction
-- Tips For The Hitman - Part XV
-- A Plea For Some Gazeteer Help
-- How Hotbot Ranks Sites
-- The Front Line Of Defense
-- Snippets
-- Welcome Back Infoseek
-- Need Some Hits?

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g28

This week the Gazette community zoomed right past the 7,000 subscriber mark. It was just two weeks ago that we passed the 6,000 mark. The growth is due to the hundreds (thousands) of you who have taken a proactive position on your web sites to help let people know that the Gazette exists. Give yourself a pat on the back. No community like VirtualPROMOTE has become is ever built by one person. Only your involvement has made this community possible. Six months to reach this point is a remarkable feat.

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To those who have inquired about JimWorld being off-line this weekend, sorry, but it will be down a few more days. It is migrating to a new NT server and nothing ever goes according to plan. Should be OK by Wednesday. The new server will give me the tools to better maintain the site's growing list of links without having to spend half my life editing HTML pages by hand.

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Taking a week off from publishing the Gazette gave me an opportunity to repair my soapbox. Those of you that have been around here for a while know what that means, don't you? Yep. Another 'Oh no. There goes Jim again' issue. This week we discuss (would tirade be a better choice of word) against the predators on the web and try to establish a time line for the end of the Net.

I have discovered this week that I cannot write as fast as Scumbags breed. I just can't keep up. So rather than trying to expose them all, we will try each week to learn a few more signs to watch for that we might all learn to recognize them on sight. It's either that or ask each of you do add a new hard drive to your system to allow adequate space for Gazette storage.

This week we zero in on the requirements for the Spam Scumbag Recognition Merit Badge.

Extremis Logicus Eruptum

Many of our younger subscribers express concern that they might become infected with the compulsion to express themselves in the manner of the Gazette. To allay their fears, I have done extensive medical research and can attest to the fact that the causes of this disorder have gone the way of smallpox.

The disorder is commonly known as Extremis Logicus Eruptum (ELE). ELE primarily afflicts those born between 1942 and 1960. It is believed to be an environmental disorder and therefore not contagious.

ELE manifests itself as uncontrollable urges to think in logical terms and seek logical answers to social issues accompanied by strong biological urges to vent their feelings in the face of normal, day to day life. In rare cases it has proven to be fatal, but most sufferers report favorable results from current efforts to control symptoms.

The cause of ELE is believed to be tied to unrestricted free thought during the 1960s. For many years it was not understood why all survivors of that period are not currently afflicted. Exhaustive research leads us to believe that the following environmental and behavioral forces imparted high degrees of immunity to ELE:

Serving on high school yearbook committees
Earning a law degree
ROTC drill team
Attending too many sessions of Polysci classes

The oft-rumored cause has been totally discounted. ELE can not be caused by toxins released through burning of the ink used in the printing of draft cards. Both the CIA and the FBI absolutely deny that any such experiment ever occurred. A high degree of credibility is given this news based on recent double-blind study results establishing that no government employee has ever suffered from ELE.

Sufferers of ELE can reduce their symptoms though the following means which are believed to dull those areas of the brain which trigger ELE episodes:

Read 3 consecutive issues of the National Inquirer
View 2 hours per day of CNN or appear once on a daytime TV talk show
Read the 'in-depth' news coverage in your local paper
Join an MLM down line to sell 'Search Engine Secrets' reports
Attempt to renew a driver's license
Attempt to install an upgrade to Windows 95
Attempt to install Windows NT
Volunteer to serve on district or council Boy Scout committees
View any 60 hours of the OJ trial or any 2 hours of the Nanny trial
During severe outbreaks, temporary cessation of symptoms can be achieved by voting for Bill Clinton. This step should be reserved until all other efforts have failed, as the side effects of disorientation and guilt can be fatal.

Under no conditions should ELE sufferers build a web site. ELE eruptions could become constant and escalating.

A FEW FAVORS FOR JIM

Please, please, please.....

I am trying to build a basic profile of the Gazette subscriber community in order to be prepared to offer demographic data to potential advertisers in the Gazette. I need a bit of help from some of you.

If you live outside of the United States, and you are subscribed under an email address that doesn't indicate your country of residence, please send me an email note with just your email address and country of residence. If you want to say 'Hi' that's nice too. For instance, if you live in Australia (lucky dog) and your email address is something like jim@hotmail.com instead of jim@virtualpromote.au I would like to hear from you.

Please don't assume that someone else will do it and you don't need to.

In the near future we will be doing a more detailed questionaire like the kind you fill out to get a free magazine subscription.

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The next favor is a bit more complex. I hear from so many of you that you have followed the VirtualPROMOTE techniques to promote your site without spamming the search engines, started newsletters, built up links to your site, prepared your site for promotion.... you know the things we preach. If you have done the VirtualPROMOTE 'thing' and your site has flourished because of it, please let me know about it. Even if it flourished in spite of VirtualPROMOTE, send it along. What the heck do the newcomers know, anyway.

I want to put together a page that new visitors can visit and hear from --you-- that there is a straight forward way to build a web community that actual works and lasts. There is so much bad information out there, people are gun shy and need a few testimonials to make them feel secure about trying the VirtualPROMOTE way. Usually by the time someone finds VirtualPROMOTE, they have had it hammered into their heads that clawing their way to the top of the search engines is the only way to build traffic.

