SPAM & black lists

Alex, if your site has been dropped from Google it has NOTHING to do with this site.

Thanks for responses. I certainly appreciate that my site (in its present form) is not worthy of being indexed, I just found it interesting that instead of dropping rank it seems to have removed it for keywords that worked just a few weeks ago, even though it is clearly present in index if you search for domain name.

My view is that using "click-out" scripts is a perfectly legitimate technique. Google certainly uses it itself, but then again it know that it is a trusted source, my guess would be that they might have a number of extra diligence that can be triggered by certainly factors, perhaps usage of some keywords. Perhaps that this topic is best to be left for SEO threads.

I hope my post was not misunderstood as any attempt to blame anything on anyone - merely an observation of black-box like activity by all-mighty Google.

thanks

alex

Hey Russell

I am a complete new kid on this block but have to find out what blacklists our company is on and see what can be done to get us removed.

We are an online scuba diving site and it can be difficult to keep the mails as unspammy as poss. One too many mails to someone who expressed an interest (by emailing us first) and we get blacklisted.

So how do I go about this?

Cheers

Gavin

On 14:08:26 27 February 2004 Russell wrote:
>> surely one could be malicous towards an organisation
>and ensure
>> that they are added to the e-mail black lists.
>
>Theoretically, yes. In practice, no, since they'd have to
>send complaints every other week (Spamcop-type sites
>typically put you on their blacklist for ~7 days if they
>don't keep getting complaints).
>
>> 1. What can an organisation do to ensure their
>ability to send
>> valid e-mails to their customers are not filtered by
>Spam filters.
>
>Use a consistent "From" field.
>Have permisson to contact the recipient.
>Avoid spam trigger words.
>Follow best practice email marketing techniques.
>Never spam.
>Resolve complaints successfully.
>Monitor the blacklists.
>Configure your mail server correctly.
>Don't use carbon copy to lots of recipients.
>Personalise the "To" field.
>Don't keep mailing to someone if they have unsubscribed.
>Don't use a mailing service that tolerates spam.
>Remove bounces from your list.
>
>> 2. How can one stop a malicous intention from a
>competitor
>> or very unhappy customer to add one to one of the RBS
>lists?
>
>The RBS lists are primarily for blacklisting open relays
>rather than responding to spam complaints.
>
>Even if they did act on spam complaints, the IP address of
>the complainant would be on file, so you could do
>something about it if there was malicious intent. After
>all, it's not difficult to track the source of legitimate
>email.
>
>Of course, resolving customer issues is always a good
>idea, so it should never get to the stage of someone
>becoming a very unhappy customer (who also has the
>knowledge & the will to create a problem).
>
>> 3. Are Spam filters having a growing negative effect
>on
>> e-mail marketing?
>
>Yes, but not in the way you'd expect.
>
>False positives based on message content (ie. filtering
>legitimate email) is a far bigger problem than being
>blacklisted (since there are things you can do to resolve
>the latter).
>
>It all comes down to the filter configuration on various
>servers. At the moment, many ISPs have a policy of
>throwing the baby out with the bath water in attempt to
>stop the spam. And this is not a good thing.
>
>In fact, I personally don't think that ISPs have any right
>to filter email. Eventually someone is going to sue their
>ISP for lost business because of some over-sensitive
>filter blocking incoming email.
>
>Having said that, the best solution IMO would be to allow
>UK-based email through to UK recipients (since you have
>legal recourse if spammed) & filter other emails by
>source, with varying levels of strictness depending on the
>sender's country.
>
>Just my 2cents for a Friday afternoon.
>
>Russell
>Email Marketing Solutions UK
>http://www.emailtools.co.uk