Newsletter article on SEO with 'spammy' pop-ups

[Coley]

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right area and you guys have already probably seen this before - I just came across it and my jaw hit the deck.

I received a newsletter - clicked on the link to scan the article online. Apart from the pure amount of ads on the article page - the articles are broken up into different pages - purely I think to get more ads past the visitor.

But what got me was the underlined words throughout the article. Sentence is "Proper search engine optimization can....." and the words 'engine optimization' are bolded/underlined - when you hover over it it displays an ad with a link for some Cloaking program ......

I am constantly amazed at the techniques they use and the effort they put in ....

Vicki

[Connie]

Vicki,

I seldom click on links in e-mail. If I didn't ask to receive it I delete it before downloading. Was the news letter one that you subscribe to?

[Dave Hawley]

Yes, be very warey about spam with links. Clicking will confirm you have got their spam and you are interested. Also, you now likely have a heap of spyware running on your PC. Do a Google search for a "free spyware software".

[Coley]

Yes, it is a newsletter that I subscribe to - I subscribe to a lot and 99% of them are for scanning purposes only nowadays - must do a clean up - I definitely just unsubscribed myself from this particular 'well known' newsletter.

These are not 'normal' links though. They are online at the website where you have to go to read the articles (the newsletter just gives a precis) and they have specific words underlined/bolded all the way through the articles which naturally makes them 'look' like links but they are 'mouse-overs' which then pop-up an advertising window.

I am very wary of links so I haven't clicked - but knowing my clients if they were presented with information in this way via a so-called informational 'newsletter' 90% of them would be clicking away - that's something I still have problems with with clients, they just can't 'resist' them :-) and have had one client who has had her computer completely zapped 5 times in the past 15 months - gotta love 'em :-)

I had just never seen ads presented in this way before. Also disappointing that the article was about how to do SEO on a PHP site and then it was full of spammy advertising links.

Vicki

[Coley]

Dave,
I use SpyBot and AdAware at least once a fortnight and recommend it as 'essential' maintenance for client computers - they don't seem to take much notice though - I feel most of them just can't cope with learning new software such as this as well as being jack of all trades in their small-businesses so they let some things 'slide'.

I also feel that in Aus. most have not been subjected to the dangers of being online and also most small business owners do not give a lot of weight to the on the online side of their business - this is changing, but much more slowly than I thought - and they seem to take such things as their site being offline for a few days, their computer system down and they can't answer emails for a couple of weeks etc. as nothing too important - I nearly have a heart attack when I hear about this stuff. I run an online directory and have had many emails from website visitors querying an email address on our site - after following it up as to whether we have got the email address wrong - they come back with such things as "Oh, sorry, we've been on holidays for a month", or "Our computer is in being repaired - we're not taking emails at the moment" or some other such remark. Absolutely astounding and very, very frustrating.

Just read my post and I'm whinging today - apologies - having a PITA client day :-)

Vicki