AussieSeek

[aussieseek]

Nice to be here... Actually visitors to Aussieseek come in from 3 Directions, but mostly lookabout.net and aussieseek.com\We have been developing quite a bit of advertising lately and are selling Banner bursts at $50 a thousand, We need extra capacity
as some advertisers are seeking more fine tuned profiles rather than our shotgun approach.

Shortly we are going to try to lower our visitor Age with a Youht Australia Weglog Promotion aimed at Schools.

The Political Messageboards on Aussieseek work with the 50 Plus Group, (IRAQ WAR etc Help!) but we really need a younger skew


We urgently need to make an aliance with other sites or a banner exchange... ( Share Revenue) Any one out there ?


I noticed a critical reference about how we dare to charge. well we have never lost a cent operating Aussieseek and this wont change. Of course viabilty is our focus and we work hard.

All the Best


KeithA
l

[Dez]

Hi Kieth,

please don't take offence but I'm confused about what your site is actually. When I visit your site, I get a really busy page, but the only search form I can see is a directly POST to 7search.com with something that queries stormpages.com in the back ground?

Then the final page I get is from 7search.com directly, and it's pretty much 100% pay per click ads with very low relevance to what I search for each time, it can't be doing your brand or user base any good surely?

Would you be interested in a search feed, for free, from http://WebSearch.COM.AU by any chance, it would go a long way towards helping build your site and quality.

As I said, please don't take this the wrong way - I genuienly tried to get a handle on your site.

but as you'll know of course 7search.com simply dumps around 9 or 10 epilot and sex.com paid listings based on a javascript pull keyword targeted "listing" and then uses a meta crawl style script to suck free ( illegal actually - certainly unsupported by google, msn and co ) results and feeds them below the pay per click. not pretty at all.. ( not to mention the frightening sprawn on the right hand side of the page? what is that? )

At first glance I actually thought it was the AAA Matilda site www.aaa.com.au that was sold for a decent figure some time ago ( was it 2000 or 2001? ) which was a massive plague of links within scripts within links withing god knows what.. spam filled autobot noise zone from hell.

I could provide you with your own branded version of http://WebSearch.COM.AU in around five days or less probably if you were interested and were bone fide about your interest in being an Australian Search Engine.

Cheers,

Dez

[AndrewB]

Judging from the number of posts that this person has made this website just looks like an attempt from the poster to gain some revenue, it's full off ads and doesn't look anywhere close to professional.

I think this thread should be deleted, so people like me don't even bother looking in here.

[ihelpyou]

LOL Andrew. The first post was 1 1/2 years ago. :D

[AndrewB]

:uplaugh: Still I managed to come across it and waste my time

[Blindsurfer]

I dont think any thing you say will make much difference

because you clearly dont seem to know the net much

Please explain how Aussieseek gets a motza of traffic, makes massive profits
from advertising and affilates and found its niche a long time ago
It seems that time has passed you by

It also employs 5 Australians and I guess youre not one of us

mmmm ????

[bigDugan]

First and only post is a shameless self promo for a site registered through tucows... Did I even need to pull up the site? Probably not. But I did. Egads! Redirected and then numerous third party cookies. Be sure to toss your cookies after visiting this crappy site.
:barf+:

[AndrewB]

Yeh clearly I don't seem to know the net much :D

When I go to aussieseek.com it redirects to the page
http://lookabout.stormpages.com/

that is full of affilates links and banners with that search box, then that search box goes to 7search.com, which is also full of affilate links.

So is your site actually meant to be a search engine? I'm with Dez I dunno what's going on?

[bigDugan]

That could be why I didnt see much. As I run with the full compliment of Norton Internet Security turned on with ad blocking. :D

[polarmate]

Hate to hijack this thread ...but say, bigD, would you have any idea what malware/scumware uses wscript.exe to launch multiple instances of IE? Whatever it is, I have it on my computer. I can't find anything on this on the net except that it can be used in this manner. Spybot and AdAware cannot find the culprit either. Can't find any virus on my system either.

[bigDugan]

wscript - wscript.exe - Process Information
Process File: wscript or wscript.exe
Process Name: Windows Script Host
Description: Application that allows users to run scripts from Windows. The application displays a dialog box for setting script properties.
Company: Microsoft Corp.
System Process: No
Security Risk ( Virus/Trojan/Worm/Adware/Spyware ): No
Common Errors: N/A quoted from this website (http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/wscript/) or straight from the horse's mouth (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/wsh_runfromwindowsbasedhost.htm). Seems like you're ok... or at least your PC is! :p

[bigDugan]

Sorry I misread your post. You want to know what exploit is utilizing wscript. :doh:

[Dez]

employs 5? are you / they entirely dedicated to running the site? seems rather intensive.

the WebSearch.COM.AU engine spiders aroudn 26.5m *.au URLS each 30 days, has an active cluster of 9 front end processors, five search processors and two storage / san servers, and a frightening amount of switched fabric and bandwidth supporting it. It takes around 36k to 38k unique site submissions every day, and does real time indexing. All that and it only has a part time staff of 0.01 FTE ( full time equivielant ) and that's... well.. actually, it's me, or my alter ego at least ).

