Most Internet users know the basics on how to use a Search Engine. How effective they are depends on how well they determine the keyword or keyword phrase of whatever they are searching for. Learning how to search effectively can take some determination and a willingness to try different search terms and even different Search Engines in order to find a good variety of what they are looking for. How well a Search Engine performs for each individual can depend in part on the search terms (keywords and keyword phrases) used to perform the search.

Web Directories are not so dependent on keywords and keyword phrases. In fact, most directories have a very basic search feature, not nearly as complex as major Search Engines, and not as necessary. A Directory is focused on categorization, with parent and child hierarchy, that can go as deep as 10 or more pages, depending on the size and focus of the directory. While most directories have the same basic structure, how they use that structure may be different. Web Directories are one of the most unutilized features on the Internet today, mostly because the average and many not-so-average users don’t know they exist or don’t know how to use them.

There are less than ten major human-edited general directories online today. While there are tens of thousands of directories online, most offer very little to potential users (surfers). Their focus is on selling links, trading links, ad click-throughs and/or for the benefits of search engine placement. They are not focused on building a useable directory for the average Internet user. I’ll be writing more about this in the future.

Niche directories can be a valuable resource when researching in a narrowly focused area of interests. There could be thousands of niche directories worth your time to explore. A good niche directory could provide you with more information than you would ever find using just a Search Engine because the directory has weeded out the redundancy and less appropriate Web sites for you. Niche directories are usually created by people with a passion for the subject of their niche and go out of their way to find good Web sites that fit their niche.

Next I will write about how to use a directory and the benefits of exploring a Directory as opposed to a Search Engine.

The above link was left in a comment to my post, Rankingdirect.com or TechFiesta, which was written about email spam but apparently these spammers spam everything and anything. While I give kudos to Sandy of Slantsix.com for choosing to do something about the spam being posted on his forum instead of just ignoring it, I’m not sure that the way it has been handled is the way it should have been handled. Fighting fire with fire is never the best way to deal with a pyromaniac. The spammer’s fire is now blazing out of control, scorching long spammy messages on the forum, some with Sandy’s personal information attached to “Call Sandy for Free Porn!” I mean, really, would an adult be so childish?

My first thought was why does Sandy allow it to continue but I think he is leaving the evidence for the authorities to see. I think I would just take screen shots and delete the crap but then, I wouldn’t have done what Sandy did anyway. I have fought against spam for a long time now and know that it’s a loosing battle. As long as there is money to be made from spamming, there will be those who choose to spam. The only way it will ever stop is if everyone stops opening their wallets to spammers. Even making it illegal will not stop it, though it might slow it down and give use some recourse. Getting their sites shut down by their IP’s doesn’t work or it’s only a temporary reprieve. It’s just too easy to get another IP these days. Educating the general public on what not to do with spam and how not to fall prey to spammers and perhaps, expose the spammers publicly for what they are is what might make a difference. Unfortunately, there will always be those who will click on that spam link in their email, forum, blog, referral logs, or guest book and invite the spammers to the party, especially if it looks like they will bring liquid spirits.

We have laws against drugs in the US but it hasn’t stopped anyone who wants to take or sell drugs. Spamming is a drug of sorts. Those doing the spamming get a rush of anticipated wealth, those selling the paraphernalia and the how-to use it are counting on the green-dope of greed to overrule common sense and go for the short-term elusive high instead of the long-term natural high. No SELF respecting human would stoop so low. Unfortunately, there are many who do not respect themselves enough to respect others. Very sad but also very true.

So, spam and spammers are here to stay. All any of us can do is find ways to keep it under some kind of control and never give a spammer our business, no matter how enticing it might be.

What I found interesting about this company is how far they will go to make a buck. They have hundreds of domains with the same content. I was spammed with a link to rankingdirect.com, which is owned by TeckFiesta, which also has at least one mirror, wholesalesupport.com. They claim to be a web design and tech support company. Right! I’m going to rush right out and use their slimy services, not!

