Search Engine Optimization

Turbulent Times in Internet Marketing, and the Rise of Co-Registration

It is certainly an interesting time to be in the field of internet marketing. "Interesting", of course, can be both good and bad. The past few months have seen some drastic changes in the marketplace, even by speedy internet standards.

To summarize the current internet marketing trends:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), long the linch-pin of internet marketing, has become even more challenging at present due to the instability of Yahoo! Web results, and MSN search results. This instability is due to the fact that both search engines abandoned their former partnerships (Yahoo! with Google, MSN with LookSmart) in favor of creating their own search spiders. Unfortunately, these spiders are not yet ready, so both search engines are making do with what I would term "patchwork" search results. Rankings are highly volatile, and many consumers are not pleased with the inconsistent results.

2. Email marketing continues to fight a battle for existence, as the prevalence of unwanted spam, or bulk, email continues to draw ire from email users worldwide, resulting in a spate of anti-spam legislation. This legislation, unfortunately, has an adverse affect on many legitimate opt in email marketing campaigns. In addition, fear of spam has led to 2 factors that threaten the future of opt in email: 1) Many companies are afraid to send out legitimate campaigns, for fear of being branded as spammers; and 2) Many consumers are reluctant to sign up for ANY offer, for fear their email address will be sold and sold again, and they will drown in spam.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC), or pay per performance, continues to be a very stable industry, capable of generating consistent business for those who pay for the sponsor results. Overture formerly ruled this world, but now Google AdWords has made strong inroads as well, establishing themselves as viable competitors.

4. Co-registration, known familiarly as co-reg, is climbing rapidly up the ladder and going from neglected last resort, to a strong contender. Co-reg now has firmly established affiliate networks that generate thousands of visitors each day. Due to the cooperative nature of the program, companies can advertise and generate leads for a fraction of the cost of a dedicated lead generation campaign. As long as co-reg maintains its integrity, look for this to become more and more popular.

As always, the key to success for internet marketing companies and their clients is to remain abreast of current trends, and to remain flexible in their outlook and open to new approaches.

www.sharpnetsolutions.com

SEO, Email Marketing, and Ethics: Part II

Yesterday I discussed some of the issues that plague email marketing, in terms of what is "ethical" or "unethical", and how some tactics are perceived both inside the industry and outside of it.

Although the term "spam" is most often associated (negatively) with email marketing, it's just as prevalent in search engine optimization (SEO). In one form or another, people have been spamming the search engines for almost as long as SEO has been in existence! Common spam techniques past and present include: Spammed domain names (www.spam-spam-spamspam-spam.com); spammed meta tags ("spam keyword spam keyword spam spam keyword); spammed text ("we offer spam, spam, spam, spam and spam"); doorway pages (spam site 1, spam site 2, spam site 3... spam site 3,742...); hidden text (if this background was black, you wouldn't see all the hidden spamspamspamspamspam!); and link farms ("here's a list of 831 totally unrelated and worthless websites we've linked to!"). The one thing they all have in common is that all of them exist solely to try to fool the search engines into giving top ranking to a website that might otherwise go unnoticed.

However, although many of those techniques are annoying, are they necessarily unethical? Granted, search engines punish you for them these days, and most visitors aren't thrilled by them either, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're "wrong". There is nothing technically unethical about buying a spammed domain name, provided the site actually offers that product or service. Spammed meta tags became so common that most spiders don't even read tags anymore, and after all they don't affect the visual appearance of a website. Spammed text content probably does more harm than good, because with a large number of quality sites available, most web surfers aren't going to waste their time digging through poorly written, obviously spammed content to find what they want. Hidden text doesn't hurt the visitor because by definition, most will never even know it exists. Link farms? Worthless, in a way, but harmless basically. Three pages of links you don't care about doesn't really harm the rest of the site. One could even argue the same for doorway pages: Who cares if multiple versions of a website exist, as long as they really do offer the product or service?