But congrats if you're generating the revenue form that site to fund 5 staff, that's outstanding! Incredible infact - publish a book on how, I'd buy it * grin *

I know I'll live to regret this, but perhaps you could give us an update or overview on the company and the project, i.e. what you're all about and why you started it, what your businss plan sets out to do et al.

I'm curious of course as when you visit www.aussieseek.com you go get an instant redirect ( from what I can tell it's just a META REFRESH ) to some horrid web page at http://lookabout.stormpages.com/, where the only search tool available is infact 7Search.COM which is what I found some time ago when you first announced your www.aussieseek.com project here in this forum and thread?

Or has your site been hacked and are kids redirecting to some page they are using to raise click traffic revenue they use to pay for online music and porn ( god I hope not ) - but I for one am completely lost as to what on earch your aussieseek.com site is about, now that it redirects to some lookabout thing where the home page just sends a query to 7search.com where in turn the first 8 listings are just paid ads, and the search results are.. well. I think the word horrible best describes it.

Do you need help? I'd gladly assist if you're struggling to get the project off the ground, I really would, I'd give you three months free virtual search if that would help!?

Dez 2.0




Originally posted by Blindsurfer
I dont think any thing you say will make much difference

because you clearly dont seem to know the net much

Please explain how Aussieseek gets a motza of traffic, makes massive profits
from advertising and affilates and found its niche a long time ago
It seems that time has passed you by

It also employs 5 Australians and I guess youre not one of us

mmmm ????

[Dez]

I have to say that I get flashback's of the days when www.aaa.com.au was thought to be a "search engine", when it was nothing less than an open source directory engine running under apache on a desktop pc running linux, fed by the zillions of automated SEO/SEM scripts for FFA pages, so the thing was ... what was the word .. horrible?

Amazingly though, someone purchased www.aaa.com.au ( a close associate of mine did the due dilligence on the technology for the deal ) and paid good money for it - sadly you have to ask yourself "where did it go?"

A bit like www.OzSearch.com.au - actually, the very same! Darn.. ( there's a back door mining company listing I we ever saw one - too bad it went wrong - now they can't shut it down eve if they wanted to, it's got public money to burn ).

Dez 2.0


Originally posted by bigDugan
First and only post is a shameless self promo for a site registered through tucows... Did I even need to pull up the site? Probably not. But I did. Egads! Redirected and then numerous third party cookies. Be sure to toss your cookies after visiting this crappy site.
:barf+:

[Dez]

Oh,

I think you and the rest of us know what's going on, but this is indeed a public forum, so at worst, the "public" wander around looking and find this, but like the rest of the web, you need to be rather dicerning about what you read online.

But it's great material for debate * grin *

Dez 2.0
"Crawling, not browsing!"



Originally posted by AndrewB
Yeh clearly I don't seem to know the net much :D

When I go to aussieseek.com it redirects to the page
http://lookabout.stormpages.com/

that is full of affilates links and banners with that search box, then that search box goes to 7search.com, which is also full of affilate links.

So is your site actually meant to be a search engine? I'm with Dez I dunno what's going on?

[Dez]

<frown>

c'mon you boys...

Dez 2.0

</frown>

Originally posted by bigDugan
quoted from this website (http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/wscript/) or straight from the horse's mouth (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/wsh_runfromwindowsbasedhost.htm). Seems like you're ok... or at least your PC is! :p

[AndrewB]

Yeh I can't believe someone actually came in here to stand up for that site, if that person 'knew anything about the net' they would know that you don't stand up for a site like that, nobody in here is fooled into thinking that your site is a search engine,

Unless it was hacked, but I'm doubting that.

[Dez]

<grin>

oh it wasn't hacked... but I'm buggered if I can figure out .. well .. why bother? there can't be much revenue in all that click through crap..

<grin>

I seriously can't understand why you'd bother, and that's not me being stupid or nasty, I just don't get why bother.. sell the domain frankly - that's my advice..

Dez 2.0

ps: are you in Australia, Sydney?


Originally posted by AndrewB
Yeh I can't believe someone actually came in here to stand up for that site, if that person 'knew anything about the net' they would know that you don't stand up for a site like that, nobody in here is fooled into thinking that your site is a search engine,

Unless it was hacked, but I'm doubting that.

[AndrewB]

I'll have to say that would have to be one impressive affliate system that they have built if it takes 5 employees to build and operate.

I'm in melb and Why doesn't my website come up number 1 in your search engine? Do some tweaking :D

[Blindsurfer]

Des

bit of Energy there
Thats nice. You seem, to be on the ball
Several of those Those other posters really seem like really very nasty people

lWhat happened with aaa.com.au was

the domain expired on purpose

the same the other day with my own lookabout.com.au

I didnt want the domain anymore as I use Aussieek.com for Australia
and lookabout.net for USA

Some Arab Guy who operates mysex site.com gabbed the domain
lookabout.com.au
and for his new page put in a search script which he called Lookabout Search Engine to replicte for himself what I had there before

know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
But hey why bother.