I did a search for TeckFiesta and found hundreds of sub-domains of salonhomes.com that are mirrors of the spammy domain they sent to me. I also found another domain, googlemenow.com, which has a file not found error but as of Sept. 24th, it was a functional domain with lots of info on their slimy affiliate program for suckering new, unsuspecting webmasters into using their dubious services. Here is Google’s cache of the site. I wonder how Google feels about a site trying to game their system with a crappy google me now domain?

So, who owns these domains? Well, that’s a good question. Even after looking at the whois, I don’t really have a clue. The googlemenow.com domain is registered to:

Stanley, William wssbill@yahoo.com
Lumbermax
3300 gonzales
Austin, Texas 78702
United States
5122899565 Fax — 5122899565
Technical Contact:
Stanley, William wssbill@yahoo.com
Lumbermax
3300 gonzales
Austin, Texas 78702
United States
5122899565 Fax — 5122899565

What’s most interesting is that the first testimonial on rankingdirect.com and all of its mirrors reads as follows:

LumberMax.com of Austin, Texas wrote: “At first we were skeptical that we would actually receive thousands of links. months ago we had only 3 back links and now we have 118,000 and still rising! Our site is at the top of almost all the search terms we wanted and we have over 2000 unique visitors a day. The amount of money we are saving on pay per click is huge. These people know what they are doing! “

Oh, Stanley (or is it William?), you’re such a hoot! All those sub-domains of salonhomes.com were created to give your site a ranking boost in Google. Gee, I wonder why you only have a 4 ranking? And doing a search for you keyword phrase, (Wholesale Decking Austin), your site doesn’t come up in the first 50 returns. Well, I should say that your message board spam does come up in 41st place. Way to go, Stanley, your spam comes up before your site! LMAO!

Did you know, Stanley, that you have been banned on Rhyolite Software, LLC as a spammer and there is a list of a few of your domains. And, they have your name as William Lawrence, i.e. William Lawrence Liberty Enterprises. But I will call you Stanley because I like the way it sounds. Stanley the spammer just has a nice ring to it.

But wait, I found more as I was wondering the halls of cyber space …. qedshopper.com is on the logo but Stanley, the URL is knowlescorporation.com. Why is that? It definitely has the same phone number, 207-899-2332, as the spam you spammed me with. But the whois info is different. By researching a bit more I found qedmediagroup.com. The whois info is:

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Russo, Robert ….. qedmedia@maine.rr.com
qedmediagroup
34 Oregon St.
Portland, ME 04103
US
207-899-0286

Interesting … another web design company that thinks they are SEOs … and what do they link to? Hummm, the URL looks different but things are not always as they seem. Speedrankings.com is just another mirror of rankingdirect.com and supposedly owned by Stanley.

So, the question on who owns these slimy sites is still a mystery and for no other reason than that, they should not get your business.

Could you please update the CAL-MOAA.ORG web directory listing by Sunday so we can continue to list you, if you don’t mind? Update your listing for FREE at: http://www-goto.com/update.cfm?d=CAL-MOAA.ORG&e=w Thanks. To unsubscribe: http://www-goto.com/cancel.cfm?d=CAL-MOAA.ORG&e=w Media LLC, 1158 26th St. #528, Santa Monica, CA 90403 USA

I blinked a few times and thought, what the heck? What listing? In which directory? The site this person is referring to isn’t my site. I’m just the webmaster for the site. I received the request on Friday. Nice of them to give me 2 days to update a listing in a directory I’ve never heard of. But before I clicked on the link I looked at the html code and copied the url without the extension and did a whois search on the domain. Note that the domain is www-goto.com, which is very misleading if your not paying attention to the details. It appears that the www is the prefix that most sites have in the url path but in this case it’s a part of the domain. The whois didn’t tell me much so I pasted the domain into my browser address field and up comes a crappy site claiming to be the Web’s Biggest directory and search engine. Right! They use Google for their search and Dmoz for their directory. What a crock. This sites owner is not only a spammer but a scammer as well. The domain, www-goto.com, is actually a front for http://dirs.org/. www-goto.com frames the real site. The whois info is:

Domain ID:D104710290-LROR
Domain Name:DIRS.ORG
Created On:01-Aug-2004 17:35:04 UTC
Last Updated On:01-Aug-2005 17:14:31 UTC
Expiration Date:01-Aug-2006 17:35:04 UTC