The problems arose because some of these sites did NOT really offer the products or services, or did not offer good quality compared to others. However, they choked those worthier sites out of the top rankings by employing every trick in the book to grab 7 of the top 10 placements on any given search engine. Search engines did not appreciate being exploited, and web surfers howled. The spam techniques were considered unethical at that point, because they were actively working against the stated purpose of the search engines (to provide useful and relevant search results) and the stated desire of web surfers (again, useful and relevant search results).

Enter the infamous "re-indexing", where search engines not only shake up their search results, but frequently tweak their ranking algorithms as well, in their ongoing effort to keep one step ahead of (or behind?) the exploits. Spammed meta tags were one of the first to go, along with spammed text content and spammed domain names. Hidden text was next on the block. Link farms are currently receiving the same treatment. Far from being beneficial, these tactics will now, at best, do nothing to help your site, and at worst can get your website(s) blacklisted.

However, many techniques still exist that exploit various aspects of search engine technology, one of the best-known being cloaking. Whether or not it is unethical can be difficult to say, although from the point of view of the search engine, it breaks their rules, and hence MUST be considered unethical. For the user, as long as they get relevant and useful results, that's a harder call to make. SEO professionals, by definition, try to get the best possible rankings for their clients, and the more they get, the better. Therefore, it could be argued that there's nothing unethical about just doing their jobs.

In my opinion, stated repeatedly in this blog, the best policy is to stick as close to the search engine guidelines as possible, and to offer a quality website. Don't break the rules, and don't encourage others to do so. The guidelines are in place for very sound reasons in most cases, and they have a great deal to do with site relevance and usability. Obviously, the soundest approach is to make sure that your website is, in fact, relevant and user-friendly! Otherwise, all the rankings in the world will not help you sell your product or sign up clients for your service. Your site needs to be informative, easy to navigate, and provide a good way for the visitor to contact you.

In SEO terms, the most ethical way to approach it is to make sure that the site you are sending visitors to is actually worthy of the rankings that you are attempting to gain. If you have to resort to tricks and subterfuge for ranking, then the odds are that the site itself doesn't deserve them. Instead, consider adding some quality text content to the site, trying to get some relevant backlinks, and cleaning up the meta tags so that they have some actual relevance. There are plenty of ways to help a site gain rankings that can only benefit the visitor and the business owner, so there can be no ethics questions involved!

SEO, Email Marketing, and Ethics: Part I

A topic which surfaces periodically in the industry newsletters is the question of "ethical marketing", particularly related to email marketing or search engine optimization (SEO). Some people say that there are "black hat" SEO techniques, the "bad" techniques done by "bad" people, some say that anything which is done to a site to try to raise ranking is bad, others feel that anything goes in the rankings wars. Similarly, there are some who believe only "spam" (bulk) email is wrong, some who believe ALL email advertising is wrong, and some who feel that they can and should do anything they want via email.

As an internet marketing professional, I can't agree with the purists who feel that no marketing should be done via email. I also cannot agree that websites should not be thought of as marketing tools and manipulated accordingly. On the other hand, I soundly denounce those who feel that internet marketing is a free-for-all.

In this article, we'll discuss email marketing. Is it a legitimate marketing technique, the root of all internet evil, or somewhere in between? Is there any way for legitimate email marketing to continue, but shut down the spammers?

"GOOD" EMAIL VS. "BAD" EMAIL

Good and bad are subjective terms, and it's not really possible to lay down clear boundaries of what is good or bad for marketing purposes. However, I think that all parties could agree that it is "bad" marketing if the end effect is to annoy a lot of people to the point of doing damage to the advertising client. Spam email annoys people. A LOT. If a marketer repeatedly sends out spam email blasts for a particular client, then people who hate spam will associate it with that company. This, then, is "bad" marketing, by almost any standards. You've annoyed millions of people, your client has gotten a bad name, and nobody wins.

