The Chinese Domain Name Scam.

I first came across these three years ago, so this is hardly new. Plus there’s already plenty of information on the internet about these scams already. Thing is I started getting a few more of these recently so that means they’re obviously doing the rounds again. That’s why I decided to write this post again as a fresh new warning to those who may not be familiar with the type of scams involved.

The format of the Chinese Domain Scam is simple; you receive correspondence from someone claiming to represent some domain registration agency somewhere in Asia, China or Hong Kong usually:

Dear Manager/CEO/Director/Whatever

We are a domain registration company based in China/Hong Kong/Asia…. (more…)

Google Instant & Search Results

In the previous post I gave an introduction to Google Instant and talked about the technology and how it works. This time I want to talk more about how Instant predicts people’s search habits and what effect it will have on those habits and on your business’s website traffic. Finally I want to mention a little bit on Google Instant SEO and debunk many of the myths and misrepresentations that surround Google’s novel search engine enhancement.

So I guess the first thing people will want to know is; what about all those bloggers who’ve been saying that Google Instant marks the end of SEO and online marketing? In a word – bull.

So why say it? Well, clearly these bloggers know the value of link-bait. In the same way scandals and controversy helps sell newspapers, saying something alarmist or controversial is always a sure-fire way to get people to read, comment on and link to your blog post.

Big Names – Big Brands
One of their most alarmist comments is that Google are now “suddenly” giving more weight to large corporations in search. This is complete and other BS. The fact of the matter is Google Instant doesn’t mark the end of SEO any more than the introduction of autocomplete did.

A is for:

B is for:

The above tables show examples of Google Instant/autocomplete information (September 2010). There you will see the big brands & big names based on the most popular searches. No real surprises there (well other than the revelation that so many of my fellow countrymen are still interested in Big Brother).

Yes, when you search you do see a predilection towards big brands and big names, primarily large Internet companies or large retailers and chain stores, as well as airlines, banks, telcos and so on, but that predilection originates with all of us. Google are merely reflecting our own search trends back at us. In other words they’re giving the people what they want. And what they want, clearly, is to buy things, bank online, book flights online, play games online, talk to friends online or check the news, sport and weather. Go to any internet café on the planet and this is exactly what you will see people doing.

In fact, back when I used to own an internet cafe I used to check which were the most popular sites with customers as logged by my Smoothwall firewall/proxy server. When I compared them with those of a friend of mine who ran another cafe the results were virtually identical. Google released their autocomplete functions just I was exiting the net cafe business, however I did have the time to check the logs of both cafes against the Google suggestions and, once again, they were virtually identical. Since Instant and autocomplete are one and the same this is basically solid proof, if ever any was needed, that the results that are generated by Instant are based solely on which sites are the most popular with searchers and not, as some have hinted, motivated by any covert agreement between Google and its advertisers to gain a higher ranking.

Still don’t believe me? Ok, try it for yourself, open two tabs and search for the same thing, one tab with Instant enabled and the other disabled. Because Amazon’s dominating the A’s let’s see if they perform any different on Instant than they would normally. “Books” (I used Google.com US for this) bring up as the top two, books.google.com and Amazon. “Bookshop” brings up a company called “Bookshop Santa Cruz.” However as I honed in on the location, “bookshop [name of town/city - wherever you live]” the results began to change and update themselves according to my searches. When I had my my full search term typed in the bar I then compared my search with that of “regular” Google and – hey whadya know! – they were the exact same. The same companies dominated the top results for the same search term in both regular and Instant.

So whilst Instant uses autocomplete information to help facilitate the search and changes the look and feel of the search engine functionality, the final results for any given search term remain unchanged. Therefore if you’ve already conducted a comprehensive online marketing campaign, with the emphasis on SEO and local search/maps, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from Google Instant.

How will Google Instant change how people search?
Another common anti-Instant argument I’ve heard is that, by providing people with ready-made search terms people will be more likely to go with those search terms than use their own. This simple isn’t true. If the suggested search term is identical to what the person was searching for in the first place – which is all a case of predicting probabilities as far as the search engine is concerned – then that person will, of course, go for the suggested search term. But if Instant throws up suggestions that are contrary to what the user is looking for, they will naturally be ignored.

