chinook
14-10-2002, 10:43/10:43AM
I received an email from a client, and I will also post my return email. Comments are invited:
Dear Wolf:
My name is <snip> and I am the sole owner of the website: <snip>.com
of which I paid to your company to be put on the internet. My web-site designer is <snip>.
There are some things that I am missing and information I need from you.
We forgot the login name for the website and I would like this information sent to my email here or my telephone number <snip>
I am owner the website and I need access to my own email, of which I paid for as well.
Furthermore, I think that having paid to you the price of almost $<snip> for the annual fee for this site to be up and running, that I should be able to have my website working in search engines. For example, when I type in my site in the search engine, nothing shows up and therefore, my site is not registered and I would not like to pay your fee to you to only have a domain name and nothing included.
I cannot use my email as I don't even know how to log it it. AS you will see, my name is the name on the visa, it is my site and I would like this information. If for some reason, you are unable to assist me in getting my domain name registerd so that search engines will work, I would like a refund and to switch to another company. Hopefully we can work something out and asap because so far, this site has NOT helped to generate any business for me.
Thanks alot,
<snip>
Now my reply:
Hello <snip> and thank you for letting us know your concerns. I will try to address each one, hopefully to your satisfaction.
The typical role of a web hosting company is to provide space on their servers to accomodate client's websites. In addition to that, a web hosting company provides the connection to the internet so that the surfing public can access the site. Some web hosting companies will claim to put sites onto search engines. This is almost always done through automated submission programs. I will explain why this is less than desirable and how we address helping our clients achieve success with their websites.
Although the Internet is extremely fast paced, the world of the search engines is agonizingly slow. Let me demonstrate by the example of google which today powers 50 to 90% of the world's searches. Google uses automated programs called spiders (robots) to scour the internet and they follow links from one page to another, analyzing the content and adding to their database. Generally the results of these spiders traversing the internet get accumulated and then added into the master database at least once a month, sometimes more often but those are special case scenarios. So if google is so important (because they power so many searches), how does one get the search engine to include a specific site. There are two ways of this being done. Google does maintain a "submit a site" page. <snip -cause we all know this> The second way of being included in Google is for the spiders (robots) to find your site on their own. As I pointed out earlier the spiders follow links, so the more links from other web pages that your site has the better chance it will be included in the next update. The consensus of experts in the field of search engine technology is that it the spider discovering the site on it's own is better for its rankings in the engines. ( we help our clients by providing such a link, www.<snip> on one of our portal sites). The process I described above can take anywhere from 1 to 6 months to occur (see this is the slow part). Now, once you are in the database, the question becomes how visible within the database are you? A search engine like google takes into consideration many things when it assigns you a rank in the results page. Some of the factors are: # of quality sites linking to you, content that is on the page, competition for keywords in your category, site design techniques.
The reason why automated submission programs are generally not satisfactory is twofold. 1. The major search engines discourage this practice, as it tends to clog their databases with spam and irrelevant results. For example: google ignores automated submissions, dmoz requires a manual application, inktomi ignores automated submissions, yahoo is pay for review, altavista is pay for inclusion, etc. 2. The search engines that do allow automated submission are generally lesser known, low traffic engines or link farms. These types of engines can actually hurt your chances of ranking well, as the search engines generally take a dim view of link farms and will often ban them from their results. Once you are banned it is difficult to get back in. Remember in the previous paragraph I mentioned quality sites, this is very important for the major engines.
To sum up on search engines, we are basically left with manual submission for your site, and that is the responsibility of the webmaster (site owner), or by proxy the web designer. I have personally invested a great deal of time developing and acquiring expertise on search engines. (that is how your developer found us). The world of search engines is full of scam artists who will claim to get you top results and add to that the complexity that each search engine operates differently with most of them now requiring payment of fees (again this is contrary to automated submission). Professional and ethical search engine consultants often charge in the range of $1000 US per month to assist clients to get top results. I don't provide a search engine consulting service but I do offer my clients the benefit of our knowledge with helpful tips and advice on how to get found and how to rank well. Submission and optimization is the client's responsibility. I am in the process of developing a customer resource area which although not complete yet (and that is why it hasn't been announced) already has numerous helpful articles on search engines. To view this , go to www<snip-not for public viewing>
I have reviewed the log files for your site and summarized for you the search engine activity on your site:
Oct 13 - thunderstone (not a search engine)
Oct 12 - firefly (fireball.de)
Oct 3 & 4th full index by googlebot (google search engine)
While reviewing the logfiles, I noticed that your site uses framesets for one section. Framesets need to be optimized in a special way.