Spam is also "bad" marketing because it harms the marketing community, and their clients, as a whole. The technique is so hated that it has launched an entire new industry devoted to stamping it out. This has led to spam filters, anti-spam software, anti-spam legislation, and endless complaints to ISP's to get websites shut down. If it really is annoying and totally unsolicited email, that's one thing, but innocent victims often get caught in the net. Many legitimate emails get blocked by overzealous spam filters, and many email campaigns generated through validated opt in lists generate complaints or threats under new laws. Spammers could care less as long as some of their email gets through, but those of us who play by the rules are finding that legitimate advertising options are being taken away, through no fault of our own.

Validated opt in, or permission-based, email wears the white hat in this battle, but it too has some problems. For starters, some people get signed up on opt-in lists by other people, as a joke or for more malicious reasons. They are understandably angry at receiving unwanted email. Other problems arise if legitimate subscribers opt out of a list, and continue to receive email for weeks or even months.

For ethical, "good" email marketing, good list management is absolutely essential! All opt in subscribers should be verified by sending a confirmation email. Opt outs should be honored as promptly as possible. The list should not be over used, to the point where legitimate email becomes spam by sheer volume. If you have an opt-in list for your customers, don't sell that information unless you want to risk losing a customer. Never release any of their information without their consent.

If you're a business owner who is considering an email marketing campaign, think seriously before you go with a bulk email marketer. The prices might look attractive, but the fallout could be deadly. Odds are, most of your email won't even reach its intended target, since it will be filtered out first. That which does will probably be deleted without being read -- if you're lucky. If you're not, they could complain to your hosting service and get your website shut down. Your company's good name will suffer.

The more people try to block spam, the smarter the spammers become. The only way to put an end to spam email on a permanent basis is to make sure that no one can make any money doing it. Don't pay someone to run bulk email campaigns, and don't purchase anything through spam offers. If it doesn't pay, they'll stop playing. One final thing: If you receive an email which offers something illegal, then report that company IMMEDIATELY. Examples include promising prescription drugs without any kind of doctor validation, or promising to repair someone's damaged credit.

Marketing Sherpa Weblog Survey

Marketing Sherpa is conducting a contest for the best blogs in various categories. The SharpNET weblog is one of only 6 in the category of "Blogs for online marketing". Out of more than 50 blogs originally nominated, only 29 made the cut to be in the contest. If you like our SharpNET blog, and you feel it's been informative to you, feel free to give us a vote! It's also a good chance to check out some of the other blogs out there, not just for internet marketing but also for small business marketing, business to business, public relations, and other marketing topics. The blogs all take slightly different approaches and have different specialties. If you've got the time to check a few out, it's not only fun but very informative as well (and of course if you should choose to give our blog a good review, we'd be very grateful). I have bookmarked a couple of the other blogs for my personal reference, in those areas that I don't feel very informed about.

There is a wealth of information available online for almost any specialty, and good weblogs are one of the newest and most convenient ways to get up-to-date information. A blog that is updated regularly will reflect the current trends and tides of the business world, and provide helpful, inside information on how to deal with some of the changes that are taking place.

Therefore I'd also like to encourage anyone out there who has a specialty area of their own to create their own blog! It's easy, it's fun, and it's a great way to share information. There are a number of free blogs available, as well as paid services that offer more options. If you could invest an hour or two a week into creating an online resource for your specialty, there will be people who will appreciate your efforts!

TIPS ON CREATING A USEFUL BLOG:

1. Keep to the point. If you're creating a blog for your business, discuss things relevant to your business and your company.

2. Decide what "voice" to use. Do you want to be friendly? Professional? Analytical? This will depend on who your target audience is. If your target audience is stay-at-home moms who do crafting and scrapbooks, your tone should probably be very warm and friendly, spoken in first person and using your own voice. On the other hand, a blog on industry trends aimed at engineers should be impersonal, analytical, and up-to-the-minute.

3. To advertise or not to advertise, that is the question. Where to advertise is another question. Personally, I find ads placed in the text body of newsletters and blogs to be very annoying. If you're going to do banner advertising, consider placing it off to the side so that your readers can get through your entire post uninterrupted.