Of course, each story will get full credit and links.

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I need a volunteer. If you would like to research and locate all of the free (controlled circulation) magazine and tabloids that are available that would be of interest to the Gazette and VirtualPROMOTE community, I want to hear from you. You would need to find, and review, every publication involving online computing, software, Internet, marketing, advertising and so on. I suspect there are about 100 of these and finding and reviewing and organizing that information would be of enormous value to our community.

If you are interested and have the time, send me a note mailto:jim@jimworld.com and give me a brief pitch describing why you are the best choice! Whoever winds up doing this gets full credit on the page and in the Gazette. In addition, he or she gets to place their banner (60 X 230, 4K max, animation OK) on the page permanently.

Did I mention that this then becomes your page to maintain? An update every 2-3 months would be nice.

If this works out, I hope that we can do more of these. There is such a long list of projects like this that need to be adopted. VirtualPROMOTE visitors have more needs than even I can fulfill.

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And finally, if you publish a newsletter or discussion list, let me know. I want to give each of you a plug in the 'Gazeteers Publishing Emporium' page. Let me know what impact it has had on your site community or business. Success stories might help some others decide to give it a try. I know there are lots of you who have already launched your e-pub. Let me hear from you. Include subscription information.

BTW - if your list is growing and becoming a nuisance to administer, give RevNet a call. If your time is worth anything, every month you will more than earn back the money you pay them. The best thing that has happened to me in a long time is having RevNet distribute the Gazette. Saves me too many hours each week to even talk about. And at my normal billing rate of $3.50 per hour, it pays for itself.

Sorry folks, but I am fresh out of inventory for the $3.50 hours, but I do have a good supply at a slightly higher price. < g >

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I have started getting a steady flow of article being submitted for inclusion in the Gazette or in the Guest Tutorials section of the site. Please keep them coming, but there is one thing you need to know. The Gazette is not a publication that publishes articles that have appeared elsewhere. We only publish articles that are exclusive to the Gazette. The exception is the author can publish on her/his own site.

First, the Gazette community is accustomed to getting the word early on anything regarding promotion and marketing.

We at the Gazette put a lot of effort into promotion each major article or tutorial that appears here. That is one of the primary ways we build new traffic. And we also encourage other web sites to republish article and tutorials. They always include links to the authors site and a credit that "This article originally appeared in the Gazette link and is republished here with permission of the publisher.'

So please keep them coming, but I just wanted you to know what is required. The up side is that you get excellent results from publishing a good article in the Gazette. Just ask anyone who has already appeared.

SCUMBAG WATCH

Let me preface this story with a disclaimer: I haven't attempted to contact the two sides of this issue. The mainstream press articles I've read have already done that, and they reported the events as 'news'. It is not my intention to report this as a news item, nor to cast aspersions on either party to the issue. Even if the story turned out to be a hoax, it is so indicative of techniques being used daily on the web, that it stands well on those legs alone.

A well written article covering both sides of the issue can be found at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,16051,00.html?latest

Here's the background:

On sale http://www.onsale.com/ was a pioneer in the development of online auctions. Their service lets companies place products and services into the auction and sell them to the highest bidder over the Internet.
eBay http://www.ebay.com/ thought there would be a market for this same type of service to individuals instead of just companies. So they launched their own site and it was a hit. Part of what made it work was the ease of communications between the buyer and the seller. eBay has an index of all 'members' (buyers and sellers) with their names and email addresses posted to their site. This allows the buyers and sellers to make arrangements for the transfer of products and payments. Their 300,000 'members' think it is a pretty valuable and profitable service.
Onsale apparently thought that eBay had discovered such a good market that Onsale decided to offer the same service. Nothing wrong with that. That's called competition. Everyone wins from competition, as all competitors must try to offer better and better services at lower prices in order to capture market share.
Unfortunately, the way Onsale decided to launch their new service was not in keeping with the unwritten rules of fair play. They 'harvested' all of the 300,000 names and email addresses of members from the eBay site using a 'bot' and sent email announcement of their new, competitive service to all of the eBay members. Foul flag is down on the field. Stop the game clock.
According to the story: eBay chief executive Pierre Omidyar said, "This is the first time a public company, a large company of such high standing, has used spam to advertise its services. The Internet community is very much against the use of junk email. America Online, which is a partner with On sale, is leading the war against spam."
According to the story: Onsale's Kaplan said his company's messages aren't spam. "eBay publishes on its Web site the addresses of its users, presumably so people can contact them about matters of import," he said. "Because we are launching a service, we thought it was a highly targeted [message]."

It must be very embarrassing to AOL to be caught with their Spams Down. After spending most of this year sending their checkbook to court to save the American Way Of Life from the onslaught of the roving bands of spammers, to be caught spamming must really throw off their game plan.

--End Of Story - Start Of Moral--

The moral here, and something everyone needs to start paying attention to, is the simple fact that just because something can be done doesn't make it right, or even smart. If everyone on the web has to spend their time devising ways to protect their online communities from attack by the 'win by any means' types, the whole thing could just grind to a halt. Harvesting email addresses is unethical regardless of what the spin doctors say.

What is the difference between stealing 300,000 names and addresses, and stealing the content of a web site? None. They are both the same. No difference. But let's not talk about the fellow that rewrote every page, point by point, of VirtualPROMOTE and posted it as his own work. I'm saving him for the coveted Scumbag Of The Year Award. He knows who he is because he subscribes to this newsletter so he can keep 'his' site up-to-date.