.keitha


Ave a look ?????


A Domain is only good for the links that are made to it

[AndrewB]

Don't you mean you run lookabout.com.au ? Cus that looks like a useful search engine where as aussieseek.com is just affliate crap.

[Blindsurfer]

The Affiliate thing has been built up over 5 years
it was not hard but finding the honest programs was.
I have also been lucky and had a lot of Agencies buy banners
who have no where else to book and who I met via radio
(ud to own stations)

Sorry for the typos. Big BIG Magnifier

K.Ashton Editor AussieSeek.com-Lookabout.net Search Engines
1/274 King Georges Rd Roselands 2196 Australia
+61 02 97593774
Regional Print Handicapped News * Note the Sender is Blind (5%Vision)
FROM Aussiesek.com Internet Services ABN 92957836514

[Blindsurfer]

No AndrewB

I just let the domain lookabout .com.au go What you see there now is a new guy who decided to use the name lookabout also ( SEE previous posts)

I am happy wth Aussieseek.com (AUS) and Lookabout.net (US)


cheers

keitha

[AndrewB]

Ah ok so your not running a search engine your running an affliate revenue generating system disguised as a search engine
that only brings up affliate links for results, not really useful for anyone is it?

Good luck with your affliate search engine :D

[Dez]

Originally posted by AndrewB
I'll have to say that would have to be one impressive affliate system that they have built if it takes 5 employees to build and operate.


chortle.. indeed..

http://yourAdcenter.com was built in one day, serves thousands of advertisers, and is 100% automated, it's the shop front for advertising ( sposor listings and text boxes ) for http://WebSearch.COM.AU and it employs ZERO staff and deals with a frightening amount of traffic, it's the single engine for every single search request "placement" based on key word(s) and or phrase(s) throughout the entire WebSearch.COM.AU and WebSearch.CO.NZ network.


I'm in melb and Why doesn't my website come up number 1 in your search engine? Do some tweaking :D

what's the site?

It's only going to be there if it's been crawled and indexed, or submitted, oh, and it's in the *.au ( or .nz for WebSearch.CO.NZ of course ) zone.

Dez 2.0

[Dez]

Originally posted by Blindsurfer
Des

bit of Energy there
Thats nice. You seem, to be on the ball
Several of those Those other posters really seem like really very nasty people


aw gee, shucks, thanks.. yea, there's some interesting characters in this forum but hey, you get that..


lWhat happened with aaa.com.au was

the domain expired on purpose

the same the other day with my own lookabout.com.au

I didnt want the domain anymore as I use Aussieek.com for Australia
and lookabout.net for USA

Some Arab Guy who operates mysex site.com gabbed the domain
lookabout.com.au
and for his new page put in a search script which he called Lookabout Search Engine to replicte for himself what I had there before

know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
But hey why bother.


.keitha


Ave a look ?????


A Domain is only good for the links that are made to it

yikes.. that's nasty, sorry to hear it.

I recall back in the early '90's some lame expat aussie managed to register geko.com before my DNS admin got around to it ( unfortunatley he got fired as a result, by me * grin * ), when we had geko.com.au and all the others ( it was an ISP project I ran for 6.5 years of so ).

This crazy expat aussie who'd moved to the UK wanted UK$18,000 for it!! I said forget it, so he put a porn site on it - laugh, saved me having to remenber weird URL's any time I needed a fix * giggle *.

Well I task you with the challenge of a 5,000 distation on the history of your project, it's life and pains and pitfalls, and the current status, and be done with it.

I'd love to hear about it all..

What are you doing now then?

Dez 2.0

[ihelpyou]

Please tone down your language Dez. I deleted a word in your post that was truly over the top. Some other posts are the same way so I would appreciate it if you would chill out a little. Thanks! :)

[Dez]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Please tone down your language Dez. I deleted a word in your post that was truly over the top. Some other posts are the same way so I would appreciate it if you would chill out a little. Thanks! :)

Hey ya Doug,

yea, you're right, I forgot to apply the [\RANT] - good thing you're such a good editor right.

but good to see some lively discussion happening again in the AU space in the forums, it's been pretty stale for ... well .. far too long ... I was about to give up on the site as it was lame coming here only to find this lunatic Dez was still the only poster in all but one thread, and the one he wasn't the last poster in you were when you closed and locked the thread * grin *

It's a shame there's not more happening here in the AU section(s).

Cheers,

Dez 2.0

ps: I've done a pkg_rm badwords_v3.1.tar.gz by the way

[Blindsurfer]

Des

well Im a 60 year old blind pensioner
and can only see some days
so im not much use

What is ?????

http://www.aussiehitz.com/

is it junk

traffic but no real people ??? >

keith

[Dez]

Originally posted by Blindsurfer
Des

well Im a 60 year old blind pensioner
and can only see some days
so im not much use

What is ?????

http://www.aussiehitz.com/

is it junk

traffic but no real people ??? >

keith



Hi Keith,

wow - a blind web surfer surviving a complicated forum layout is impressive, but I'll credit your web savy status at 60 - now I am impressed!

