BigFishSubmit

[highman]

Anyone else getting their customers bombarded by these £9.50 clowns?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi! I like your site.

To introduce myself, my name is Jason Smith and I work for a business called BigFishSubmit (http://www.bigfishsubmit.com). We specialise in driving targeted new business to UK web sites like yours. We find that search engines are the most cost-effective way of getting new lead s to your site.

I have run a free ranking report for your site "Company Name removed" (http://domain.co.uk/) to give you an idea of how easily customers can find your site at the moment. (See below).
----------------------------
Followed by a table containing SE results for selected keywords (they dont even research keywords that apply)
----------------------------
Followed by:

As you can see, unless people know your brand already, you're not getting all the traffic you could be.
Why do we use search engines to generate leads?
* Over 80% of web surfers use search engines to find new sites (source: Forrester, Jun 2000).
* 55% of all ecommerce purchases are by users who originally arrived from search engines (source: NDP Group, January 2001).
* 47% of people name search engines as their primary means of finding new sites (source: Neilsens NetRatings, March 2000).
* The first 10 results for any search enjoy click-thru rates of 65% (source: Berrier & Associates, 2000).
* Search engine traffic is the best kind of traffic as it comprises of people actively looking for a solution.

We would like to help you get more visitors on your site and drive sales. We have automatic internet marketing solutions starting at just £9.50! For more information, please check out our web site at http://url removed cause i hate them.


Kind regards,
Jason Smith
Business Development Manager
BigFishSubmit - The Leaders in Online Leads.



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They have now contacted several of my clients, it takes time to calm the customer down and explain why we dont charge £9.50 and why they are not ranked for MP3 !!

I am looking for there phone number, I really want to give them a piece of my mind

:1:

[ihelpyou]

sheesh. These types should be abolished from ever having another site on the net. The gawl of doing a report for any site without permission is totally unethical. Then, to SPAM the site with their childish offer is appalling. They should be jailed.

[MakeMeTop]

Don't help them out by giving them a link, please :D

Yep, they've been contacting some of my clients with joke keywords who have forwarded them to me. Having primed them about the futility of submission services, I haven't got any real flack - just curiosity!

Usually saying "if they are so good, why don't they appear anywhere?" for what they do seems to cure any queries.

[ihelpyou]

Actually, I would like them to respond to this thread to explain why they SPAM and take advantage of new webmasters. They are cruel, heartless, and could give a flying **** about anything other than the fact they have NO clue about how to succeed on the net and could not have their own content or product if they wanted to. Not a unique thinking brain in these people. No brain at all.

[Alan Perkins]

Check out the whois (http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=bigfishsubmit.com&SearchType=do) lookup. It's our old friends Decide Interactive from Australia! I have received one of these as a Webmaster for a particular domain. The e-mail addresses were clearly scraped from the site. But I'll make no call as to whether it's "spam" or not yet... let's just play devil's advocate for a while.

[list=1]
Suppose you place a message on your site that says "If you find a problem with this site please contact webmaster@..."
Now suppose S. Body comes to your site and finds a "problem", in their opinion. It's not ranking well for some keywords.
Suppose S. Body then sends a message to the webmaster informing them of the problem. Is that spam?
Suppose the message from S.Body also invited the webmaster to use S.Body's product or service. Is that spam?
Suppose S.Body realised there were a lot of sites with this "problem". He employs thousands of people to send these personalised messages. Is that spam?
Suppose S.Body then sacked all those people and writes a program to do their job instead. The program still sends out personalised messages. Is that spam?
[/list=1]

[ihelpyou]

Will these people ever stop with their nonsense? To even scrap email addresses off of a site is spam Alan, in my opinion. This type of correspondence is spam thru and thru.

[ihelpyou]

Note: This site was just opened in July. Hardly enough time to collect email addresses the right way. They visit sites with a robot and scarf them up to SPAM with.

[Alan Perkins]

I try not to label anybody as a spammer out of hand. I am intensely suspect of the e-mail I received but the keywords were at least partly related to the client's site. I suspect they were scraped out of the keywords tag and jumbled around until they produced a poor set of results, but I have no evidence that is what was done. The ethics of scraping versus employing a roomful of people is an interesting debate to have.

I thought that was a pretty fair list of questions I posted ...

[highman]

Good points Alan,
I wouldnt mind so much if they sent a mail asking if the client would like a report and if so on what keywords..........