Below is the login information I previously provided to your developer:
<snip>
Dear Wolf:
My name is <snip> and I am the sole owner of the website: <snip>.com
of which I paid to your company to be put on the internet. My web-site designer is <snip>.
There are some things that I am missing and information I need from you.
We forgot the login name for the website and I would like this information sent to my email here or my telephone number <snip>
I am owner the website and I need access to my own email, of which I paid for as well.
Furthermore, I think that having paid to you the price of almost $<snip> for the annual fee for this site to be up and running, that I should be able to have my website working in search engines. For example, when I type in my site in the search engine, nothing shows up and therefore, my site is not registered and I would not like to pay your fee to you to only have a domain name and nothing included.
I cannot use my email as I don't even know how to log it it. AS you will see, my name is the name on the visa, it is my site and I would like this information. If for some reason, you are unable to assist me in getting my domain name registerd so that search engines will work, I would like a refund and to switch to another company. Hopefully we can work something out and asap because so far, this site has NOT helped to generate any business for me.
Thanks alot,
<snip>
Now my reply:
Hello <snip> and thank you for letting us know your concerns. I will try to address each one, hopefully to your satisfaction.
The typical role of a web hosting company is to provide space on their servers to accomodate client's websites. In addition to that, a web hosting company provides the connection to the internet so that the surfing public can access the site. Some web hosting companies will claim to put sites onto search engines. This is almost always done through automated submission programs. I will explain why this is less than desirable and how we address helping our clients achieve success with their websites.
Although the Internet is extremely fast paced, the world of the search engines is agonizingly slow. Let me demonstrate by the example of google which today powers 50 to 90% of the world's searches. Google uses automated programs called spiders (robots) to scour the internet and they follow links from one page to another, analyzing the content and adding to their database. Generally the results of these spiders traversing the internet get accumulated and then added into the master database at least once a month, sometimes more often but those are special case scenarios. So if google is so important (because they power so many searches), how does one get the search engine to include a specific site. There are two ways of this being done. Google does maintain a "submit a site" page. <snip -cause we all know this> The second way of being included in Google is for the spiders (robots) to find your site on their own. As I pointed out earlier the spiders follow links, so the more links from other web pages that your site has the better chance it will be included in the next update. The consensus of experts in the field of search engine technology is that it the spider discovering the site on it's own is better for its rankings in the engines. ( we help our clients by providing such a link, www.<snip> on one of our portal sites). The process I described above can take anywhere from 1 to 6 months to occur (see this is the slow part). Now, once you are in the database, the question becomes how visible within the database are you? A search engine like google takes into consideration many things when it assigns you a rank in the results page. Some of the factors are: # of quality sites linking to you, content that is on the page, competition for keywords in your category, site design techniques.
The reason why automated submission programs are generally not satisfactory is twofold. 1. The major search engines discourage this practice, as it tends to clog their databases with spam and irrelevant results. For example: google ignores automated submissions, dmoz requires a manual application, inktomi ignores automated submissions, yahoo is pay for review, altavista is pay for inclusion, etc. 2. The search engines that do allow automated submission are generally lesser known, low traffic engines or link farms. These types of engines can actually hurt your chances of ranking well, as the search engines generally take a dim view of link farms and will often ban them from their results. Once you are banned it is difficult to get back in. Remember in the previous paragraph I mentioned quality sites, this is very important for the major engines.
To sum up on search engines, we are basically left with manual submission for your site, and that is the responsibility of the webmaster (site owner), or by proxy the web designer. I have personally invested a great deal of time developing and acquiring expertise on search engines. (that is how your developer found us). The world of search engines is full of scam artists who will claim to get you top results and add to that the complexity that each search engine operates differently with most of them now requiring payment of fees (again this is contrary to automated submission). Professional and ethical search engine consultants often charge in the range of $1000 US per month to assist clients to get top results. I don't provide a search engine consulting service but I do offer my clients the benefit of our knowledge with helpful tips and advice on how to get found and how to rank well. Submission and optimization is the client's responsibility. I am in the process of developing a customer resource area which although not complete yet (and that is why it hasn't been announced) already has numerous helpful articles on search engines. To view this , go to www<snip-not for public viewing>
I have reviewed the log files for your site and summarized for you the search engine activity on your site:
Oct 13 - thunderstone (not a search engine)
Oct 12 - firefly (fireball.de)
Oct 3 & 4th full index by googlebot (google search engine)
While reviewing the logfiles, I noticed that your site uses framesets for one section. Framesets need to be optimized in a special way.
Below is the login information I previously provided to your developer:
<snip>