Sponsoring
Registrar:Intercosmos Media Group Inc.
(R48-LROR) Status:OK

Registrant
ID:IMG-574589
Registrant Name:Web Master
Registrant Organization:Media LLC Registrant
Street1:1158 26th Street #528
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Santa Monica
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:90403
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.5306889820
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.5305048433
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:listings2@www-goto.com

Admin ID:IMG-574589
Admin Name:Web Master
Admin Organization:Media LLC
Admin Street1:1158 26th Street #528
Admin Street2: Admin Street3:
Admin City:Santa Monica
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:90403
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.5306889820
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+1.5305048433 Admin
FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:listings2@www-goto.com

Tech ID:IMG-574589
Tech Name:Web Master
Tech Organization:Media LLC
Tech Street1:1158 26th Street #528
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Santa Monica
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:90403
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.5306889820
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+1.5305048433
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:listings2@www-goto.com

Name Server:NS1.DIRS.ORG
Name Server:NS2.DIRS.ORG

This scumbag also owns the domain, websbiggest.com, which the others mirror. I found a press release on this directory Here, making incredible claims that apparently can not be proven to be accurate. This release was published in January this year so things could have changed since then. Here is what Danny Sullivan has to say right after the release. Then I found that the Web’s Biggest was purchased by Edgetech in June, 2005. You can read about it Here. Is this the same directory in my email? It appears that it is. This Edgetech company has info in Yahoo Finance. I’m completely mystified. Why is this company spamming unsuspecting webmasters into updating a listing, which by the way is not FREE, in their directory when what they actually have is the RDF dump from the Dmoz directory? Here is another financial report that confirms that this company did purchase the Web’s Biggest. Amazing! And the sad thing is, some webmasters will pay to continue to be listed in their spammy directory. All I can say is, DON”T DO IT!!!! Don’t give spammers anything but a tongue lashing. They certainly don’t deserve your business. I’m sending the spammers a link to this posts in response to their slimy spam.

Update: It appears that www-goto.com and/or websbiggest.com has changed it’s whois info as well as the so-called company name. And apparently Edgetech has shut down completely. Just thought I’d update this post for those who may be searching for information using the whois info.

Registrant:
Media LLC
33 Hazelton Ave., Suite 118
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E3
CA
530-688-9820
Fax:530-504-8433

Domain Name: WWW-GOTO.COM

Administrative Contact:
Master, Web searchenginecompany@bigfoot.com
33 Hazelton Ave., Suite 118
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E3
CA
530-688-9820
Fax:530-504-8433

Technical Contact:
Master, Web searchenginecompany@bigfoot.com
33 Hazelton Ave., Suite 118
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E3
CA
530-688-9820
Fax:530-504-8433

That was back in 2000 and not much has changed with the amount of spam sent out hourly. I used to turn every piece of spam I got into their provider, every single one. I did that for several years and while I was successful at decreasing the amount of email spam reaching my inbox, I was never able to completely get rid of it. Once your email address gets in the hands of a spammer, it’s virtually impossible to keep your inbox clean, regardless of how good your spam filters might be. Certainly some anti-spam programs are better than others and what you pay for them makes little difference in how good they may or may not be.

I don’t hunt down and report spammers anymore. I also don’t get a lot of spam, well … at least I didn’t until I started working as a webmaster for a military organization. Now I get spammed with Viagra. How stupid is that? But then no one ever said spammers were smart, except maybe another spammer. The spam is sent via a webmaster form on the site I maintain so they don’t actually have my email address but the outcome is the same, spam in my inbox. I’m also getting spammed with online marketing companies. They had to have gotten my email from my whois information. Most are web design companies offering me such a deal! Or SEO companies wanting to optimize my business site for high traffic and relevant, keyword, search returns for all the major search engines, along with hundreds of minor search engines. There’s only one little problem they have all over-looked. I’m not marketing anything online, nada, zilt, zero! And if I were, I sure as hell wouldn’t use any company that has to resort to spamming in order to get customers.