So in return;
Ive just submitted thier site to 900,000,000 search engines and directories, lets hope that gets them some business so they can leave me alone to do MINE

muppets

[ihelpyou]

Alan, your point #5 is spam. First contact was made by the site, not the visitor. Point #6 does not pertain as we all know you cannot have that many contacts in 3 months time. They physically go out and search for email addresses.

Any email that is sent by anyone that is commercialized, to another who did not request an email, is spam.

[ihelpyou]

An example:

I get many referrals from current clients or over the phone. It may go like this:

"you may want to make a call to my friend so and so. They need optimization services and I talked to them about you."

Or

"you may want to shoot my friend an email who could use your services."

In both cases, I will tell the referrEE to simply have the friend Call me or email me first. I have never and would never make the first contact.

Now, in a "real life" sales business,.. cold calling is common and accepted. With online business,... cold calling or "cold emailing" is Spam in my opinion.

I wish the director of i-Cop could weigh in here. She has strong views on this. :)

[Advisor]

So in return; Ive just submitted thier site to 900,000,000 search engines and directories, lets hope that gets them some business so they can leave me alone to do MINE :green: ROFL!

J

[Alan Perkins]

I agree with you Doug. Permission marketing is the only acceptable form of Web marketing. But the key to it is this phrase:

Suppose you place a message on your site that says "If you find a problem with this site please contact webmaster@..."

Is that "permission" to market to the Webmaster? Most products and services address a "need" or a "problem".

(As usual, I'm just trying to test perceptions and boundaries here. I think e-mail spam to webmasters is a much more murky area than search engine spam ... :( ... it's closer to search engine user spam.)

Point 5 says that the team of people are all looking for Web sites with that phrase "If you find a problem with this site please contact webmaster@...". So, if they find that phrase, is it spam if they then send an e-mail? Point 6 then says what if robots are used instead of people. Is that spam?

I was trying to lead you gently to these two killers ...


7. What if the message just said "webmaster@..." , i.e. a silent "If you find a problem with this site please contact "
8. What if there was no message at all??? i.e. a silent "If you find a problem with this site please contact webmaster@..."

[ihelpyou]

LOL. You are picking fleas now. :)

I consider all those points as spam as well. The webmaster does not put up his/her email address for others to email with their offers. What that visitor could do is this:

Send an email and say:
I just visited your site. You have a statement on it that says "if this site has any problems, please email the webmaster" on it. I do have some advice for you. If you wish, simply email me back and I can explain further.

Now, if that happened..... it would not be spam as long as the sender does Not have any links or offers whatsoever in the email. He is simply asking the webmaster to email him back if he is interested in further advice.

Any robots used for the sole purpose to scarf up email addresses is spam, no matter what the site might say.

[Blue]

Note: I abhor spam as much as any "ethical" person.

Doug, I'm not sure your "real life" sales example is correct in that it kind of sounds like a double standard. After all, certainly a lot of business sites are as "real" as their brick and morter counterparts in that they're purpose is to promote or conduct sales. I should think that if you call one spam, then you have to call the other spam as well, or vice versa. And as to the "accepted" part, that may only be due to time, as in "over time this became the accepted norm", and maybe this will become the norm for online businesses. I highly think it is a matter of perception....some cold calls are hated vehemently whilst others are, at least, tolerated.

Alan, though your questions are certainly applicable, they, at least to me, aren't easy to answer (for the most part).

#1 is easily agreed to: BUT, it raises the old subjectivity flag which leads to the difficulty with the rest.

What one sees as a problem, another may not. So in this case, whose subjective definition of "problem" is correct? I would have to say that #'s2/3 are not spam simply because you've invited others to report "problems"; whether they may be subjective or not, you made the invitation.

#'s4/5 ARE spam because a sales pitch is not a problem report but rather a problem solution and is unsolicited. Wham bam thank you spam!

#6 is DEFINATELY spam, presuming of course that this program uses a harvester to gather the email addys. If it was an opt-in program, that would be different.

Hey! Actually those answers were easier than I thought at first.

(Jill, Shame on you! You left out the last 99 SE's. They're gonna be maaaaad at you. I thought all you experts knew there were 900,000,099 SE's & directories.)

[highman]

FYI the site in question does not display ANY email address anywhere, it can only be found in the contact form code

Which sort of suggests a email stripper or a very dedicated person looking for email addresses which I somehow doubt

Blue: yes only 900,000,000 today but tommorrow.......

[ihelpyou]

Yes Blue. I agree that over time it may be different.... with calling. But, I do not agree that unsolicited commercial email will ever be tolerated online from anyone.