4. Listen to your readers. Blog readers will make comments on the blog and will frequently send you email. You'd be well-advised to pay heed to their words -- often you can get some good advice and feedback, to keep your blog as useful and up-to-date as possible!

Viruses, Worms, and Bad Decisions

The good news is, they have caught the author of the Sasser worm. The bad news is, that internet worm successfully crippled several large international organizations, and hundreds or thousands of smaller companies and banks and personal computers. This wasn't one of the email worms that savvy computer users can easily avoid; Sasser snuck in through backdoors of computers without adequate firewalls, or with no firewalls at all, and spread like wildfire.

More good news: They believe the suspect may be the one who authored all 28 variants of the Netsky virus. I get on average about 100 versions of Netsky every day in my email (all blocked by anti-virus software). Having that virus shut down will be a personal blessing, and with any luck, the infected computers will slowly get cleaned up, and that one will disappear into the sunset.

The bad news is, shutting down one 18-year-old computer whiz from Germany will not solve the problem. As software and security grows ever more advanced, so do the authors of the worms, viruses, and Trojans that plague us on the internet. Many of these authors are in their teens or barely out of them, and one thing heard almost universally is, "I didn't think it would do this much damage." Almost all of them insist that they didn't mean to harm anyone. Maybe they really didn't. People do a lot of things they shouldn't out of a sense of curiosity. "I wonder if I could write one of those worms," the computer whiz thinks, and decides to try it, feeling pride and excitement when it works -- which changes to horror as it spreads across the world and shuts down major corporations, and suddenly they're looking at a Federal jail sentence. I can actually believe in this scenario. I could see myself at age 18 thinking it was kind of fun and dangerous, a cool challenge, and never in a million years imagining how out of hand it could get (I would never have gotten to the point of actually launching it, though, fearing repercussions on even a minor scale).

So what can we do to protect ourselves, at home and at work? The advice remains the same: Install anti-virus software and keep it updated; install a good firewall; keep your internet security settings high; keep your Windows updated; avoid questionable websites; don't open email attachments from anybody you don't know; scan your computer regularly with anti-virus, anti-Trojan, and anti-spyware software, in case something got past your barriers. The Netsky virus is carried via email, with a standard set of subject lines, and is easily blocked with anti-virus software. The Sasser worm was stopped by patches from both Symantec and Microsoft. None of my computers have been infected by these common threats.

The warning: Take the threat seriously. Stop thinking that you can avoid computer trouble by simply not opening email from unknown senders. The viruses, worms and Trojans get more sophisticated every day, in response to the ever-increasing efforts to block them. Taking routine precautions won't stop everything, but not taking them could be a nightmare.

There's a deeper level which is perhaps more philosophical, but here's the dilemma: How can we channel the creativity and intelligence of these worm authors in a more positive direction? With their obvious skills, they are probably capable of creating great software programs that could be useful and innovative. They'd be great in tech support. They'd be great internet detectives, helping track down other authors of harmful internet bugs. They'd be great for product testing, to identify these potential weaknesses and plug the holes before the product ever goes on the market. How do we convince them that putting their talents to good use will ultimately be more fun than testing a computer worm that wreaks havoc across international borders in a matter of hours, maybe costing them years of freedom?

18-year-old Sven Jaschan is almost certainly facing jail time. I wonder if he thinks it was worth it.

Google Goes Public

In a widely-anticipated move, Google has now filed with the SEC to go public, and be a publicly listed company. Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Boston were listed as the underwriters. It is probably only a matter of time before Google has an IPO, and there is speculation that the initial public offering could be as much as $2.7 billion in stock. Google has stated that founders (Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt) will continue to run the company, but they have expanded their board of directors to include John Hennessy, president of Stanford University; Art Levinson, chief executive of biotech firm Genentech; and Paul Otellini, president and chief operating officer of chipmaker Intel Corp. From a strictly business standpoint, it can be assumed that any public offering would probably result in heavy trading and a very active interest.

From the other side of the business, what does this mean for search engine marketers? Well, certainly no one is coming out and stating that an IPO would change Google -- in fact, every attempt will be made to reassure the world that Google will remain Google, public or not. In practice, however, this may be difficult to achieve.