You'll have to tell us all more about you and your life now of course.

But in the mean time I'm sorry to say that the web site you asked about, aussiehitz.com, although seemingly genuine, seems to be an unknown - even Google only has one link to it.

Using www.geektools.com and their WHOIS look up page, we find that the domain is registered to and rented to ( remeber, you can never actually own a domain, it's one of the world's greatest interenet related scams!! ):

Registrant:
Leo Milner (AUSSIEHITZ-COM-DOM)
EPN
Rt.1 Box 488
Rockford, Al. 35136
US
2563771446
trafficx4u@yahoo.com

Domain Name: AUSSIEHITZ.COM



a quick search for trafficx4u@yahoo.com ( which is a good quick way to learn more about the registrant as their email address is usually used widely if it's valid or more importatnly, they are legit bone fide folk who are active in other projects ).

In this case, two hits, one was a dead link to a suspect looking URL to do with traffic generation ( read as scam ).

The second hit was to an angelfire member web page:

http://www.angelfire.com/biz7/traffic/

and frankly, it's a sham, a traffic generation "thing" which I read as a gateway to sucking people into giving their information such as email addresses to simply find themselves on SPAM CDROM's being sold via teh web for US$99 I'm sure.

the hillarious thing you'll see at that URL is that at the footer, there's a visit counter, and I was #9 ( nine ) so clearly this isn't a hot spot.

And the one eight hundred ( 1-800 ) free dial they list 1-800-555-5555 seems just too good, so I wonder if someone in the USA could dial it and see if they get anything to do with:

TRAFFIC GURU
TRAFFIC GURU EZINE
1-800-555-5555
trafficx4u@yahoo.com


frankly the first paragraph:


Traffic Guru Ezine, Welcome to the jungle of Internet marketing. If your going to survive you must get the edge over the rest of the people trying to sell a service or product just like you. You already know 95% or more of all people who come here to work fail. Forget failure and get tough and get the edge you need to be a success here in this massive marketplace. We are a radical success driven team of people who have proven our skill by the millions of dollars we have made. We never failed because we took the Internet by storm with hard hiting ads that grabed our clients and made them sign up or buy! You "NEED" Traffic Guru Ezine to survive and gain wealth and success!


well let's just say that it's so horribly scam'lish ( scam english ) that I laughed at the end of the first sentence.

There ther's the second paragraph which just proves my point, it's selling a CDROM of marketing info, read as "big pile of crap" or "long lists of email addresses you can spam to advertise to"


We arent going to mess around with you and lead you on with junk. See the links to the left? Click on any one of them to get thousands of free ads for your business or service. What you get with Traffic Guru Ezine is all our marketing skill in our weekly Ezine and the "Traffic Guru Marketing CD" with all our best software and tips for you to use for your product or service. Thousands of dollars worth of marketing software most of which you wont find anywhere. Lifetime membership in Traffic Guru Ezine is $19.95 and that includes the price of the Traffic Guru Marketing CD. Dont even think twice grab this and start to get the results you need from Traffic Guru Ezine. We pull out all the radical tricks and tips that made us wealthy to give you an edge over all the millions of people who are lost in this Internet jungle. Click on the "Stormpay" link below and pay for your lifetime membership and Traffic Guru CD and start now!


The little button with StormPay, well I would not be putting any credit card info into that site, none of the links such as the critical "About Us" opened up to the Javascript popup url's they show when you mouse over them.

What's that line: Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

I went further and searched for "leo milner box 488 rockford" who is the renter of the aussiehitz.com domain name, and he pops up yet again under a scam style URL:

http://www.randombuxx.com/index.php

and whoa, check out who the "OWNER" is listed as:


OWNER : Leo Milner
ADDRESS: Rt. 1 Box 488,Rockford,Al.35136
CONTACT: CLICK> randombuxx@yahoo.com
MEMBERSHIP: $10.00 One Time Payment!
GUARANTEE: If You Do Not Make A Profit In 90 Days We Will Refund Your Money,Period!
SPONSOR: Lightning Fast Money: Grab Your Pre-Launch Spot Now Free And Hold On For A Wild Ride To $$$$ :CLICK> http://www.lightningfastmoney.com
OFFER: We Offer A Real Honest Business That Anyone Can Join And Make Money. Join Us Now!

yea gods!