If any of this story makes you uncomfortable about things you have done on the web, my advise is: fix it. Remove work from your site that is not your own. Or ask permission to use it and give full credit to the real creator. The web is a place for creative people to have a voice, not a place to validate theft.

THE OTHER SIDE

As much as I dislike spam and the invasive nature of harvesting my name and address from any effort I make to communicate over the Web, there is a worse scenario that may come to be.

Many misguided Internet citizens applaud and encourage the efforts of the U.S. government to solve the spam problem. Even though it is self-evident, I feel compelled to point out that 'government solution' is an oxymoron. I challenge any one of you to point out any problem that has been solved through government meddling.

To properly set the stage for an exploration of how government 'help' with the spam issue would inevitable mean the end of the Internet, let's look at two randomly chosen problems that the U.S. government has solved recently.

Several years ago when the hysteria over pollution was at it's peak, the forces of change decided that instead of implementing solutions through social change and free market economy, they would invite the government to force change upon the citizens. The government did its thing. It passed massive laws. The crown upon their body of law was the Super Site laws. The government identified the most polluted sites in America and put them onto the Super Site list of pollution sites that would be restored to their natural beauty and safety. It was a magic moment in American history. The forces of good would regain the high ground and rule for eternity.

The good guys in the government allocated billions of dollars to fund this War On Pollution. They set about designing a procedure whereby the American people could be assured that every last gram of pollution in these evil sites would be removed and the land made whole again for future generations, and that not a single cent would wind up in the coffers of the evil money-grubbing business owners.

-- Time passes --

It is now 1997 and we can look back on the results of this popular War On Pollution. Many things have been accomplished, the most important of which is that all of the billions of dollars have long ago been spent. Political careers have flourished on the War On Pollution bandwagon. Great speeches have been made. Fortunes earned for attorneys and con artists. And not a single ounce of polluted dirt was ever cleaned and restored to public use. None. The Super Sites remain polluted.

The billions were spent on studies and paperwork and legal fees and corruption. The government, in their ignorance, had set up such stringent goals to be met before cleanup could even begin that no actual productive work was ever performed. Just government stuff. And enough environmental impact studies to paper every bathroom wall in America and any other 12 countries.

The biggest losers in this farce are the legitimate forces of change that want to save the Earth from drowning in its own swill. When they now try to raise their reasonable and logical voices for social change, they are countered with the Super Site fiasco, thereby effectively neutralizing their voices.

Let's examine one more example selected at random from Uncle Sam's Gifts To The People bag.

When the War On Tobacco started many years ago, it was initiated with a seemingly simple request: Don't smoke in the center section of movie theaters. It interfered with the light of the projector and was rude to the non-smokers. OK. That's reasonable. Then it was asked that smokers not smoke anywhere in the actual seating area, but rather in the special smoking lounges just outside the seating area. OK. Then, please don't smoke in the theater at all, but rather please go to the lobby. OK. Please don't smoke anywhere in the theater building, but rather please go outside. OK. Please don't smoke within 50 feet of the entrance to any building as walking three times through smoke can cause cancer. But it is better yet if you don't smoke inside or in public.

Now comes the current laws in several American cities that require the firing of police and fire department employees who test positive to random blood tests for the presence of tobacco in their system. The tobacco can be from the employee personally using tobacco or merely being in the vicinity of someone who is using tobacco. Second hand smoke exposure is now a crime punishable by firing without benefit of due process of law. No appeal. No Constitutional rights. Tobacco usage, or even the tolerance of usage by others, is such a serious crime that Constitutional rights need not be honored.

Of course we all know that we have not reached the bottom of this particular slippery-slope. Not until posession of a pack of cigarettes is a felony punishable by prison time, with gangs of kids out on the street selling tobacco for $200 an ounce, will the process eventually be reversed. Maybe.

Yes, you are absolutely right. This could never happen. Best we don't even talk about Prohibition. It was just a story conjured up by Communists to confuse simple-minded Americans. The War On Drugs. The War On Crime. The War On Guns. The War On Poverty. The War On Pollution. The War On Illiteracy. With the help of the government, the American people move about their country free from fear of crime while reading scholarly works and enjoying the only high they need, which comes from the pleasure of experiencing clean air, a safe food supply and abundant personal freedom.

Now the lunatic fringe has set its sights on the worst crime of all - Spam. The sending of any message that is not specifically requested.

Bills are before Congress right now to start the slide down the slippery slope. No more sissy starts for America. No more slithering up on the problem an inch at a time. The opening salvo in this War will add email messages to the same law governing fax transmissions. Any unsolicited email message will allow the recipient to sue the sender to collect at least $500 per message. The onus is on the sender to prove they were invited to send the specific message in question. Guilty until proven innocent. Maybe we can give the enforcement of this law to the IRS. They understand this approach.

Under this law, if I visit your web site and it so impresses me that I feel compelled to send you a short note to congratulate you on your fine work, you can sue me for at least $500 plus your court and attorney fees.

If I send an issue of the Gazette to someone based on an electronic form they filled out, I must be able to prove that they actually filled out that form. If they claim that they didn't fill out the form, they can proceed to sue me.