And again, no webmaster posts a statement on the site to get "unsolicited commercial offers" from anyone.

[Blue]

Well, I for one certainly hope you're right Doug.

It's too bad that there couldn't be some kind of "tarrif" on UNsolicited emails that would help pay for the costs of ISP's, somewhat like postal spam.....

[Alan Perkins]

Good replies, Blue!

I hate this stuff as much as anyone. I'm Webmaster for lots of different IP addresses and some of those addresses host lots of domains, so I suffer my fair amount of "Webmaster spam". But I'm not here to gripe about that. I'm trying to work out what would be reasonable.

I also think that, in an SEO world, we all get a bit self-centred and don't consider what maybe 70 or 80% of Webmasters make of this stuff.

Let me try to use some non-SEO examples to illustrate the point:
If somebody reported a broken link to you, would that be reasonable?
If so, what if they pointed you towards a link-checking program?
Now, what if they were affiliated to that link-checking program in some way?

Same applies to HTML validators, browser compatibility checkers, the lot. So, is it a problem only with SEO software and services, or is it a problem with all sales pitches of software that may be useful to Webmasters?

I think Blue got quite close in saying problem reports are OK, problem solutions are not. What do you all reckon?

[ihelpyou]

Again Alan, what you are saying is fine except for the fact you are saying to INCLUDE a link or something.

All I am saying is that you could email the webmaster and tell him about his broken link. THEN, simply ask him if he would like you to send a link to him that can help him. Leave it up to Him! It is not spam that way. You are Asking to send an offer. You are not sending the offer without asking first.

That is a big difference.

And no, this is not just an SEO thing.... this is ALL and ANY kind of software or offers of any kind. Ask first.

[ihelpyou]

Hi Webmaster!

I just visited your site. Very informative! I noticed that you asked if a visitor found any problems on your site to please email you.

Well, you do have a broken link on this page ...... and it is this link.........

I am familiar with a program that can help you with this a bunch. If you would like, I could email you the Url for you to check it out.

Let me know.
Doug

no signature

[ihelpyou]

That email would Not be spam.

You are accomplishing a couple of things with that.

1. Developing a relationship first. No matter how small.

2. Helping him immediately by telling him about his broken link. This gains trust.

3. Letting him make the decision on whether or not to reply back to you asking for the link.

It's a win-win situation for both parties with NO spam involved. AND, you could gain a business acquaintance in the meantime because of your good manners and good business ettique (how ya spell that?) :)

[ihelpyou]

Hi Doug!

I really appreciate the alert you gave me for the broken link. I wish more visitors would do that. Thanks a bunch!

You mentioned about a link that might help with this? Could you send it to me please?

Thanks
Webmaster

[ihelpyou]

Hi Webmaster!

Glad to be of help. Yes, I know how hard it can be for sites to keep up with this. I try to help when I can.

The program is described at this link:
thislinkwillhelp.com

Hope you find it useful Webmaster. Let me know if I can help you again. Maybe I will ask for your assistance sometime. :)

Doug

[Alan Perkins]

So, again stretching the limits, what aboout this (where does it go wrong):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi! I like your site.

To introduce myself, my name is John Smith and I work for BigTwit . We drive targeted new business to web sites like yours. We find that search engines are the most cost-effective way of getting new lead s to your site.

You ask on your site to report any problems. You appear to have a big problem with being found on search engines. I have run a free ranking report for your site "Company Name removed" (http://domain.com/) to give you an idea of how easily customers can find your site at the moment. (See below).
----------------------------
Followed by a table containing SE results for selected keywords (they dont even research keywords that apply)
----------------------------
Followed by:

As you can see, unless people know your brand already, you're not getting all the traffic you could be.
Why do we use search engines to generate leads?
* Over 80% of web surfers use search engines to find new sites (source: Forrester, Jun 2000).
* 55% of all ecommerce purchases are by users who originally arrived from search engines (source: NDP Group, January 2001).
* 47% of people name search engines as their primary means of finding new sites (source: Neilsens NetRatings, March 2000).
* The first 10 results for any search enjoy click-thru rates of 65% (source: Berrier & Associates, 2000).
* Search engine traffic is the best kind of traffic as it comprises of people actively looking for a solution.

We would like to help you get more visitors on your site and drive sales. We have automatic internet marketing solutions starting at just $5! For more information, please send me an e-mail and I will send you back our URL.