Good luck getting your $10 back if you're brave enough to get your life time registration * grin *

Actually, when you follow this thing through, it gets quite scary, for example on the randombux page, there's links to lightningfastmoney, and when you look up who registered that domain name, you get yet another name, but the same postadd address as the aussiehitz.com:

Registrant:
Georgina Sprenkle (LIGHTNINGFASTMONEY-COM-DOM)
RR1 Box 488
Rockford, AL 35136
US
256-377-1446
ginasprenkle@aol.com

Domain Name: LIGHTNINGFASTMONEY.COM


yea gods!!

and the list goes on, another link on that page as it refreshes goes to:

http://www.stadney.com/

and that's, yes, you guessed it, yet another money making scam selling junk internet marketing crap - oh many, where do these folk crawl out from!?

Infact every time you refresh this bloody site, you get another link to yet another domain where the same scam monster has setup an internet marketing black hole scaming people out of small amounts of money that have to add up over time!

Check it out:

Domain name: goldrandom.com

Administrative Contact:

G Sprenkle (sales@marketingextreme.com)
+1.1234567890
Fax:
RR1 Box 488
Rockford,, AL 35136-9661
US


Wait a minute, haven't we see that dear old RRA Box 488 in Rockford Alabama before?

Now there's almost an endless array of bloody domain names and sites this crazy fellow has setup! For example:

Domain Name: tuffbucks.com
Domain Name IDN: tuffbucks.com
Creation Date: 2003-10-18 14:10:17 UTC
Expiration Date: 2004-10-18 14:10:17 UTC
Last Modification Date: 2004-06-08 17:45:10 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar: CORE-95
Created by: CORE-95
Updated by: CORE-95
Last Updated By Registrar: CORE-95
Registrant ID: COCO-4052866
Registrant Name: Leo Milner
Registrant Organization: Leo Milner
Registrant Address: RR 1 Box 488
Registrant City: Rockford
Registrant State/Province: Al.
Registrant Postal Code: 35136
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone Number: +1.2563771547
Registrant Email: leomilner@hotmail.com
Admin ID: COCO-819501
Admin Name: Jim Longnecker
Admin Organization: Valley Oaks Drive Corp
Admin Address: 1901 Valley Oaks Drive
Admin City: Harker Heights
Admin State/Province: TX
Admin Postal Code: 76548
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone Number: +25.45984554
Admin Fax Number: +.
Admin Email: jlongn8718@aol.com
Tech ID: COCO-819501
Tech Name: Jim Longnecker
Tech Organization: Valley Oaks Drive Corp
Tech Address: 1901 Valley Oaks Drive
Tech City: Harker Heights
Tech State/Province: TX
Tech Postal Code: 76548
Tech Country: US
Tech Phone Number: +25.45984554
Tech Fax Number: +.
Tech Email: jlongn8718@aol.com
Zone ID: COCO-819501
Zone Name: Jim Longnecker
Zone Organization: Valley Oaks Drive Corp
Zone Address: 1901 Valley Oaks Drive
Zone City: Harker Heights
Zone State/Province: TX
Zone Postal Code: 76548
Zone Country: US
Zone Phone Number: +25.45984554
Zone Fax Number: +.
Zone Email: jlongn8718@aol.com
Name Server: ns1.ath1.us
Name Server: ns2.ath1.us

http://www.goldrandom.com

hmmm..


Oh, this one is great - what a laugh, I really feel like writing a book about this guy alone:

http://www.newlandrush.com


"New Land Rush, Inc. introduces AVA (Accelerated Value Appreciation),
a totally new approach to land owner property sales, utilizing a Redeemable Phased Option concept
Where You Can TRIPLE Your Money Over & Over
AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN, etc., etc., etc"


http://wtraffic.com/
http://dollarkafe.com/index.php?uid=199
http://www.egoldmatters.com/run_mode.asp?

how manyh of them can there be.. sigh..


I think I've had all I can take from this sorry..

Run forrest, run! This is one of the most amazing scam links I've seen for a long time, and I'm 100% going to get a pal to write it up in ATOMIC magazine for a good laugh.

I'd stear very clear of anything to do with it unless something changes, but I'll gladly put money on it that you'd be waiting a month of sunday's before this traffic scamvertising site did anthing you should waste time of effort on.

Cheers,

Dez 2.0

[Bernard]

:uplaugh:

Nice detective work Dez "2.0".

[Dez]

Originally posted by Bernard
:uplaugh:

Nice detective work Dez "2.0".


thanks,

actually, I tried to make sure I posted the sites and tools etc that anyone can use to hunt down and track scams, there's lots of really simple and effective ways to figure out what's behind some of these crazy sites..

scam's are so prolific on the web now, that you have to get behind who's driving stuff before you jump on board as the days when folk were able to be trusted based on what they said on their web sites are long gone, and unfortunately never shall return.

Have a go at it yourself.