I could just ignore this new business email spam I’m suddenly getting but I think I will use my blog to rant about them or rat them out instead. Turning them in to their IPs is a complete wast of time, especially since it’s so easy and inexpensive to just get another one. No, instead I will waste my time writing about them and hope someone happens by and reads my rants and it somehow helps another from falling victim to a marketing scam! Yes, I said scam because spam and scam are related in my opinion and my opinion counts when it comes to letting go of my money!

I used to think that spammers were just victims of some so called marketing guru. That they were told that they would make lots of cash from spamming when in truth they only got a big headache. It was hard for me to believe anyone would buy anything from an email they didn’t ask to receive. But I was wrong. Email spam continues because it works and the risk is small. But that may be changing, at least for those spammers living and operating in the US.

I found this news flash, Feds say spammer wouldn’t stop on the Houston Chronicle site about a spammer, Christopher Smith, who was arrested and faces a grand jury investigation on his email spam business. This spammer made millions before he got caught and after he was arrested and released on bail he tried to launch his pill pushing factory from the Dominican Republic. What an idiot, but clearly a wealthy one, at least until the feds confiscated everything he had. It will be interesting to see if the courts actually give him a sentence worthy of his crimes.

This is a good anti-spam site, Spam Help if anyone is interested. It has a good anti-spam news area on the front page. Right now it’s providing information about an ex America Online employee who sold 92 million screen names and email addresses to spammers. Amazing, 92 million! He was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months in prison. The justice wheels are spinning but will it make a difference? I doubt it but it makes my heart sing to know that some will get what they deserve. However, I’d like it more if they would just stop but what are the chances of that happening? None, I’d say.

I had one of their affiliates try to spam my comments. Hashcash didn’t let it through but I get an email generated by the Hashcash program with a list of all the spam attempts each week, which includes the spammy urls the spammers are hustling. This one appeared to be casino spam from the look of the domain, carvinal-casino.ws. Note the .ws. Global Domains International only sells .ws domains and they are are not accredited by ICANN. All that means is that they are not subject to the same rules that govern .com .net or .org registrars, including having their personal information available to the public. So you can not find out who owns a .ws domains if they don’t want you to know. That annoys me to no end, especially if the person is doing business online and using said business to spam me with.

Global Domains International is hustling a MLM scheme five levels down for their domain and hosting services. They claim that they were named one of America’s entrepreneurial growth leaders by Inc magazine in 2002. Perhaps that was before they decided to encourage spam or started marketing their affiliate program. I don’t know and don’t care, all I know is that one of their affiliates tried to spam my comments more than once and that the IP is within the company’s range of IPs. So the spam lives on their servers.

I found the following information about Global Domains International on biz.yahoo:

701 Palomar Airport Rd.,

Ste. 300 Carlsbad, CA

92009-1028

760-602-3000

760-602-3099

CEO: Michael S. Reed President: Alan Ezeir Global Domains International, which does business as WorldSite.ws, provides domain names with the “.ws” suffix for both individual and commercial use. The .ws suffix stands for western Samoa; the company has a royalty arrangement with the kingdom of Samoa to use the top-level country code assigned to the Pacific island nation by ICANN, the Internet regulatory body for domain names and numbers. Global Domains was founded in 1999.

I haven’t payed too much attention to the Hashcash generated emails I’ve gotten in the past year or so but I think I will from now on and post a comment on the ones that are especially slimy like this one.

John Sullivan at benzoblog was having a problem with comment spam. It seemed to be one spammer in particular and even though he had done several things to detour the spammer, nothing seemed to work. So John decided to do a little detective work and went in search of his spammers identity. What I found entertaining was how John discovered who his spammer was and what program his spammer was using to spam him. Now, John, it seems has some hacking abilities and those, umm … skills turned up some very interesting information. I confess, I admire people like John and their abilities and wish I had the knowledge they own. I do like the sleuthing thing and even though I do have some skills, I don’t have near enough to uncover what John did. I think I’m in love!

Anyway, what John found on the questionable spammers server was Blogs Autofiller 2.4.0, published by Maksym Nesen from the Ukraine, if you can believe the whois information. I know that I probably should not link to the spammy sites but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

A quote from the spam script site:

This is the perfect unique tool that quickly submits your information to message boards/blogs or many other web scripts using the most effective technique and offers you fantastic opportunities for web site promotion, increasing the link popularity of your web project.