This first issue will be profits. Those who buy stock in Google will want to see profits from Google stock, and that is perfectly reasonable. Therefore, we can expect to see continuing or even increased push from Google to participate in paid advertising on their site.

The second issue will be control. It's straightforward enough to argue with your co-founder and partner; it might get acrimonious at times and you won't always agree, but overall, the decision-making power to date has been limited to an extremely small circle. Even the modest expansion of the board that just took place means that there are now more fingers in the pie. These new board members are industry experts, and they will definitely have ideas. The original vision of Brin and Page might well end up diverted or diluted.

The third issue is the hard to define "essence" of Google, what makes it Google, the heart of its "Google-ness", so to speak. Google has a feel unlike any other search engine. Overall, right now, most people think of Google as fairly streamlined, not weighed down by too much corporate culture or too much advertising or dead weight. They're also known for a sense of humor notably lacking in many other search engines, not being afraid to indulge themselves in April Fool's jokes at their own expense. Will all that remain the same, or will the stockholders panic in the face of such frivolity?

It seems safe to assume that Google will have to change, at least in some regards, when they go public. That may be for the best, since it's become a huge beast that is probably hard to control with just a couple of people. However, expect a lot of nervousness among Google users at the prospect of their bastion of free internet being corrupted by capitalism! Only time will tell if that nervousness will be justified or not, but let's hope that Google does not follow the trend of so many search engines, and "go corporate", so to speak. They need to make an honest profit, of course, but it would be nice if they could remain the champions of natural search and the unpaid internet. The little guy websites have few champions left.

Google Gmail and Email Marketing

Google's announcement of their proposed new free email service, Gmail, has been creating quite a stir not only in the internet industry, but also in the business sector. Google was wise enough to invite several business people to participate in the trial period and give their feedback, thus incidentally insuring a lot of word of mouth advertising.

Two things stand out primarily at this point in time:

1. Privacy advocates are still up in arms about the fact that Google will be spidering through your email messages and adding paid advertisements to them before they hit the recipient's inbox, and the fact that these emails are NEVER deleted from the system, even if you try to delete them.

2. Everyone who's tried the service really likes it, except in some cases for those ads.

Having email stored essentially forever has pros and cons; it could provide very useful documentation of things like business transactions, but on the other hand, if you fire off an email when you're hot under the collar, you might just want that deleted at some later date. Of course, it could be argued that if you're writing things down that you don't want to be saved and possibly seen by other people, then perhaps you should not be wriring them in the first place.

The issue of the advertisements it another story. On a strictly personal level, I don't care if some computer program reads through my email, but I don't care to receive emails that have banner ads added to them. They're annoying enough to me on websites.

However, my dislike of seeing banner ads in my email is personal; the business implications that it has are a different story. One of the services offered by Sharpnet Solutions is email marketing. What will happen to legitimate email marketing campaigns under Gmail? Your advertisement for your client will be scanned by a spider, and an appropriate paid advertisement inserted. In other words, your client will be paying for an email blast which might very well end up also advertising for their competitors! If the campaigns are sent as pure HTML and images, then it's unlikely the spider will find anything to read; on the other hand, none of those emails will get through to AOL users, since AOL email blasts require text messages.

If Gmail really does become a reality and gets a lot of people signing up, then email marketing companies will have to change their strategies. Perhaps it will require filtering the lists, and either eliminating certain addresses, or doing separate creatives for them. Either way, it's almost certain that email marketing costs will rise.

This is a great pity, because opt-in email marketing (as opposed to the universally-loathed spam) is a legitimate, effective, and extremely high ROI means of advertising a business, product, or service.

Doteasy Hosting, and Copyright Issues

It is sad to report that Doteasy.com has finally responded to our complaint of copyright infringement, and shown no intention to cooperate. My third email to the company, threatening legal action, finally received a response -- obviously a template response. Essentially, unless we sue the owners of the website in question and send a copy of the legal papers to Doteasy, they will not pull down the site.