Kind regards,
John Smith
Le Grande Fromage
BigTwit - The Biggest in the Business
----------------------------------------------------------------

[ihelpyou]

Spam.

[ihelpyou]

That email gets deleted after the first sentence is read where you say Who you are and what you do.

It is spam.

=============

This is better and NOT spam.

Hi Webmaster!

I just visited your site. You ask on your site to report any problems with it.

I did notice that you are not listed in the search engines. I can give you some advice on this if you would like. Please email me back if you would like some more information.

Thank you for your time.
Doug
NO signature

[ihelpyou]

The way I see it, any one who has to send an unsolicited commercial email to tout their search engine business, should not be in business in the first place.

They must be hard up for business to have to do that. They must not be any good attall.

[Alan Perkins]

OK Doug. I don't want to wind you up. As I said, I hate Webmaster spam as much as anybody. But I'm just trying to test where we draw the line. I've got Search Engine Spam quite fixed. General e-mail spam is also quite simple - get permission first. It's specifically Webmaster e-mail that's cloudy...

[ihelpyou]

Oh no... no wind up here. I enjoy talking about spam. I have strong views about it.

I do not see where there is a difference in email spam and webmaster spam. All the same thing. Spam is spam. If it is sent without permission and contains a Url or an offer, it is spam. Simple.

If it simply tells the webmaster about a problem on the site, and then ASKS the webmaster if he/she wants more advice or info, then it is not spam. Simple.

[Blue]

I have to agree with Dougs examples 100% given the email addy that those examples were addressing. I would definately respond positively to Doug if he sent me those emails, either accepting or declining his offer.

Alan, as to your broken link demo, since they are the webmasters responsibility, I suppose the logical person to send a sales pitch concerning a websites' technical aspects would be ....erm....the webmaster. But only concerning technical stuff (hmmm....stuff....a real technical word.... :rolleyes: ).

You have to ask, 'why does a site put up a webmaster link'?

Only reason I can think of is for the purpose of having a way for outsiders (or insiders) to report website technical problems (in which I might not classify SEO, depending on whom was given that responsibility, if anyone).

Now, why does a site put up links to, for instance, sales or marketing?

These would be, at least to me, acceptable email addys to receive offers of business from outside resources. Further, I would draw a parallel from them (the outside resource emailers) to cold callers. I think, as Doug pointed out about cold callers, that this is an accepted norm. To any other email addy, it would be spam.

Hope I was clear enough on that.

[ihelpyou]

As a matter of fact, there are a few members in here who Did receive an email from me before they became a member. They know who they are.

I simply told them about my search engine forum that just opened and told them if they would like, I could send them the url.

I did not leave a signature nor did I say who I was or anything.

I got a 100% positive response back from everyone. They ALL asked me for the Url to these forums. This is a real life example.

If I would have instantly gave them my Url on first contact, almost none of them would be members right now.

They know who they are in here. NO Spam email works!

[markymark]

back to Big Fish Whatsite Spam Farm or whatever they are called - I got this email (must have been targetting UK sites) for my old site. I was very disappointed to discover I didn't rank in the top fifty for the term 'web of life'. I knew then that these were the people for me.

Honestly, what f***wits.

[ihelpyou]

LOL...... web of life

[Alan Perkins]

Blue:
I think your post nicely summed up the problem with Webmaster spam :)

Doug:
OK, e-mail spam defined for future debates! :cheers:

markymark:
ROFL!

[Advisor]

Good thing your site doesn't rank high for web of life as those are the exact terms I have been targeting! I just know that one day, I'll have a nice top 10 ranking for it. My mom will be soooo proud! :D

J

[markymark]

Oh it gets better, I wish I hadn't deleted it now. But apart from failing to get a good rank for 'web of life', they very kindly told me that I was top ten in Google for 'small business web site design' (this was my old site, remember). Seeing as this was my first ever attempt at SEO and I didn't know about targeting search phrases, it was very gratifying to know that 18 months later I was still top ten for the only phrase I optimised for.

Obviously, I contacted them immediately for more information ;)

[Mel]

Hi All:

It was in the early days of the web the notice to please report any problems to the webmaster got started, and it was very helpful for a time as it was used correctly.

This is somewhat like the notice that you used to see in shops "You are welcome to browse" but you don't see that too much today as the "browsers" tend to leave the store with pockets full of unpaid merchandise.

perhaps the time has come to remove the webmaster contact addresses from the websites, and then any email we get of this ilk will definetly be SPAM

[JuniorHarris]

>Usually saying "if they are so good, why don't they appear anywhere?"