Think about it; if I’m looking for “Paris Hotels”, and I’ve just typed in “Paris H” the odds are very high that I’m going to continue typing my search term and I’m not going to be swayed by recommended links to sites about Paris Hilton. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I start searching for Paris Hotels and do click on the link to Paris Hilton, one has to wonder how committed I was to booking a hotel in Paris in the first place. It begins to look very much like I’m surfing, rather than searching.

It works the other way too. Say I’m a zoology student researching “Amazonian tapir population decline”. How likely am I, when Google Instant suggests it, to forget about my research paper and buy Dan Browne and Harry Potter books on Amazon instead? Not very.

So, whilst Google Instant does make it easier for people to access the most popular sites and content online it does not mean people are suddenly going to forget what they’re looking for. What it will do, however, is help prevent people from accessing sites they didn’t mean to, therefore improving bounce and conversion rates.

Whilst there have been massive improvements in search over the years, they’re still not all that good at understanding exactly what information we want. Google still doesn’t really know what we want so it guesses based upon what other people have wanted in the past. This helps anyone trying to conduct a search because, whilst they know the answer they want, they may not necessarily know how to best phrase the search query in order to find it. Instant now not only shows suggestions of what people have searched for in the past, it also shows the results in real time. So the user can see whether the search was successful or not. The result is that people find exactly what they want faster and easier and the likelihood of people accidentally accessing sites unrelated to their search term is greatly reduced.

Of course it’s not going to stop false landings completely, as anyone who’s accidentally landed on this page searching for Amazonian tapir population numbers can probably attest. (I aim to please, try here)

How to increase traffic with Google Instant.
Contrary to what the doomsayers say, Instant exposes even greater scope with which to connect directly with search engine users. Most people still don’t understand what a search engine actually does and fewer still understand how search engines actually work. They just know that if they type the name of the company they’re looking for it brings up the company automatically so they don’t have to mess around with all that fiddly www-dot stuff. They also tend to view Google as the oracle of the web, rather than understanding how it crawls sites and indexes content and keywords, they tend to ask it questions; “How do I do this?”, “where can I buy X in region Y?” and so forth. Google has only the most limited understanding of what words and search terms mean, so although it has a better track record than most search engines, it will none the less frequently show results that are irrelevant to what the person was looking for.

There are two reasons why this happens. The first is because the person used a bad or vague search term. This problem will be greatly reduced by Google Instant’s improved autosuggest feature, thus greatly increasing the chances that they will eventually find that which they seek. The second reason the user cannot find a relevant page is because a page relevant to their chosen search term simply doesn’t exist. This problem has also been reduced a lot due to specific question and answer sites like eHow and Yahoo Answers filling in many pre-existing gaps, but it still happens quite often.

Now imagine there’s a Google Instant search term that’s already out there, that’s related to your business or niche, but that there’s no answer or content to satisfy it? There are obviously a lot of people searching for that term, but that demand is going unsatisfied and all the potential is lost. So, rather than trying to go after saturated search terms that your competitors are already ranking high for, why not go all-out to secure this specific search term? Google’s Zeitgiest and Insights pages are a good place to start looking for those terms. Bear in mind, though, there are many words and phrases which Google automatically censor from Instant results.

So, whilst there’s still a long, long way to go before we reach the Star Trek level when we can just say, “computer, how do we do this?” or “show me all the files related to that” and the computer responds appropriately, Instant does serve as a good stop-gap solution by making it easier to match the queries made by users with the content they desire. You won’t have to wait long for other search engines, most noteably Bing, to follow Google’s lead, and for suggestive search to become the new standard.

Google Instant search optimization.
So how do you optimize your business website for Instant-type search? Well, getting back to the “bookshop [town]” example I reccommend, firstly, that your business concentrates heavily on local search, particularly Google Places, Facebook Places, Bing Local and the emerging trends in geo-tagging social networks like Foursquare.

