500,000+ Search Engines and Directories!

[TallTroll]

Here we go again. I just recieved an HTML mail from the charming [snip] at [snip]. Here's what she had to say

Hello,

I have visited and noticed that your website is not listed on some search engines. I am sure that through our service the number of people who visit your website will definitely increase. [snip] is a unique technology that instantly submits your website to over 500,000 search engines and directories -- a really low-cost and effective way to advertise your site. For more details please go to [snip].

Give your website maximum exposure today!
Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,
Sales & Marketing

The mail comes complete with a screen capture of our site, and a "Signup now" button that doesn't work...

[snip] and looking down the places they submit you to gives me the shivers... a couple of obvious FFA sites (it says so in the URL!), a "Pick your category" box to allow "targetted" directory submissions.

Its a slick operation though. To see their other [snip] service, check here[/url]

Our goal at [snip] is to help everyone ... to make dreams come true, so contact us and let us know how we can better service you

Anyone come across these guys before?

[edited by: Brett_Tabke]

[littleman]

lol,
I'll submit a site to one billion search engines for $5.

[Macguru]

Hi TallTroll,

500.000! Numbers sell.

The funniest sollicitation I ever recieved was very personalised. It showed whow bad my site ranked. There was a position report attached to the email. They even went to the 10th page!

The only problem was that the site was about engineering and the keywords they used was about gardening.

I could not restrain to answer them whith a couple of evil smilies.

[JonB]

yes, they sent me few e-mails. i wondered wow, they have my website snapshot, my name, e-mail everything in their e-mail to me.

i aslo see looksmart,yahoo and other pay-to-include directories.For $59 like they say i would pay them right away.Yes, i might send them question how can they submit my site to looksmart and yahoo(since yahoo buz category has to be paid) for onl $59? will they pay additional $400+?
hm...

jon

[Mike_Mackin]

>will they pay additional $400+?

Yes, BUT they make it up on Volume ;)

[legster]

This company often sends emails to my boss, and I think he likes to forward them to me just to get a rise out of me. :)

[john316]

I just signed up all my competitors! ;)

[Macguru]

Just saw they will even get you in Infoseek! Those guys are serious.

[Lolo]

Hi,
I speak Russian, I'm from Russia.
Don't worry about Vanessa Lintner. She is simple spammer and send such emails for everyone.
This is a robot that find our sites in SEs and send us such messages.. I receive this messages regularly.

[TallTroll]

Hi Lolo, and welcome to WebMaster World.

I'm not worried about Vanessa, I just find it amusing that "she" is sending English language junk mail to a Russian language site.

I was curious as to what was being said about her on the Russian site though.

[andrey_sea]

TallTroll, that Russian site does not write anything curious about Vanessa, they just are curious how Vanessa found out about their site. That is all.

[TallTroll]

Fair enough. Maybe they've never heard of e-mail spiders :) Lucky them, I wish I hadn't ;)

I guess it shows that people occassionally read these things...even if they do confuse them sometimes

[Brett_Tabke]

Folks, I'm sorry, but I feel I have to snip the name of the company mentioned in this thread. When we go down the road of posts like this, please keep in mind that there is the potential for problems. Whether right or wrong, it presents a liability to the system. The problem is compounded sometimes by even discussing the situation. We've put a huge amount of time the last two weeks into discussing and dealing with the issue of liability vs freedom of speech behind the scenes. It is always a gut wrenching decision for us to edit a post like this that clearly has merit. There is also the issue of promotion. A post like this is impossible to deduce whether it is a legitimate discussion or url dropping. Then there is the search engine referrals on content we aren't comfortable with. We don't take decisions like this lightly. I don't think there was intentionally anything done wrong here or any poster at fault. It is something that occurred and needs to be kept in mind when you are posting on any system.

-brett

[TallTroll]

Oops! Didn't really think of liability issues, apologies if I've caused any trouble.

I assumed that as the original subject of the post was clearly using a bulk e-mail to an e-mail d/base, loads of people would have had them so it would be kinda "public domain"

This one just caught my eye as the whole package was a cut above the usual standard for this kind of effort

Again, apologies if I've been any trouble, I just wanted to "share the fun"

[Brett_Tabke]

whoops sorry, I guess there isn't really a need to lock it.

Yes, it's a difficult issue for us that we've labored over for a long time. It's a constant education and discovery of new effects. Everytime we feel we've seen it all, something new pops up. It's not about us looking good, or disagreeing with the content, is protecting the system long term - thats's job 1.

Again, it was all innocent TT, I don't think you did anything wrong at all and I don't enjoy editing posts at all. (always feel like a shower afterwards).