And let's not forget that this windfall can be extended by suing my ISP for allowing me to send Spam. This particular technique of placing blame on the ISP has already been pioneered during the ground breaking process of creating the new copyright laws that place equal blame on an ISP who provides web hosting to a client who infringes someone else's copyrights.

What happens when the first laws in the War On Spam hit the streets?

Start with the disappearance of every free newsletter, newsgroup, discussion list and autoresponder. The only way I will be able to prove that you wanted to receive the Gazette will be to produce the signed charge against your credit card. Trust me when I tell you that, much as I enjoy sending you the Gazette, I am not prepared to pay thousands of dollars a week in legal fees for the privilege of sending out a free newsletter.

Nor will I respond when you send me a message asking for some free advice. How do I know you sent it? You want advice, pay me for it. Why should I be exposed to a lawsuit just because of my desire to lend a helping hand?

I will still be able to keep VirtualPROMOTE going if I can find a service provider that will allow me to post my site on his server, thereby opening the owner of the server to copyright infringement lawsuits and spam penalties.

The American part of the Internet will become the stronghold of large corporations publishing slick marketing materials and software updates in sanitized ways with every word requiring approval by the corporation lawyers. And a bunch of Scumbags hiding behind illegal taps into the Net sending Spam and pornography throughout the world. Everything in between will be gone.

The rest of the world will keep right on going trying to discover the limits of personal expression and empowerment. They just won't send any of it to America for fear of becoming embroiled in our slide down the slippery slope.

I can hear several of you muttering that this is not the way things will go. The laws will only serve to punish the true Spammers. Nobody in their right mind would take the time and effort required to sue over the simple act of sending them a newsletter. Even if they did, the courts would recognize these as frivolous lawsuits and publish the instigators.

Just like they recognized that only a moron puts a hot cup of coffee between their legs and sues when they get burned. They would never collect millions from a hamburger chain.

Those doing the mumbling are obviously new to the Net. The lunatic fringe is just waiting for this power before striking out at the world that has failed to recognize how important they are. Every week I get attacked by an onslaught of email from 2 or 3 new morons who forgot they subscribed, or just need something to do to feel alive. The email is vulgar and illiterate, but comes in a wave of hate and frustration.

Anyone publishing on the web gets attacked by their own handful of morons. They know the lengths these people will go to in order to be heard. These same morons have already run an attorney off the web who published a site full of important information about each of the banner exchange operations. He saved many people from being ripped off, but one review caused the reviewee to mount such a hate campaign that Mark just said to Hell with it and started consulting to the banner industry instead. I sure can't blame him for that.

So what do I want you to do about this threat? Should you put a ribbon on your web site and proclaim your support of a free Web? Write your Congress person?

No. None of the above. Based on a careful analysis of the past gained through a lifetime of tilting at windmills, I can state a true belief that there is nothing to be done. The lunatics are in control. The American system of law is now a field of lunatic seeds fertilized by a thick layer of self-interest and extremism. Just try to avoid helping the process along. It will move fast enough without your help.

I do suggest that you save each issue of the Gazette, as it may be the last.

-- PS. Nick suggested I tell you his favorite Helping Hands Of Government story. You probably won't believe this one, but since my hackles are already up and shredding the back of my shirt, here it is.

Nick started Junior High School this year. Big school. 1,500 students. Great school. Best teachers I've ever encountered. Fantastic campus. Great student library where they can explore the limits of human knowledge.

The government of California is very concerned that every year the results of their investment in education shows less learning is actually happening. I think we can all agree that not much learning appears to be happening in the schools. We lag behind most of the industrialized nations of the world and are approaching the results being realized in third-world countries.

So California's legislators (who were unfortunately educated by this same failing system) decided to 'fix the problem once and for all.' The evil they identified? Too many students in each classroom. So they set a new lower limit on how many students can be taught at one time by any one teacher.

This, of course, requires more teachers and a lot of new classrooms. I support all of that. I agree that lower ratios might help. Unfortunately, California forgot to allocate any money to cover all of this added expense. No portable classrooms. No new money to pay teachers. Nothing.

Nick's school did the only thing they could find to do. They shut down the library, covered all of the books and put desks in for 5 new classes of students. 100 students, 5 teachers, no walls, no privacy. Just a big room full of kids trying to learn.

Of course the other 1,400 kids have no library in which to research and read. Even the 100 students being 'taught' in the library can't get to the library books. They're covered up to protect them.

Still think the Spam issue will come out OK in the end?

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

When we invite people that have never visited us to the house for dinner, we don't meet them at the door and start telling them about all the home improvements that aren't done yet. We don't try to entertain them with stories of the room over the garage that may never get built. Nor the plants we wish we had planted instead of the plants that are there now. The kitchen would be much nicer if we had the outside wall moved another 10 feet out.

There's nothing wrong with the house the way it is right now. While all of these, and a few dozen more, enhancements would be nice, and the house would look even better, the bottom line is: the house is big enough to get lost in and everyone seems to like it just the way it is. They'll still like it when upgrades get made.

I have always treated my web site the way I treat my house. What I have at any given time is all I have. It is complete as it is. It may get more complete later, but right now I have a lot to offer and here it is.

Just as I don't paint doorways on the walls of my home to show where the game room might be someday, I don't put links to pages that don't exist and then show people an under construction sign. If the page is finished, put in the link and show them the page. If it's not done, why talk about it? Why frustrate people with links to pages that may never be finished?