Local search is becoming ever more important these days and geotagging is another rising trend. Search for any busines + location combination on Google, e.g. “Hotel London” or “Restaurant Paris” and the first thing you will notice is that, top of the results are lists of businesses on Google Places complete with maps of their location. Naturally you’ll want to be right at the top and marked on those maps. You’ll also want to ensure that your organisation keeps a very close eye on your listings and deals proactively with any negative comments so as to resolve disputes before they escalate. That way you can rank high on Google and also enjoy high customer feedback.

Other than that the rules of good SEO still apply and have not changed not even slightly. As discussed in the bookshop example the end results of a search for a given term or keyword are identical whether Instant is enabled or not. So you will need to ensure that your site exibits the charactaristics of quality web design, that it is properly designed, coded and easy to navigate. This way not only is it easy for people to find what they’re looking for, it makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your site also. You should also provide a sitemap for your users and an XML sitemap of your site to help search engines, like Google, index your site’s content more easily. Finally be sure, also, that your site does not have any flash-based navigation or contains frames.

If you are not sure you can always contact us for a consultation. You may also be interested in our link-building services.

Here are three great Firefox add-ons which I use quite regularly, one for assistance in design and development of web pages, one for for checking search engine rankings and other SEO-related information and finally one for helping to keep my browsing more secure.

Web Developer
The Firefox Web Developer Toolbar is an indespensible tool for web designers or developers.
It boasts a broad range of options such as enabling or disabling Cookies, Java or Javascript, CSS elements, forms, images and various other page elements. You can also view and highlight various HTML and CSS elements, edit them or validate them, as well as your site’s feed and check whether your site meets W3C accessability standards. Other features include a small screen rendering function to help get an idea how your site might look on a mobile device. With a huge amount of tools and information at your fingertips its the ideal tool for studying pages, tweaking CMS or blog templates, checking for errors or indeed any other web design/development task one can concieve of.

The Web Developer toolbar runs on Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Firefox, in addition to other Gecko-based browsers such as Seamonkey and Flock. A version of the Web Developer Toolbar for Chrome is now also available.

Search Status
The Search Status toolbar is ideal for SEOs or indeed anyone with an interest in their website’s search engine ranking. Available for both Firefox and Seamonkey it shows both the Google page rank of each visited page and can also display the rankings of Alexa, Complete and mozRank. There are also options to view backlinks from Google and Yahoo site explorer, indexed pages on Google and Yahoo/Bing, check the site on Archive.org, view WhoIs information, meta tag information and more.

Noscript
Installing the Noscript add-on for Firefox (or Gecko-compatible browsers) is a great way to keep your browsing safe, secure and private. Noscript blocks various scripts which may be dangerous such as Java, Javascript and Flash and the security vunerabilities which might result from them. You can then easily disable the protection for trusted sites such as your email account or other regular sites.

Internet Explorer 6 was the default browser bundled with Windows XP and has been around for nine years now. Since then there have been two new iterations of IE; IE7 in 2006 copying Opera and Firefox with the introduction of tabbed browsing, and IE8, released last year.

As more and more people upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7 is beginning to loose ground and Internet Explorer 6 has begun its slow slip into obscurity.

I am writing this on behalf of all the designers and developers out there who wish to speed up the process.

Back at the beginning of IE6’s life cycle rival browsers like Firefox and Opera didn’t have a fraction of the amount of users they have today. As IE6’s rate of adoption increased, however, so too did the adoption rate of these new rival browsers, as many people jumped ship and never returned – much to Microsoft’s annoyance.

(In fact the company often went to some rather sneaky lengths to protect its market share.)

In addition to its long history of security flaws which didn’t provide a back door, so much as a wide open front door, to hackers, IE6 was also a web designers nightmare. For one it had issues displaying .png files correctly plus a whole host of CSS styling issues, such as its own unique interpretation of positioning rules.

In short, the browser didn’t always display pages the way it was supposed to. So whenever somebody designed a website and wrote the code to proper international web standards, the result, when viewed in the Microsoft browser, often looked terrible. This meant that web designers (including yours truly) often had little choice but to design separate stylesheets just so the design would look “correct” in the broken browser.

As for web developers… the poor people, they have suffered so much for too long.