Use sites like:

use www.geektools.com and their whois tool to look up domains and their renters

use www.netcraft.com to find out what web server they are using and have been using

use something like www.alexa.com to get some back ground on their traffic and even other similar sites

when you look up the domans, get the email address, names and addresses of the folk who registered the domains, then use your fav search engines, like www.alltheweb.com, search.yahoo.com and www.google.com to see if you can find referrences to the folk who are renting the domains ( remember, you can't actually own a domain, that's the internet's most amazing scam of all, and governments protect that! who could have imagined such a thing ).

you don't have to do much to learn about the value of a web site, and just read the language they use on the site, and remeber the old and simple rule that "if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is!"

and there's some simple and sensible rules to follow that your brain does naturally off line but for some reason online people forget all the basic rules of scam awareness.

for example, check out the details in their Contact Us page, if there's nothing but an email address, and even worse, one that only goes to a suspect email address like SendUsAllYourMoneyNowForAlifetimeChanceToDoubleYourMoney@allthebestscamsliveat.hotmail.com
but no phone, fax, or street address, then you have to ask "why.."? why don't they want people to be able to ring them, or even go visit their valuable and loved place of work?

legit, bone fide buinesses love people to visit them, there's nothing so exciting as a new customer walking in the door, so you can sell to them F2F.

This is why folk like DELL Computers for example who were the darling of small to medium businesses who just wanted to buy online, and the media who thought it was neat to just buy online and not have the over head costs of having stores lumped into the cost of the computer.

But of late, DELL Cmputers have found that actually, people don't mind buying online, but gosh they hate having to ring and sit on hold, then get put through to someone in India where DELL outsources most of their support and post sales calls, only to be told that "you have to do that online!".

An example of even a legit firm like DELL comming completely unstuck because of their "we don't answer or deal with email, and we don't take phone calls, and for god sake don't try to come visit our offices, no! don't!! just visit our home page and fill in more forms, please, just fill in the forms and go wait like a good sucker.. sorry.. consumer.." oops [/RANT]..

An example in my case recently, where I made the mistake of thinking that I'd be able to help out a brother in law by ordering a DELL online for him to give a computer to his two kids, to do their homework at home rather than at the school library where they previously were ( to get access to a computer on the internet because their school kept setting homework that required you to be on the net - I hate that ), anyway, it took me five no less, five attempts at placing the order online, as every time I got to the "confirm your order" screen, it crashed Explorer on my Mac G4 17" powerbook. So then I gave up, and rang the number I got from their web site, and it went through to India every time, so I got some info on the status of the five orders, and not a single on of them had completed, they were sitting in the system as uncompleted sales, but not a single one had completed to place an order for me! So then there was the curious outcome where every one of the five orders was different, the config and such were not the same! figure that out, so we finally got this fellow on the phone in india to commit one of the five orders, and the price was not what we had decided to spend, infact it was much more, so we had to again go over it all on the phone, till we were close, then we found we were $68 under the amount we had paid by credit card with the orders online, so we had this crazy nightmare where they would not give us back the $68 as we were happy with the config we had finalised by phone, and we had no use for a memory stick, or a dozen mouse mats, we just wanted to get the system we had finally selected and get the $68 back.. but no... you can't do that, you have to spend the whole amount, so I just said NO! we don't want to, and there was nothing worth $68 they could sell us anyway, so in the end the guy had to get a supervisor to approve giving us a set of $180 pc speakers for $68 so that he could fill the order and not have to refund us the $68 - now get this, it gets worse..

five b l o o d y weeks go by, five! no less, and we hear nothing, we had paid in advance, DELL had our money in their bank account the second we pressed PAY, and we paid for home install, support, extended warranty with on site, lots of software, lots of cost, and no email, phone call, fax, no curtesy "sorry we're so pathetic and can't deliver a DELL pc within five weeks."

So I rang them, again, and the standard "please go to our home page and submit a web form request for help" - I refused and just asked to be put through to the managing director or the sales director, or even the marketing director. They refused.

So I hung up and called again, and this time didn't complain, just asked for a senior manager as if I was calling in from a business ( well I was actually, I informed them that I was a senior executive with Cradle Technologies and that it was an urgent business matter with DELL.

Still I got filtered out and they said they would get someone to call me back.. guess what, they didn't call back, ever..

So I got on the phone a few hours later, got some guy again in india, and just cancelled the order, said that if they didn't refund us and send the money back immediately, that we would go to the press, to the various authorities in the local and federal government and announce their FRAUDULENT business practices.

Well three weeks later no less we got a cheque in the mail, no letter, no with compliments slip, nothing, just a machine printed letter in a plain envelope, and so that ended the saga of trying to purchase a computer online.

So the interesting point out of all that was that if I had applied my usual rule of "if they can't be contacted by phone or in person by visiting their office address" then they must be trying to do something odd, nobody running a legit business has any issue with people calling on the phone, or visiting their offices, and many of us prefer that human touch - it lets us build better relationships with our clients and business parnters.

So next time you're doing something online, apply that simple rule and see how you go.

Dez 2.0

[Blindsurfer]

Thanks Des

wow

Saved a lot of trouble and wasted time

keitha

[Dez]

Originally posted by Blindsurfer
Thanks Des

wow

Saved a lot of trouble and wasted time

keitha


you are oh so welcome.

any time, happy to help, if you have others, just post them and I'll do what I can.

but you're all armed and ready to hunt them out yourself now I hope.