I'm not in the least ashamed of where I live. It is a wonderful house and home. I don't care if other people have nicer houses. That's great for them. I hope they invite me over for dinner. I'll judge my evening with them on the conversation, food and fellowship. Not on what they may want to do someday to the house.

If your site is so lacking in value and content, why is it open to visitors? If it has value and there is enough there to be worth visiting, why spend the whole visit pointing out all of its deficiencies? Why keep pointing out that it is nothing now, but will be great someday if it gets finished and if the visitor will just give me the benefit of the doubt and come back when the site isn't just some pages of crap?

If you think that broken internal links and construction signs don't portray that impression, you are wrong. That is exactly what they say: 'This site is crap, but I have big plans for it. I'm just not organized enough to finish it.'

Don't invite people to dinner while your house is still being built and don't invite people to a web site that is still being built. Don't eat dinner in a dining room that is covered with drop cloths while the painters are repainting it, and don't invite people to view web pages that don't even exist.

I have a composition notebook next to my computer. In it are literally hundreds of ideas for information I wish were on VirtualPROMOTE. A searchable directory of web promotion providers. 20 or so products that I should review. Tutorials on good copy writing techniques. How to write press releases. How to promote specific types of sites.....

But then I think about what is there. Every time I log onto VirtualPROMOTE, I get a nice little feeling... pride. There is so much there that I don't have to apologize for anything. It is absolutely worth visiting. Some of you have been using the site since the very beginning. I know who you are. If you have been finding help for all this time, why do I have to tell you what I'm going to do someday?

If your site is worth visiting, don't apologize for it. Brag about what it is, instead of pointing out all of the things it isn't.

Spend some time this week removing every link to under construction pages. Get rid of every apology. Polish what remains. Brag a bit on what you have. Let people know that yours is a site they will be glad they visited.

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - Part XV

I was not sure what subject to start on after completing the series on using email software to control and manage high volumes of email. So, I took the easy way out and asked Jim if there were any burning topics he thought should be addressed at this time. Jim was quick to reply. At that time Infoseek had just implemented their latest attempt to handle the nasty situation that has been developing on all the search engines. What nasty situation you ask.? Well, as many of you know, one of the most effective means of promotion for a Web site is a great listing on the search engines. A great listing is ideally page one for a keyword search, but anywhere in the first several pages is not bad at all. So what is the nasty situation? Some want to give it the overused term spamming. Because high position is desirable, many are trying to get these page one positions by any means.

Is this really important? Does it really make that big of difference? Yes and more yes. I know because I routinely help people attain very good listing, even top 10 listings on keywords that return over a million pages, I put people on page one in the top 10 on a regular basis. I have taken new web sites from zero to 3,000 hits a day in two months using search engine position as the key marketing strategy for the site.

Does this make me the bad guy, the spammer, the enemy? I don't think so, and I will explain. We need to look at the problem and we can use Infoseek and the current changes there to get an idea of what the problem really is and what is being done to combat it.

What has happened at Infoseek now that is causing a stir is that they have implemented a system that limits the returns of web pages on any given keyword search. In the past if you had a website that dealt with organic gardening that was ten pages in size, proper use of titles, keywords and page structure could result in your pages showing up one after the other in a particular keyword search. This was really common for keyword phrases, more than one keyword used in a search such as "organic gardening". Many times a site would have the same title, and meta tags on every page, and this would in turn cause the search engine to group the pages together. If the keyword density choice of title and meta tags were done just right, the pages would all end up right there on page one, all of page one! This was a lucky coincidence a year ago but it did not go unnoticed. As these lucky pages were studied people like me discovered it was actually easy to get a good listing on most of the search engines with a little effort. Now, I used this kind of information to develop strategy to get one URL on page one, but as you can imagine, it was not long before someone decided if being number one was good, being number 1 through 30 was even better. Thus the spamming of the search engines with multiple, duplicate pages with different URL’s began.

For a period of time this situation went unchecked but not for long. About six months ago, the search engines began to just drop groups of listings entirely when they used these methods, but, the process involved some one making a complaint, the complaint would set till some had time to review it, the matter was investigated, and if it was an obvious spamming situation the pages would be removed. In the most severe cases of abuse, the domain in question would be blocked from further submissions. This method worked, but, because it often took weeks from the time the offending pages appeared until they were removed, the person doing the spamming may have gotten just what they wanted, tens of thousands of hits resulting in record sales for the violator. And since ISP are as easy to change as a pair of shoes now days, the loss of ability to post from a particular domain was circumvented by just getting a new ISP. In the wake of this ploy were the casualties, all the others who may have had pages on some small domain trying to provide Internet services. All of a sudden they too find their pages were being blocked. After all, it is easy to block a domain and hard to check every URL from that domain. The easy way out was used and the innocent suffered. This of course was brought to the attention of the search engines as being unfair and it was. And over time, the search engines have begun to develop more and more sophisticated software to catch first this trick then the next in efforts to stop abusive attempts to gain high positions.

What Infoseek has done that is causing a stir is that they limit the return for a single domain for a single search to one result, an then just below the result is a link that says "more results from this site!" and that link leads to other pages from that domain.