The good news for those in the industry, now that Google has officially dropped support for IE6, is that the rest of the world is bound to follow suit. Apple are halfway there already and ongoing issues with Flash also mean that Adobe would undoubtedly be more than happy to dump the browser too. In other words, Internet Explorer 6 has become the new floppy disc drive.
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Multi-network Instant Messengers

Not too long ago instant messenging (IM) programs, also known as chat clients, where text is typed and shared in real time (along with emoticons) were ubiquitous and all the big web companies had one.

Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, later renamed Live Messenger, was perhaps the most popular, with Yahoo Messenger (YIM) a close second. These services were linked to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail respectively, however with the advent of Gmail, which offered far more in the way of storage and options, Hotmail and Yahoo both lost a lot of market share. Google later integrated its own Google Talk instant messenger program into the Gmail interface so that one could chat with contacts direct from their browser.

Another one-time big player in the IM market (and indeed the web as a whole) was AOL. AOL’s instant messenger, AIM, whilst also quite popular, suffered from a lot of controversy regarding its installation of a component called Viewpoint Media Player which many considered to be spyware.

Other popular instant messenger programs included ICQ, which was also once the property of AOL, and IRC, one of the oldest and also most popular messenging systems, albeit more so with the “geeky” end of the spectrum than with regular users. It was (and still is) highly popular with members of online communities such as the online gaming community.

Over the last ten years, however, use of instant messengers has diminished with the advent of social networks like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter, which allow for real time status updates, as well as other Web 2.0 collaborative platforms such as the excellent Google Wave.

With the advent of VOIP programs like Skype IM programs are nowadays more like hybrids allowing old-style instant messenging in conjunction with free, or low cost, Skype-style calls.

Whilst some companies actively discourage staff from using IM programs, because they don’t want their employees chatting when they should be working, many more are unable to function without them. Obvious examples of such businesses include web design and graphic design firms such as ourselves as well as project managers, writers, transcribers or translation service providers where being able to type to a person or persons in real time without having to pick up the phone provides massive time and money savings. Other applications include inbuilt web applets on company websites which allow customers to chat directly with company representatives, for example, to provide real-time technical support.

So, depending on the company type, instant messenging can provide many advantages to one’s company, and that’s not even including the advantages provided by cheap or free calls with inbuilt VOIP telephony. The only real issue is that with so many different platforms from various different, competing companies, it’s all too possible that the person you want to talk to is using a different program than you are. Installing and running seven different IM platforms is not only impractical it would also slow down your computer, and your productivity, dramatically. Thankfully there are programs out there that allow you to use the one program to access all major chat networks simultaneously and best of all, these programs are also completely free.

(Note: to use these you will still need to set up accounts with the various companies, i.e. you will still need to set up an MSN account, a Yahoo account, a Google account and so forth. You just won’t need to download and install all their IM programs.)

Trillian is a lovely little program for Windows, Mac and mobiles, including the iPhone and Blackberry. It allows you to chat with all major clients, such as MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM, and, depending on your system, is also compatible with Skype as well as Twitter and the instant messenging features of Facebook and Myspace. This is a great all-rounder program, especially because it’s mobile. Plus, what other instant messenger out lets you send an animated octopus as an emoticon?

Pidgin, formerly known as GAIM, is an open source multi-platform instant messenging system available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is compatible with all major IM platforms including MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, IRC and other programs such as the popular Polish chat client Gadu-Gadu. Because GAIM is open source it means that it’s constantly being developed and so a number of GAIM plugins exist that add compatibility with Skype, Facebook IM, Twitter and pretty much any other platform you can think of.

Free Alternative to Winzip and Winrar

Yes, technically, Winzip and Winrar are not free. They are what is often referred to as nagware. Software that nags you to upgrade to the pro version every time you use it, in the expectation that you will eventually do as you’re told – expect away, because…

7 Zip is an open source archiver program that’s free to download and use, with great superior compression and compatibility with other formats such as .zip and .rar files. Highly recommended.