First of all, an earlier email of mine not only plainly stated the infringements, but gave the hosting company exact links to each offending page. Second, this site is being used to defraud citizens of the United States and the UK; by refusing to pull it down after being so notified, Doteasy.com has just become an accomplice to this fraud. Third, the site owners used fake names and addresses, and hence, it is NOT POSSIBLE to directly contact them and sue them.

Although we respect the right of Doteasy.com to protect their clients and to give them the benefit of the doubt, this is a very poor decision on their part. Our attorney will be contacting them on our behalf, and further action will be pursued. In their attempt to give their customer the benefit of the doubt, they are allowing them to continue abusing SharpNET by their blatant theft of our copyright-protected website content, and are aiding and abetting in an international fraud scheme. Monster.com and other job boards, upon learning of the situation, immediately pulled the links and job listings. It's unfortunate that Doteasy.com did not see fit to do the same.

Again, we caution everyone to beware of InsyncSoft, a website using stolen content which is perpetrating fraud. And we also advise caution in all dealings with Doteasy.com, who has proved themselves less than ethical.

Privacy on the Internet

The outcry over aspects of Google's proposed new "Gmail" has brought an old argument back to life. Privacy advocates are opposed not only to the ads that Google proposes to place in personal emails, but also by the fact that these same personal emails will not be deleted -- even if the user attempts to delete them.

What does this mean, in practice? It means that: A) Your personal emails will be available to someone, somewhere, for an essentially indefinite time period; and B) Your personal emails will be put through a spider and altered by the addition of ad content, based on your personal communications. In practice, it means that if you're writing something confidential, self-incriminating, or inflammatory, you'd be well-advised to pick a different email service (or of course reconsider writing it in the first place). It also means that you could be sending emails back and forth with a friend, perhaps discussing a visit to the dentist, and suddenly find a paid advertisement for toothpaste showing up in them. If you'd find this unnerving, annoying, intrusive, or all of the above, this is not the email service for you. So in the small picture, people can avoid potential privacy issues by simply not using Gmail, or corresponding with those who do.

What is the bigger picture? The very strengths of the internet become weaknesses where privacy is concerned. You can easily share information with literally millions of people with just a mouse-click, but the down side is, that information is now available to any number of people. Those other people might copy it, steal it, or use it for malicious purposes, and most of the time, you wouldn't even know.

Free and open email communication, sending information across the world in seconds, also carries risks. Spam permeates email inboxes everywhere, pounding recipients with useless and unwanted information. All of it carries the risk of a hidden virus bomb which will detonate on your computer, doing everything from sending out spam to your friends, to hijacking your browser and implanting spyware on your computer. Some of that spyware can be put to malicious use, stealing passwords, PIN numbers, and personal information, leaving you at serious risk of being stolen from or defrauded.

Privacy issues are dominating many discussion forums and articles, both in the internet industry and in the general public. Identity theft is becoming a serious problem, along with the other less dangerous but still annoying hassles.

But is privacy really even possible on the internet? Is there really any way to patch all the holes, and protect yourself from every potential risk? The unfortunate truth is, probably not. An intelligent and malicious hacker will almost always manage to penetrate your defenses, particularly if you are a private citizen, whose computer is not protected behind the massive firewalls of the major corporations (which are by no means impenetrable). Almost everyone has been on the receiving end of virus attacks, and many people have found spyware on their computers when a more-knowledgeable friend suggested they run a check. Most of the spyware is neither harmful nor malicious, but it sill comes as a shock if you don't know it's there. I am an internet professional, and my home computer is guarded by several layers of firewalls and protection software -- yet last night, with one careless mouse-click, I got my browser hijacked, my anti-virus shut down, and bought myself almost 3 hours of computer cleansing before I got rid of it all.

In an imperfect world, the solution is to protect yourself as best you can by being proactive. Just as those who don't want their emails saved indefinitely should probably not use Gmail, there are other things you can do to protect yourself:

1. Don't have your passwords and PIN numbers saved on your computer, no matter how well-protected you think it is. It's better to take the time to type in the password every time than to have some stranger with bad intentions getting into your bank account (besides, that way you won't forget it!).