Is this a bad thing? Is it unfair to those submitting pages from one domain that may consist of many pages? Many are screaming it is unfair and limits the results to what amounts to one page. If that were the case it would be unfair. Closer examination shows that in fact this is not the case at all. What really happens, if multiple pages from the same website that come up with a particular keyword get lumped together, but not necessarily all pages from a particular domain. What do I mean? If you go to Infoseek and enter the keywords "targeted email" you will find that I have a page in the number two position for this search. If you click on the "more results form this site, you will see that I have three pages that were actually other attempts at this keyword, and there are seven additional pages that really are not trying to address this keyword at all. Does this mean I have had the entire contents of my domain stuck in a list of a dozen pages? I don't think so. If you were to enter "harp music" you will see there is a Webthemes page in the number 3 position and there are no "more results from this site" at all. This page is actually a pointer to a page for a paying customer. And it should make it clear that what Infoseek is doing is very likely a good thing. It is good in that it means that if page one has ten results, you see ten different domains in the results, and unless someone is very tricky and using multiple domains and page layouts, (it happens) they are all different sites competing for this particular keyword. To me this is a good thing. I have always used the approach that one good listing is enough, although I am guilty of trying more than one time if I fail on the first attempt. But this is not a crime. It is persistence.

Is trying to get a good search engine position a bad thing? Obviously I do not think so. But not just because that is one of the services I sell. I feel that if a page show up on page one and is not just there because the keyword is popular as a trick to bring to your attention an unrelated site, then it is just good marketing. I do not condone and never do pages that use popular keywords to bait people to unrelated sites. But this subject would best be covered by starting a series on the legitimate reasons for, and methods used to get your page a better or great listing, this was part one!

Hayden Mitchell mailto:hayden@webthemes.com
Web Themes http://www.webthemes.com

A PLEA FOR SOME GAZETEER HELP

Help for non-profit group

I am the volunteer webmaster at a non-profit, apolitical human-rights group in Israel http://www.cyberscribe.com/mia. About a year and a half ago, a website was built for us, and basically left alone afterwards. Needless to say, the results were pathetic.

Now I've decided to help improve the group's web presence. Alas, I am very much an amateur. I'm seeking good-hearted webmasters and website promoters, who know what they're doing, and would be willing to donate a bit of time to advise me on what I can do to increase our exposure significantly.

It's a big mitzvah.

Grayson Levy mailto:grayson@aquanet.co.il
ICMIS http://www.cyberscribe.com/mia

-- This qualifies for credit towards your Gazeteer Merit Badge. This would be a worthwhile project to help out on. -- Jim

HOW HOTBOT RANKS SITES IN SEARCH RESULTS

How does HotBot rank search results? The best answer is taken directly from the HotBot FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page.

Each document that matches the requirements of a search is assigned a score. HotBot considers a number of things when assigning these scores.

Word frequency in document - In general, the more often a query word occurs in the document, the higher the score. However, the obscurity of the word also has an impact. Common words like "the" contribute less to the score than rare and distinctive words like "tiki." Search words in title - Documents that use your search terms in the title will be ranked significantly higher than documents that contain the search term only in the text.
Search words in keywords - Documents that use your search terms in the keywords META tag will be weighted higher than those that have your words in the text, but not as high as those that have your words in the title.
Document length - A short document that repeats your search words frequently will be ranked higher than a long document that repeats the words just as frequently.
Spoofing - Some people like to make documents that maliciously "spoof" search engines into returning documents that are irrelevant to the search at hand or that rank higher than they should. They may do this by duplicating words thousands of times in comments or keywords, or by including large numbers of "invisible" words in a tiny font or in the same color as the background of the document. If HotBot recognizes a common spoofing technique it will rank that document lower. Spoofing also lowers a document's ranking in HotBot by making the document longer.

This brings us back to the Basic Rules Of Site Promotion. They are:

Create GOOD titles for your pages that contain your major keywords. The first 64 characters are the part that will be displayed by most search engines, so make them count. Anything after that still gets indexed by most spiders, but not displayed in search results. Words in the titles are given the most weight by most spiders.

Create EXCELLENT Meta Description tags for each page of up to 200 characters. Don't go over or you may get dropped by some search engines, or they will not index the Meta tag at all.

Create EXCELLENT Meta Keywords tags for each page. Do not go over 1,000 characters of keywords, and don't repeat over 7 times. Do repeat 7 times and use the entire 1,000 characters.

Make sure your image alt= tags include your keywords. Several spiders index them.

Make sure your pages have good copy at the beginning of the page which contains your main keywords. The closer a word is to the BODY tag, the more important it is assumed to be. If it also appears frequently, it is assumed to be REALLY important, especially if it is also in the Title.

Keep your body copy short and to the point. The longer the body copy, the less the keywords count.

Spell check everything.

Don't use frames. If you do, create a really comprehensive NOFRAMES section.

Submit you pages to the big directories by hand.

Submit each of your pages to search engines (with spiders and bots) but don't submit more than 20 per day. If you wait for the spiders to index your whole site, you'll be sitting there forever. They just aren't getting the job done. So tell them about every page.

Now you know everything I know.

THE FRONT LINE OF DEFENSE

The response was overwhelming. Between Jim's "scumbag" article and my article on "Merchant Beware - Fraud is rampant," we received hundreds of messages. Many of the messages I received were from online merchants who wanted to thank me personally. It seems that after reading my article, they took a closer look at the orders they had just received. It turns out that my article saved a few of you a lot of money. One in particular was getting ready to send out an order totally almost $1000 (yep, that's One Thousand US Dollars)! Turns out the order was placed with a stolen credit card.