Cheers,

Dez 2.0

ps: I assume you're trying to get traffic and more importantly customers to your web site right? what is your web site by the way?

[Blindsurfer]

Des

I agree with you that visitors would be better served if your
aussie search bar was there as well as 7search
its just that ive been to chicago and have a long relationship
with them. And as a pensioner the revenue helps

All my peoplr are gone so the payout was done in wages
JJ ( my eyes) has problem wit his kidneys and his wife wont let him out so I am alone

I mean to say apart from domains the cost of the operation is $60 a month and youre right the eyes are a real problem
For a guy who used to spend $9000 on a bandwidth alone
I think I am frugal and net savvy

Over the next year I am putting on a suit an going to call on Agenies chasing Banner space but I can only deliver 500,000
banners a year. If I sell them to 30 a thousand need to to
double the traffic to get a saleable million

ay way thank you for allowng some dignity


its been a shock to find someone with such a fine item as your site


keitha

[Dez]

Originally posted by Blindsurfer
Des

I agree with you that visitors would be better served if your
aussie search bar was there as well as 7search
its just that ive been to chicago and have a long relationship
with them. And as a pensioner the revenue helps


heck if it's making you money, then you go for it, and keep that old addage "if it's not broken, don't fix it"

And I wish you every success and I only wish some how I could easily increase your revenue, but as you know there's no quick fix. Traffic takes time and effort and even then there's no gaurnatee's.


All my peoplr are gone so the payout was done in wages
JJ ( my eyes) has problem wit his kidneys and his wife wont let him out so I am alone
[B][QUOTE]

then you're putting forward a stellar effort, and it's a priviledge to be talking with you!

[QUOTE][B]
I mean to say apart from domains the cost of the operation is $60 a month and youre right the eyes are a real problem
For a guy who used to spend $9000 on a bandwidth alone
I think I am frugal and net savvy


that's the trick, bring the costs down, make your operational over heads work at a bare minimum, and convert outgoings into incomings, and make income more profitable, it's a simple formula, but not so simple in practice.

Is that US dollars or AU dollars by the way, that's a decent chunk of money a month for bandwidth.


Over the next year I am putting on a suit an going to call on Agenies chasing Banner space but I can only deliver 500,000
banners a year. If I sell them to 30 a thousand need to to
double the traffic to get a saleable million


do you have stats backing up that approx 41,500 impressions per month? I'd be interested in learning more.

although half a million impressions isn't big, it's certainly not something to be scoffed at.

Actually, I'd recomend you drop an introductory email to the crew at http://www.fastclick.com and get into their publisher network, I haven't delt with them for some time but I worked with them when the founder was working out of his home funded by family and friends and wrote a brilliant bit of code that he open sourced to get folk like me to test and bug fix for him for free, I ran a project called AdNet here in Australia, and we had more than 12,000 sites running our banners, they were sites with 5,000 or more impressions each 30 days, we were running around AUD$1.1m in gross revenue a month through 2000, 2001 and 2002 but then after the DOT BOMB things fell apart and I sold it off quckly to make a little extra from it.

The guy who started out with a thing called AdCycle ( adcycle.com ) by the name Jeff, a really fantastic fellow, kicked off FastClick.com and I see he now runs AdServer.com too - he's really done well.

I don't know if it will do much good but feel free to mention that I referred you of course.

The Fastclick model from memory is around 65% of all click traffic revenue!



ay way thank you for allowng some dignity

its been a shock to find someone with such a fine item as your site

keitha


you're most welcome, it's great talking with you - you're an inspiration!

and thanks for the very positive comments about http://WebSearch.COM.AU and http://WebSearch.CO.NZ, really appreiceated, I try to remain humble, and it is still just a pet project, but it makes a bucket load of money so I keep pouring it back into the project - keeps me happy ;=*)



http://www.lookabout.net
http://www.lookabout.us
http://www.aussieseek.com
http://www.lookabout.stormpages.com
http://www.radiotalkback.net
http://www.lookaboutusa.com
http://www.britishseek.com
http://www.canadawebseek.com
http://www.webfindafrica.com
http://www.matildasearch.com
http://www.aussieseek.com.au
http://www.japanwebfind.com
http://www.chinanetseek.com
http://www.indiawebseek.com
http://www.stormpages.com/lookabout/deutchsuchen.html
http://www.stormpages.com/lookabout/eireseek.html
http://www.stormpages.com/lookabout/newzseek.html

that's a lot of domains to maintain, and disperced traffic. Hard to buikd a brand that way, but if it's working then good stuff.

Cheers,

Dez

[Blindsurfer]

You know your comments about pay were very lateral
So I took your advice and now no 7 search
Thank you !!!!

