AGIS | Web Development & Marketing Blog

We get a lot of questions about how could a spammer get your email even though you are careful or how did you get an email which seems to have been sent by you or your company but is actually spam. 

Although the methods spammers use are as numerous as bad drivers on the road, I will only cover a few here, perhaps some of the less obvious. 

We will take the example of John Q. Public at U. S. Marketing. Emails: johnp@usmarketing.com and jpublic@usmarketing.com 

Undoubtedly, U. S. Marketing has a website, www.usmarketing.com. Since spammers can crawl the web just as search engines do, they now have access to a potential source for an email address, @usmarketing.com, since many companies use the same domain for their web site and email. 

If there are any contact us pages or bios on the web site, with email addresses, the spammer now has those addresses, since the crawl program just has to look for an @ sign. The crawlers also look for @ signs anywhere on the net. Is your email in any social media blogs, business directories or almost any electronic form accessible on the web? 

So, now the spammer has a domain and potentially some email addresses. But they do not need specific email addresses to send spam. They can create potential email addresses by running through many combinations and variations. How about williamp@ or johnp@ or maybe even stumble on jpublic@. 

OK, so they have some emails and 1000′s of potential emails. The spammer doesn’t have to send all those emails to know which ones are valid, though they could, they can test them without actually sending an email, sort of like pinging. Bingo, now they know both johnp@usmarketing.com and jpublic@usmarketing.com are valid emails. 

How do they get you to open their email? Since they know the address (they are sending to it, aren’t they?) they can add a few tricks. First, for the most part, they can make it seem like it is sent from any address or display name they want. The from address or the display names are among the easier things for them to fake. Often your own email program will add the display name from your address book. So, if they make it seem like it is to johnp@usmarketing.com from johnp@usmarketing.com Outlook, or whatever program you use, might display your full name in the inbox, even though the spammer does not know your full name. 

Another trick would be to send it from info@usmarketing.com or support@usmarketing.com or any potential general account a company might have. If they chose the johnp@ as the address to send it to, then they also know your first name is John, so why not add your name to the subject, Hey John, open me. Tricky, huh? 

Well those are just a few of the tricks and, having said all that, I will now help them out a little by posting this and telling everyone to go to our website at http://www.ag-is.com. Who knows, maybe they will crawl my post or a search engine will pick it up and they will crawl that link.

On November 9, 2010 Google announced Instant Previews as yet another upgrade to its search results pages in an attempt to provide more information to support “stickiness”. It’s as simple as a small icon that looks like a magnifying glass next to the search results, which users can click to see a “preview” or “snapshot” of the linked website. These “previews” or “snapshots” may also include search terms in orange highlight where they appear in the resulting page. Google indicated on Tuesday that the enhancement increased user’s satisfaction with search results by 5% in internal testing. “We realized early on that this kind of experience would only make sense if it was lightning fast. Not long ago simply downloading an image could take 20 or 30 seconds, and even today many websites take 4 or 5 seconds to load,” Raj Krishnan, Product Manager wrote in the Google Blog today. “With Instant Previews, we match your query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customized to your search—usually in under 1/10 of a second.”
This enhancement follows the launch of Google Instant in September, 2010 which completes search results while it’s being typed into search box, with the goal of significantly reducing time spent searching. You can try Google Instant Previews prior to its launch in the next few weeks in Google Labs or click here for more information.

Google Instant Preview results page example

The following 5 quick checks will help you know if your website is helping you promote your company.

First – Check to see what the first thing is that jumps out on your Home page. Make sure that what ever your visitors see is engaging and is a “hook”  to learn more.

Second – Can you tell visually or a quick read what the website is about? Too many words, images or distractions will confuse the user. It is imperative that you provide a clear path to what you are offering.

Third- Does your website provide the important information above the fold of the website. Make sure that what sets you appart from your competition is above the fold. What does “above the fold mean”? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold

Fourth – How quickly can the visitor find your services or products? If it is difficult to access your key services or products and how they can benefit the visitor they will loose interest. Remember you only have seconds per page to engage the visitor.

Fifth – Are you asking the visitor to take an action, for example; request a quote, download literature, sign up for a seminar, watch a video, sign up for an e-newsletter, purchase a featured product….what ever the “call to action” is make sure it is a simple form. Maybe you only ask for their email address for future marketing opportunities.

This review should only take 10-15 minutes to answer these questions. If you really want feedback ask your employees or someone who has never been to your site before to respond to these few questions.

Good luck and stay tuned for the second post next week.