This is a great start! A start to what you might ask? To the virtual end of fraud committed against online merchants! I love the Internet, I love being able to run a profitable business online. I hate SPAM, I hate the dramatic increase in online fraud. More importantly, both of the latter pose a very "real and present" danger to the continued growth and success of the Net as we know it. Not just for me - for every one.

I'll let Jim spearhead the crusade against SPAM - he has a running start. I'll concentrate on trying to eliminate fraud against merchants that also lends a bad name to online commerce in general.

At a recent Internet Expo here in Denver, one of the keynote speakers was some kind of upper management type from Microsoft. The topic of her speech was online commerce. The focus of the speech (besides, of course, how Microsoft has all the answers) was the absolute safety of online commerce. She went as far to state "she has never heard of an actually case of credit card fraud originating from an online transaction" or some such silliness. Oh please! Uh - duh - how stupid do you think people are? (Well, many of us did UPGRADE to Windows 95, now didn't we: - ) While there may not be an actual, fully-documented case of someone stealing data from an online transaction, I can provide a filing cabinet full of cases where merchants would tend to disagree with Ms. MS's assessment of the situation.

Now for the good news. The more I start to pull together bit and pieces for the antifraud.com site, the more I see how big a dent we can actually make in this out of control situation. Since my article two weeks ago, I have been consulting with credit card fraud departments, dozens of other online merchants, and many Web experts with a variety of expertise. My conclusion is this: armed with a little knowledge and a handful of tools, any online merchant can virtually eliminate fraudulent orders. We can fight back!

In my previous article, I outlined several steps any one can take to reduce their exposure to fraudulent orders. Instead of repeating, and elaborating on that information, (which I'm sure Jim has archived somewhere) I want to add to it by sharing with you a few of the tools that will be available to member merchants of antifraud.com.

Instant alert notification of fraud. Members will have access to a web-based form that will instantly Email all other members with the Email address and pertinent data of fraudulent orders - before the thief strikes someone else.
Credit Card Verifier form. This form will allow you to verify a credit card number without actually running it through your credit card processor. It checks card numbers against the Mod 10 algorithm all such numbers are based on. This is great when you slightly suspect fraud - and just want to see if the number provided is valid - without actually processing the transaction.
Redflag.cgi. This is a custom .cgi script that virtually everyone can use along with whatever online order processing scripts you currently use. This script will run a customer's Email address through a database of the more than 300 free, web-based Email domains. If someone attempts to place an order with one of these "red flag" addresses, they will be asked to resubmit with a standard ISP based address. This database will be updated weekly. This script will be free to all members.
Custom scripting. Almost any online commerce scenario can be protected with certain custom scripts. I have made some great contacts recently that specialize in both custom scripting and online commerce. They have agreed to make their services available at a special price for members.
The "Badge." Each member will be authorized to display the "AntiFraud.com" badge logo on their websites and order pages. It won't be long before those committing online credit card fraud learn to recognize they are wasting their time at a site utilizing the AntiFraud tools.
The Weekly AntiFraud Digest. A weekly online newsletter with stories, tips and victory stories from other members. You can not put two minds together without creating a separate, independent third mind. In other words - I can't think of everything and cover every angle - but you can. This web-based newsletter will be posted weekly for all members to share.
What ever else is needed to get the job done! All the above are just "off the top of my head" tools that will be available immediately upon the official launch of http://antifraud.com. Additional tools will be made available as fast as I can get them developed.

As I write this, there are several people and organizations working on various aspects of the AntiFraud website. By next issue, I should be able to announce the official opening of the site.

Next issue, assuming you want more, I will continue this series with a discussion on the special problems presented by real-time order processing and orders from outside your own country. Until then . . .

T.J. Walker mailto:tjwalker@softwaresolutions.net
http://softwaresolutions.net

SNIPPETS

Wondering how to get a higher ranking in Lycos search results? The answer might surprise you. If you do a good job of general promotion, your ranking on Lycos will rise automatically. The Lycos spider catalogs Web pages by counting the number of links that point to them. Sites with lots of incoming links are considered more popular and are indexed at a higher priority than sites with fewer incoming links. This is not the only thing Lycos considers when computing rankings, but it is an important one. So this is just one more benefit of getting out there and setting up relationships with other webmasters. This is a big win-win. More links bring not only increased direct traffic, but higher search engine rankings as well.

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The battle continues to rage over who, and how, new Top Level Domain names will be handled. You remember. TLDs like .web, .shop and .info. There are seven new TLDs planned, but Network Solutions, which has a monopoly on issuing domain names until March of next year, isn't going to give up that cash-cow without a fight. There is a complete article at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,16031,00.html?owv The outcome of this matters to everyone building a destination web site based on it's domain name. amazon.com certainly doesn't want someone else to have amazon.shop. I don't want someone else to have virtualpromote.web. Are you vulnerable on this issue? If so, you'd best do some research and stay on top of the issue or you might miss a very small window in which you can take action to protect you web assets.