Keith


K.Ashton Editor AussieSeek.com-Lookabout.net Search Engines(est-1994)
Please Note" The Sender is BLIND (5% vision) Ph Sydney +61 02 97593774
FROM Aussiesek.com Internet Services ABN 92957836514 Australia
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge
http://www.aussieseek.com

[Blindsurfer]

Hi Im Keith Ashton from aussieseek.com and lookabout.net at
http;//www.aussieseek.com

Its about MSN and somethng done by Inktomi for money
not content and truth A few weeks ago

So even an MSN pick means nothing if a few bucks are concerned ?
We are all loyal creations of his browser and I dont think
Mr Gates would approve of Selling his own children for money

If you do a search for the word aussieseek ( my company and web name)
It used to come straight up in results in msn and metacawler etc
as an MSN pick when searchng for aussieseek
and in any case I would
think it sould come up first as it does with google and evey other
searh engine in the world
As it used to on msn metacrawler etc.
But not now
I cant find it any more

We get lots of other aussieseek.com other pages and those linking to us
instead
BUT also when searching for Aussieseek on MSN inktomi
also Now three 3 other Sites come up always at the top
--------------------------------------------------
RESULTS from MSN and INKTOMI SEARCH
Number 1 always

Look About Australia - Australian Search Engines and resources
Look About Australia gives you the best Australian search results and keyword bidding.
www.lookabout.com.au
==================================
The above is not me. It used to be my domain. I let it expire so this guy got
it and put in a search engine using my name.As Id done for many years
His Luck and of course it should come up when doing a search for lookabout
but how come his lookabout tops the list when someone does a serarh
for the word aussieseek ?

It never used to
No mention of Aussieeek in his Meta
-----------------------------------------------------------
Number 2 always

SecurePaynet.net: Domains Priced Right Low cost domain names, domain transfers, web hosting, email accounts, and so much ...
Domains Priced Right: Pay less for domain names. Register your .com, .net and .org domains for $7.95/yr. Bulk pricing and private domain name registration options. Transfer domain names for $8.95...
www.xoasis.com
??????????? Likewse No mention of Aussieeek in the Meta
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Number 3 Always

Australia Australian Aussie world Search Engines engine AussieSeek au Sydney Chat sms travel to free email money convertor ...
australia world aussie aussiesek seek messageboards AAA matilda australian Search Engine engines Sydney Melbourne Brisbane **** Coast Adelaide Perth Hobart Newcastle Darwin Cairns Wollongong ... SMS-Mobile Phones | Advertise On AussieSeek |Cheap Airline Tickets, Click Here! ... Advertising and Site Promotion on Aussieseek.com and Lookabout.net But try this anyway Heres a TIP for ...
www.interturknet.com/link.php?id=130

A Turkish guy hijacked our domain and redirects traffic via it
=====================================================================
and then the search goes to every other site but the home page
of aussieseek.com which was removed for money


All those who know say that meta tags will not fix it and only a paid
Listing will fix it... or will it?

keith

[Quadrille]

Hi,

You've started another thread for this (separate) issue, and I've responded there:
ihelpyou ... threadid=15943 (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15943)

[Blindsurfer]

Yep. Will just see what they do

[Blindsurfer]

Hello Keith,

Thank you for your email in regards your site. In answer to your
questions:

1. We accept most forms of payments, please find our payment options at
http://www.trellian.com/payment.htm

2. We have had a look at MSN and we have come up with a few viable
answers for you. Firstly the reason the lookabout site is coming up is
because it is most likely still cached from when you had it. Secondly the
reason that aussieseek is not coming up is because the domain has been
redirected to another address, if this is fixed the site might be shown
again in the higher listings.

I hope this information was of help to you.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Hilton Rutgers
Sales / Account Manager
Trellian / Priority Submit
www.trellian.com
www.prioritysubmit.com
Tel: 61 3 9589 7946
Fax: 61 3 9589 7951

[Blindsurfer]

new

[Blindsurfer]

The above (cant spell) was about a domain being a different way of spelling aussieseek that all

Stupid me left that out but this forum Is not here for Advertising

Sorry if you were offended by that

As you know I have had a problem of Lookabout,.com.au
coming up first on MSN when people search for the word aussieseek

Had a note from MSN which tells me nothing

But they wont talk to Inktomi

They say
==========================
Hello Keith,

Thank you for writing to MSN Search Customer Support. I apologize for the delay in getting back to you.

Currently, we only accept credit card payments.

Performed a search for the keyword aussieseek and was able to pull up the results. Its ranked second in the search results.
Please see the link for your reference:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=SMCRT&q=aussieseek

Thank you for using MSN Search.

Sincerely,

XXX
MSN Search Customer Support

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

I can see I will need expert SEO advice

keitha

[ihelpyou]

They gave you a good answer and is a good reason they are #1 and you are #2. But the bottom line is why do you care? That's trivial stuff.

[Blindsurfer]

I Guess youre right.I just did a search for the word Aussieseek
on Google and this came up

Results 1 - 10 of about 51,900 for aussieseek. (0.65 seconds)
I suppose I should be grateful and stop whining !!!

Still wanting to know how to make that 50,000, 200,000

Could it be done?

keitha