Unbeknown to most of you, the famous World Wide Web has a very serious
and damaging flaw that can affect everyone who places WEB SITES or WEB
PAGES on the Internet.
Once again, don't flip this page over to the sports section
thinking..."Here goes another Einstein quantum-Physics HTML browser Meta
tag slurp dot COM ramble!" No!
Read on! I promise to keep it simple!
The easiest way to explain this disaster is to use a practical example.
Having the privilege of writing an article in the Mallorca Daily
Bulletin might allow me to take advantage of the situation by
shamelessly, fat-headedly promoting my wonderful, blimp-like, quality,
reliable, marvellous, bright, fantabulous, incredible, dynamic,
colourful, brilliant, way-out, stupendous, magnificent, unbelievable,
cool, bloated, super egoistic plump web site!.....And it makes coffee
too!
Well, maybe so, but knowing the Editor, if I DID that, chances are next
week you'll be reading an astounding article on lower-Slobovian basket
weaving by your on-site reporter - namely me - in outer Mongolia!
So, let us use an imaginary Web Site!
You are a company in Mallorca that makes Dildoes. You see the tremendous
potential of making up a very nice stiff web site with pages of photos,
details, up-market, arousing descriptions, different vibrant models, as
well as easy-to-use order forms and automatic E-Mail reply notes,
everything to give some HARD competition to your rivals!
To do this, either you must be well schooled in the art of Web site page
design, or you must hire someone to do all the work for you. To do a
complete, well-organised site with fonts, frames, banners, logos,
photos, colour, links and automatic reply things etc., you can spend
months and thousands and thousands of pesetas in getting it all set up.
So: After 4 months of blood sweat and tears, your polished web site with
its comprehensive, erotic pages on all the models of your
battery-operated product is ready to be placed "On The Web".
To do this, you merely submit your web site to the many search engines
that abound. Examples are Yahoo!, Altavista, HotBot, Lycos, Delta,
Direct Hit, and many more. If you are NOT on any important search
engines, your web site and its pages will not be seen or found by anyone
outside of your "circle" - that is, people who know specifically your
site address. It is like being omitted from the Yellow Pages phone book,
with only your immediate friends knowing your number.
The idea is to get your web site listed in these places so that
customers around the world searching the Internet for Dildoes will come
across your up-lifting page - hopefully ranked high enough to be on the
first sheet that comes on the screen. It is in this way many companies
make their millions, some operating from a warehouse or their home!
Basically, the Internet boils down to one giant mail order house - at
least as far as business is concerned.
Now - here is the disaster: Let us say your site is called:
www.mallorca-dildoes.com, and inside the site your E-Mail address is
dildoes@ocea.es
You spend months and dollars (some search engines like Go To.com charge
$ to list your site!) submitting your pages. There are listing services
that for a nice fat fee will put your site on 300 search engines.
So finally you're up and running! You've made it into the big search
engines like Yahoo! (Getting into YAHOO! Is like having a 5-minute TV
advert during the Superbowl game!). You are getting calls and e-mails.
All of a sudden - WHAM! Your site has DISAPPEARED from 4 of the major
search engines - and you're FURIOUS! WWW.Mallorcan-Dildoes.com is in a
slump! Business drops to a limp - and you don't know why.
Mysteriously, this has been happening to me EVERY MONTH on YAHOO! For 3
weeks I´m on, then PRESTO! Totally wiped OFF the map. @$%&"!?¿?! I have
to endure another FLURRY of hectic, time wasting RE-SUBMITTING my site
to everyone on the planet in hopes of getting back on to Yahoo! Finally,
after some weeks, I´m on again....then a week or so goes by then - BOOT!
I´m out left field again! Why? Read on for the possible answer!
Enter the injustice of the system - namely the COMPETITION!
Along comes www.mallorcan music-dildoes.com who does not like seeing YOU
on the web!
Your competitor knows your web site URL or address,
www.mallorcan-dildoes.com and your E-Mail address - so, one afternoon,
he has nothing else to do, so he RE-SUBMITS YOUR SITE TO ALL THE MAJOR
SEARCH ENGINES! He does this over and over, so that the major players in
the web "yellow pages phone book" think YOU are forcing them to push
your site - and repeated submissions constitutes "SPAMMING" - flooding
search engines with a web site in hopes that it will be the top one on
the first page! The big computer-robot-operated engines do not know WHO
is sending in your site, they merely get cheezed off with YOU and "POOF"
- you are dropped - zapped-vaporised!
Don't believe me? Go to
http://deadlock.com/promote/search-engines/submit.html. On page two - I
quote: "Re-submit it! Get the URL of your competitors document and
submit it again. The robot (of the major search engines) will visit,
realise it's SPAMMED, penalise it and it gets moved to the bottom of the
pile, which means YOU MOVE UP!"
This little paragraph could spell disaster for businesses new and old
wanting to fairly compete on the Internet. The injustice is that ANYONE
in the world who doesn't like your face could arrange to have your
entire web site reduced to virtual ashes.
SOLUTION: Search engines and Internet Directories should be ordered that
ALL web site submissions be accompanied by a PIN number, ID number or a
password - something very common these days on a myriad of services and
sites on the web. This way, only YOU can change, re-submit or delete
your site. There are even some search engines that have a DELETE feature
where if you know the URL address of a site and their E-Mail address -
something easy to do - YOU could delete THEIR pages!
ACTION: Send an E-Mail to friends and family, asking them to send notes
to these engines and directories demanding that they solve this problem
now!
About the Author
Roberto Gourlay - robertog@ocea.es
www.mallorca-real-estate.com