That works for me! Wish I had a dollar or even a referral for every spam which claims to extend your market reach through the engines. Funny they usually say the site could do better on the engines, but in reality it did well enough for them to harvest the email addy!~ :eyes:

Wish these clowns would find a nice croc to toss themselves at!~;)

[ihelpyou]

I just received this:

There appears to be a problem on this page of your site.

On page http://www.freemoneyservices.com/this_page.htm
when you click on "Myanmar Free For All Link Page",
the link to http://www.myanmar.com/links/links.html
gives the error: Not found.

As recommended by the Robot Guidelines, this email is to explain our robot's
activities and to let you know about one of the broken links we encountered.
LinkWalker does not store or publish the content of your pages, but rather
uses the link information to update our map of the World Wide Web.

Are these reports helpful? I'd love some feedback. If you prefer not to
receive these occasional error notices please let me know.

Roy Bryant

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roy Bryant, roybryant@seventwentyfour.com
President
SEVENtwentyfour Inc. ("Always watching the Web")
http://www.seventwentyfour.com


I call that SPAM. The page they are referring to has Not been online in 3 years or so. A very long time. If the guy simply emailed me to say I had a broken link and told me to email him back if I would like some advice about how to watch this, it would Not have been spam.

[Advisor]

I've gotten those emails for years from Roy Bryant. I wasn't sure if I had sometime in the past (like 4 or 5 years ago) signed up for his service. The emails actually have been helpful at times! Is it possible that you signed up for his service a long, long time ago?

Jill

[Alan Perkins]

I have also received e-mails from Roy Bryant et al. I thought they were quite well done and did contain useful information. I even signed up for a free trial of the service, but never went through with the paid version. The first contact was definitely from them to me, though. I remember it clearly.

I didn't want to bring their name into it, but since you have, Doug, it was their example that was guiding my earlier dialogue. Their service *is* useful to Webmasters, they haven't sent "blanket" spam but actually reported something of real, individual, relevance to me, then suggested that (since I clearly had a problem with this...) I might want to use their solution. I think their example is one that "tests the boundaries" very well.

The stuff about the "Web robot standards" is a recent addition to this particular e-mail and is pure bull. Remarkably like another one I got recently telling me my server was "down" for a while. Funny how my own monitoring software didn't agree.

Search engine spam is so much easier to classify than this e-mail stuff. Hope has even spent several thousand dollars on the back of e-mail spam! Is it any wonder that it persists?

[ihelpyou]

I do not know of this guy at all and have never signed up for anything of the sort. That link must have been in some links page from many years ago. Obviously, I do not hook up with that stuff and my link has been offline for years. I do not even use that email address anymore.

To me, it is spam as he sent me an offer on first contact. He should have asked "permission" to do so.

[Kal]

Originally posted by webwhiz
Is it possible that you signed up for his service a long, long time ago?

Jill

Don't think so Jill - I run 3 different web sites on varying topics with completely different domains and email addresses and I received this email on each account this week, even though I've never signed up for this. Looks like email harvesting to me!

[mike_meed]

I've received a few forwards from this people from my clients.

I don't know how this could be a bot if they have a different keyword phrase for each email - they didn't read the meta tags (in some cases they really should have :)).

Whether it's spam or not? You could argue endlessly about it, but in my mind, spam is when you get an automated email that's completely irrelevant to you. If I got an email ranking my site and I wasn't an expert in SEO, I wouldn't be annoyed. I'd be interested.

I looked at the site and the £9.50 product is just for submission. How much do people think you should charge just for submission? They don't seem to be saying that submission is all you need either.. I think the real ripoff merchants are the ones that promise to get you in 1,000,000 engines for $1.. Has anyone here actually emulated the programs they use ? They're crap. Or the old-style guarantee ranking people?

I don't have a problem with people like this emailing my clients. I don't *own* them because they pay me money. I have enough confidence in the quality of my service, and enough patience in the customer service department, not to need worry..



Originally posted by highman
Anyone else getting their customers bombarded by these £9.50 clowns?

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:1:

[Alan Perkins]

Hi Mike

Welcome to the forums. :hi:

IMO spam is *anything* unsolicited, whether or not it's "relevant". Send enough unsolicited e-mails and you're bound to find somebody who finds it relevant. But it's still spam, as it is to the 99.9% (for example) of other people that received it.

French Dread has just started another thread on this company here:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/t1363/s.html

BTW, your clients are lucky that they already have a good SEO to help them out. :)

Alan