You just gotta ask yourself if people are so stupid as to believe that kind of hype. And then there’s this line:

Increase your traffic and Search Engines popularity using Blogs AutoFiller!

Makes a person wanna puke … It should read:

Increase your chances to piss off the blogging community and get banned from Search Engines by using Blogs AutoFiller!

Well, this is my spam report of the day. Read John’s for more entertainment if your the curious type.

I am a novas about how search engines work but have been doing some research on their development which I have found fascinating. I never would have believed that I would find all this techie stuff fascination but my curious nature sends me down paths I have no control over. I do understand the benefits a spammer gets from comment spamming but I didn’t understand the referral spam thingy, especially when a blog owner doesn’t publish his/her logs. However, I discovered that some sicko-spammers steal whole sites, upload them to their own domain, a domain that may look like it has been suspended or yet to be created to a real person using a browser to view it with but it’s alive and doing very well for the search engine robots. There is no way we humans can detect this kind of deceptive practice, at least not unless we own a robot or know how to write some kind of scraping code and know what to do with it. I also read that you can change a browser into a make-believe robot.

I don’t know if it works but I read that you can make your browser look like a robot by opening REGEDIT and finding the entry for your browser’s USER AGENT. Under POST PLATFORM, create a text key something like “spam bot”. Restart your browser and punch in a site’s IP. I might give it a try when I have time to play with it.

Apparently these piece-of-shit-thieving-spammers are targeting keyphrases for relevancy and passing the PR to another domain that is viewable to both browsers and search engines, causing it to place very well in a search engine for multiple keyphrases, regardless of actual relevancy. One such site is directory.hostnetwork.org with the IP of 216.144.233.205 and they are passing PR to ndchost.com. Since they have been discovered, the whole site might have been taken down. I don’t know for sure but it was still up for the robots as of March 8, 2005.

So, in conclusion the comment, trackback, and referral spammers are using deceptive practices in order to get a better ranking in the search engines, Google in particular, and violating trespass laws that have already been challenged in the US District court by eBay against Bidder’s Edge. eBay won, read about it here. It’s been 5 years since eBay won that court case and it will take more big Internet companies filing court cases before we will see any changes in the spam problem, if at all. I’m thinking the only way we, the blogging community, will get any relief from the spammers obsession to spam us is for the search engines to make some major changes in their infrastructures and how they measure a sites relevancy to a surfers search terms.

If you’re interested in search engine development, what has already been developed and what is being developed, read this interview by Mike Grehan with Ask Jeeves/Teoma developers. I found it painfully informative with some insight into Google’s PageRank, which apparently they do not actually use according to Apostolos Gerasoulis, the founder and developer of the Teoma search engine. PageRank was developed by Jon Kleinberg and its algorithm is based on linkage data. It seems that Google’s algorithm is based more on keyword density than linkage data. So maybe the spammers have it wrong or they know something the experts don’t know. Or, they are stealing our blogs and using them to push their spammy sites up in rankings with our keywords. I don’t know, it’s still a bit mysterious to me but I’ve found it an interesting journey.

I’m going to be watching Ask Jeeves and exploring its search features. They may be on to something that will change how we experience searching in the near future. Google used to be the best in terms of quality search returns but that has changed dramatically in the past few years. When I see sites in my search returns that are ranked high and are number 1, that have little or no relevancy to what I was searching for, or they have a scant amount of information, it irritates me. I might have to go through 50 sites before I find one that actually gives me something to chew on. There’s something wrong with that picture. I do hope that the spammers are not able to completely overtake the Internet. I’ll be cheering Ask Jeeves on if they can provide good search returns and leave the spammer licking their wounds.

What I did find was an interesting way to use the .htaccess to stop referral spam on Coldforged.org. Instead of using the entire domain name, the code uses keywords that are usually a part of the domain name or in many cases, a sub-domain. He even provides a nice tutorial and a full list of the keywords he uses in his war against referral spam. I can see where this would be beneficial and if my php code ever gets too long to be viable, I may try this out. In the mean time I will continue to look for other options just in case I ever need one.