Download older versions of software

Finally, to wrap this up, I thought I’d mention a favourite website of mine called Old Version.com.
This site, as it name suggests, allows you to download older versions of a large variety of different software programs, such media players, instant messengers, security programs, utilities, etc. This is a good idea for a number of reasons, perhaps because you upgraded to the latest software version before the bugs were sorted out and need to go back. (I find this tends to happen a lot when the makers of one of my favourite programs gets bought out by a larger company.)

Maybe there is some other compatibility issue, for example you are running an older operating system with which the latest version of the software is not compatible. Often, new software also means an increase in its footprint whereas older versions won’t use up so much system resources. Or perhaps, like me, you often don’t like the direction your favourite program has taken over the years and you don’t like all the extra options and superfluous capabilities. Instead you yearn for a simpler time before the bells and whistles and shiny new interface, when the program just done one thing and done it well and just shut up about it and let you get on with it. And I’m sure we’ve all come across a program which made us feel like that.

So, anyway, that’s it for now and that’s the end of this series, though I will, of course, continue to add new free software posts as time continues. If anyone would like to suggest any other free software programs or make suggestions for future post ideas feel free to comment below.

I got this email this morning, it looks almost identical to Twitter emails except for the fact that the account I received it on does not have a Twitter account connected to it. Bit of a dead giveaway that, but still, it’s quite convincing.

The email says:

Hello, Twitter-er!

You have 2 (or more) unread message(s) from Twitter System.

With a URL underneath, which, in the body of a HTML email, appears to be directed to Twitter, but is in fact directing someplace else. This isn’t new, obviously, there have been emails like this around for years, for Facebook, for online banks, for Paypal and eBay – for every service you can imagine, the idea being to either:

A: Get your Username & Password – especially for financial services like Paypal.

B: Get your Credit Card number & related details.

C: Get you to click on a link that will download malware to infect your computer.

D: All of the above.

Whether it’s a phishing attack or a malware attack the results can be equally devastating so always take precautions. In many email clients all it takes is to hover over any hyperlinks to see where they point to. Worst case scenario you can always right click and copy the URL to the clipboard and then paste it into notepad. This way you’ll know for certain whether the hyperlink in the email is really pointing where it says it is.

Even this can be misleading however. Depending on the font used it can be difficult to distinguish from the real URL and a spoofed one, observe:

www.paypal.com – Paypal.com as normal.

Paypa1.com – Paypa1 (number one) in Times New Roman

PaypaI.com – PaypaI (capital i) in Arial

There’s a million other variants one can do with any number of legitimate websites.

So, if you’re still paranoid – congratulations, you should be! – then you can always look at some of these URL malware scanners to see if there are any nasty surprises lurking in the links of your emails.

Having a good virus and firewall protection layer and ensuring that these programs are regularly updated will help protect you from these sorts of attacks. As will ensuring that you also regularly update and patch your email client, browser and operating system.

Vigilance and common sense, however, is the only true protection – so always remember the five golden rules:

1. If you’re not sure where the link goes don’t click on it.
2. If you’re not sure what an attachment is don’t open it.
3. If you receive unsolicited* (spam) email don’t ever reply to it
4. Unless your email client or antivirus program already has an automatic email attachments scanning feature, always download and scan attachments first before opening them

and finally

5. If the email comes from a known contact with links/attachments but with very brief and often baffling and grammatically-questionable text, e.g. “hey u – check this out!” always contact that person and ask whether he/she really sent it or not.

If they reply and say they never sent it then that person’s computer is infected with a virus which has most likely sent itself out to every one of their contacts already. This can be very devastating not just for the security and privacy of a business, but for its reputation too. So if you do suspect you’ve received such a virus be sure to tactfully inform them of that fact, as the sooner they’re made aware of it the better.

Be aware that whilst many spam emails pretend to have an opt-out link at the bottom these are often used to verify that your email address is correct and clicking on them will only result in more spam. It can be hard to tell, sometimes, because you may also be receiving legitimate ezines/newsletters that you subscribed to but have since forgotten about. When in doubt, look the company/organisation up on Google and if you’re still not sure, you can always just flag the emails as spam.

Read more about how to prevent phish emails & spam.

In today’s world protecting your privacy, security and your confidential and financial data is paramount.