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If you haven't submitted for the Lycos Top 5% award, get over to http://www.lycos.com/help/top5-form.html right now. For more information about their review criteria, go to http://point.lycos.com/categories/criteria.html

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I'm still getting a lot of mail about Infoseek's change to a three repeat limit on keywords. This is becoming the Area 51 of the Internet. Most of the other newsletters I get are just now announcing the change to the three repeat limit. Unfortunately, they are about a month behind. As far as I can tell, it was only in effect for a few days and they then did away with any formal limit. Seven repeats is safe.

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If you host a discussion list or publish an electronic newsletter and haven't repeatedly visited Adam Boettiger's E-Mail Marketing & Advertising Resources page at http://www.exposure-usa.com/email/ then you are missing an extensive list of resources to help you grow your membership/subscriber base. Of special interest is the extensive list of places to announce your publication and ways to exchange advertising with other publishers.

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Congratulations to everyone at Mecklermedia, Webreference.com and CoolCentral.com. Mecklermedia acquired the two sites and the company that built them. We are so accustomed to seeing great things at Webference and CoolCentral, we look forward to seeing what new things they have in store for us now that they have access to such a large new resource at Mecklermedia. Good luck, and knock our socks off with new developments.

WELCOME BACK INFOSEEK

I get a lot of inquiries as to which is my favorite search engine when I'm looking for information (sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't know everything. Some things happened in the 60's that I have little or no memory of. But that's another story entirely.)

If you ask me today for my favorite, I would answer: Infoseek. By popularity and traffic, it is ranked 2nd or 3rd in the top search sites, but that is not the whole story. Infoseek has taken some steps that put it back in the race and will become the model for all of the others.

If you haven't used Infoseek lately, or didn't pay close attention when you did, you could easily have missed this one. I did 3 or 4 searches before it occurred to me that I was not having to wade through page after page of search engine spam.

When you perform a search, Infoseek looks through all of the results to see if there are more than one result from any web site. If so, they show you the highest rated page and follow with a link that says "More results from this site..." In one masterful (and obvious) stroke, they have taken away the favorite spamming trick that drives professional webmasters and the searching public crazy. No longer do you have to wade through page after page after page of some scumbags spam. Pages with the same content but different names. Their hope is that you will get tired of clicking to get past their crap and just click out of frustration. Now if these bozos put up 1,000 pages trying to pre-empt a keyword, they will only get one listing in the results. Their other 999 pages will be hidden behind that "More results from this site..." link.

If you are one of these bozos, you'd better check how well written your descriptions and titles are, because you can no longer count on spam volume to win the race. If your title is spam nonsense and your descriptions are nothing but keyword spam, you will lose the race. Even if your spam page comes up first, there are now 9 other pages on the same results page that probably have legitimate titles and descriptions aimed at selling the searcher on visiting a site.

It is entirely possible that Infoseek has solved the one major advantage that has kept Yahoo out in front for so long. On Yahoo you don't see lists of pages. You see lists of sites. Now Infoseek has the same uncluttered results. I wish them well with this giant step forward. It is the tool we've all been waiting for.

This comes on the heels of their other giant step forward: instant indexing of submissions. All of the other search engines and directories run so far behind (Yahoo is just now catching up with the death of Princess Di) that the world has moved on by the time they get there. The web is designed to respond quickly to current events. But the search engines and directories are not a source for anything that has happened within the last two or three (or more) months. Infoseek is the exception. When you add information to your site, Infoseek is the first place you should visit and add every new or changed page. Just don't submit more than 50 pages in one day for a site. That can still get you into trouble.

Infoseek has gone through so many recent upgrades, it's hard to keep track of them all. One of these is the introduction of 'channels'. It is an enlargement of their previous 'Select Sites' directories. Now you can browse through categories of site listings in a format familiar to us all: Yahoo. On the Infoseek home page you are presented with drill-down categories such as: Entertainment, Computers, Travel and more. When you select one of these 'Channels' you are taken to a page with lots of content about that channel. When you click on the Internet channel, you are offered a page with links to Internet news sources, reviews and download information for Internet related shareware, ISP locator searches, and lots more. The goal is to offer you compelling content to get you to visit more frequently and to stay longer when you do visit.

Obviously, the longer you stay, the more banner revenue Infoseek can generate to operate their business. But all of the search engines are rushing to this same spot. They want to be your primary web community. This gives them the chance to offer products and services for sale in partnership with online vendors. Cars, books, music, software and much more are now becoming revenue streams. Just like the rest of us, they have learned that you can't sustain a business just on banner sales alone. And certainly not a business as technically complex as a search engine.

It would serve us all well to pay special attention to that last paragraph.

NEED SOME HITS?

Today I was going to present 2,000 places to get listed, but then I stumbled across Edison http://www.edison.com/index.htm so now I don't have to list them all.

Edison is a massive site with categorized links to over 3,000 information sources on the Net. Most are other directories to other web resources. Looking through this directory you will notice that it is a target rich environment for a site promoter. Most of the resources listed are places where you can submit your site. This one will keep you busy find new sources of traffic for your site.

Submit to over 200 award sites from one place with Market Tech Ultimate Award Submit at http://www.market-tek.com/awardsite.html. You might apply for the I Am Not Addicted Award, the Really Really Neato Award, the Scintillating And Stylish Site award, and the ever-popular A Web Page that Kinda Doesnt Suck award. Unfortunately, you can't submit for the Way Cool Hot Site award, but nothing in life is perfect.

The above two sites represent 3,200 places you can submit your site which is probably all you can get done this weekend, so I'll save the rest for next week.