2. Don't use the same password for everything either, and don't write them down where they can be found.

3. Make sure any site you are going to purchase from has clearly posted privacy policies, and read them. Otherwise, you might find yourself on an unwanted mailing list faster than you can hit "send".

4. Don't save personal financial information or credit card information on your computer.

5. Never, ever, place orders through unsecured websites, from companies that you have not heard of.

6. If you have any reason to believe that your computer has been compromised, immediately change any and all passwords, both locally, and online. Do it IMMEDIATELY. Don't wait. And keep a close eye on all of your credit cards and bank accounts for the next few weeks.

7. If you're a business, make your site as secure as possible, including using secure servers and certificates, and encryption. If you are made aware of a violation, take immediate and aggressive action to combat it.

Protect yourself and your customers as best you can, but be aware that at some point, you too will probably be a victim of some sort of internet privacy violation.

Internet Issues, Close to Home and Far Away

Today just proves that the issues facing an internet marketer can be very diverse!

Google has once again set tongues a-waggin' in the internet industry with the announcement of their proposed new free email service, Gmail. Now first of all, the announcement came on April Fool's Day, so not a few people thought it was some kind of joke. Considering that Google further stated that each user would get 1GB of storage space, and that emails would never be deleted. They also stated that all messages would be scanned, and appropriate advertisements inserted. The same press release mentioned applying for jobs on the moon...

Except for the lunar outpost, everything was, in fact, actual fact. Google really is debuting a new free email service to a select group of users, and it does indeed have all of the features mentioned above. This has created a veritable firestorm of posts on forums and blogs throughout the industry, along with an instant condemnation by privacy advocates. Issue #1 is the "forever" aspect of your emails: If they are never deleted, then personal messages will always be available somewhere, for prying eyes to see. Whether or not this is likely, it IS possible, and reaction ranges from disapproval to outright fear. Issue #2 is the ads being placed into the emails. Many people feel that humans will be reading their emails, even though Google insists it is just their spiders that will do the reading. Even so, do we really want to see our personal messages peppered with paid advertisements? Google says this very advertising is necessary to pay for the service. I will say only this: Extra storage space is nice, but this "free" email service seems to charge a high price in return. If you have any privacy issues at all, or if you are already turned off by the advertising that has permeated every corner of the web, then this service is probably not for you.

On another front, we have found yet another case of someone basically stealing one of our websites. In this case, they replaced virtually every word on the site with "pancake". Not every word, though, and using the company name was enough of a coattail to ride on, to get them a nice high Google ranking under one search term we tried. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then our ears are certainly burning over here. Much more flattery of this nature, and we may start changing our websites every single day!

Finally, we have been having internet issues. Specifically, bandwidth and connection issues. This is not a good situation for an internet marketing company. At certain times of the day, our connection speeds were getting extremely slow, and when we added two more users, we even started getting service interruptions. A review of our DSL contract showed that we should be getting 1Mb, more than enough for our needs. Investigation showed we were getting more like 256K, and discussions with our provider were unhelpful, to say the least. Accordingly, we investigated alternate internet providers, and have hooked up our cable internet today on a test basis. So far, it's about six times faster.

There are business lessons to be learned from this experience, which carry through to all types of businesses, in all circumstances. The first thing is to watch where your money goes and make sure you're getting what you pay for. If we hadn't added the two extra users, we would never have investigated the DSL service, and never would have found out that we were, essentially, getting cheated. This just proves, again, that it's worth following up on things that seem wrong. As an internet-based company, we should have known better.

The other thing is the policy of keeping good business relationships. Our former internet provider has lost not only a client, but a company that referred business to them. This is a direct result of how they chose to address the situation of of promising us 1Mb when they in fact only delivered 256K. Instead of trying to make good, they instead basically claimed that we should be happy with what we were getting, which was substandard service, and refused to promise that it would improve in the future.