Many computers come off the shelf with trial periods of major brand anti-virus suites installed, usually McAffee or Norton. These software suites may offer a degree of protection however once the trial period expires they tend to not just merely nag you, but try to actively terrify you into buying the full version.

It’s enough to make you afraid to get out of bed in the morning.

Thing is there are many antivirus programs out there which don’t cost a thing and, in many cases, offer superior protection to boot. (more…)

If you are searching for ways to get rid of spam you’ll find all manner of sites selling spam protection software. Although many of these programs do indeed offer protection, when it comes right down to it, no program, no matter how many stars and rave reviews it might receive, has yet to come close to the human brain when it comes to detecting and recognizing spam.

Caution and common sense – that’s the true secret to stopping spam. Software only offers a cure and a best-guess cure at that. We’re not here to talk about cures, we’re here to talk about spam prevention.

1. Abandon Ship!
If you’re reading this article odds are you’re already dealing with a massive spam infestation and you’re looking for ways stop it. The truth is, when it gets to that stage, you can’t. Your account is already compromised and the spammers have your address so no matter how many senders you block, a hundred more will take their place. That’s why it’s better to just abandon your old email account and start afresh. Backup any data you wish to retain, like your address book data, and migrate it to your new account. Then send an email to those addresses – and only those addresses – that you wish to remain in contact with.

2. Be Obscure.
A popular technique used by spammers is to automatically send emails alphabetically. (Like if you were to pick up the phone book and start ringing every name from A. Aaronson to Zeke Zimmerman.) Choosing a more obscure email address will help prevent this.

3. Filter, Filter, Filter!
When choosing your new email account, be sure to investigate what spam filtering service the provider offers. Talk to your ISP or hosting provider to find out what measures they have in place. Some companies offer far better protection than others, some offer spam protection for free, others expect you to pay so shop around.

Most free email accounts also offer inbuilt filters, some are quite basic whilst others are quite elaborate. The most effective filters are those which you can set and edit yourself. This way as well as blocking specific addresses and domains, you can also block certain keywords. For example if you’re getting a lot of messages selling counterfeit watches, you could create a filter that automatically deletes any email with the keyword “Rolex” in the subject and/or email body.

4. Keep it Private!
Never, under any circumstances, publish your private email address on the web – for example on forums, blogs, groups or social networking sites. Spammers use automated programs known as spiders to trawl through the web harvesting public email addresses. All it takes is for you to publish your address once and get picked up by one of these spiders and before you know it your new account will be submerged in spam.

5. Use a Dummy Account.
Never sign up to anything online with your personal email address. Create a new account (or just use your old account – it’s full of spam anyway right?) and the next time a website sign-up page requires that you give them an email address give them this dummy one instead.

6. No Chain Letters.
You’ve probably got dozens of these, “forward this on to everyone you know and good luck will be your reward.” More than likely, though, spam will be your reward.

These chain letters are a spammer’s dream. Think about it, they’re sent from one person to another, disseminating through offices and companies, multiplying all the while, collecting hundreds upon thousands of addresses in the process.

Beware, too, of chain letters masquerading as petitions. Even if their stated goal seems noble they serve the same sinister purpose. If you receive an email like this from a friend explain to them that you will not be forwarding the email and explain why.

Whatever your beliefs or affiliations may be there’s one thing we can all agree on – the planet doesn’t need any more spam. If you want to fight injustice or change the world you’ll do it far more effectively through acts of charity and conscientious activism than forwarding chain emails.

7. Never, EVER Reply to Spam!
Don’t take it on their honor that they’re going to remove you if you ask them. Spammers don’t have honor, that’s why they’re spammers. If you ask to be removed you’ve basically just told them that your address is active, and you’ll just get more spam.

And whatever you do, don’t ever click on links from any unsolicited emails. These links will either try to download a virus onto your computer, or will lead to a page trying to scam you or steal your personal and/or financial details.

So there you have it, all you need to know to stop spam. You don’t need to fork out huge amounts of cash for spam protection software suites or anything of the sort. All you need to do is use your head and apply what you have read and enjoy your bright, new spam-free future!