Domain Registry of Canada/America Scam

Have you ever received a "Domain Name Expiration Notice" from either the Domain Registry of Canada or the Domain Registry of America such as the one shown to the left? If you do get one, just shred it!

The letter will be addressed to you, and opens with “As a courtesy to domain holders we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire in the next few months“.

It also advises that "You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web" and "Failure to renew yur domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web".

Pay attention to those sections that read "transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar" and "THIS IS A SOLICITATION FOR THE ORDER OF SERVICES AND NOT A BILL", or you may get tricked into transfering and renewing your domain for 1, 2 or 5 years at exorbitant prices — $160.00 CAD for five years. Don’t get fooled!!

Please always remember that all of our website clientele receive a FREE domain name each year with their web hosting service. If you receive a bill and are unsure at to whether it is a ligitimate invoice or not, contact us directly and we will be happy to help!

Search Engine Scams

Submit your site to 1000 search engines! Build traffic to your site fast and easy- just $29.95 a month! Get millions of visitors a day!

If you've read these claims before and ever wondered what you might be missing by not submitting to thousands of engines daily, I'm here to tell you exactly what you are not missing: your money and lots of e-mail spam.

These services are completely worthless. And yet they are pushed and pushed hard by huge domain registrars, web hosts, web designers and many other credible web professionals, not to mention the spam mails you get for these services daily. Let's walk through the concept behind submitting so you can understand what I mean when I say they are a waste of time, money, and bandwidth.

• 1) There are not thousands of search engines. Who do you use to search? That's what most other people use as well. There are at most maybe 7 search engines with reasonably large indexes, and only 3 that anyone actually uses for searching in significant numbers.
• 2) Google, Yahoo, and MSN will find your site by crawling links from other sites. If you don't have at least 1 link from one other page already in the index, you won't rank well for anything, even if the submission does alert the engines that the page exists.
• 3) Submitting does not get your page in the index or updated any faster. If it makes you feel better to submit, then do it- it won't hurt anything. But automatically submitting monthly, weekly, or daily doesn't help.
• 4) Your e-mail spam will quadruple. I have tested this with unique emails and submission services- many "submission services" are merely fronts for email list marketers. You are actually paying them to sell your email address.
• 5) The "1000's of search engines" are often FFA pages on spam sites. (Free-for-All pages). You really don't want your site listed on these sites- it's highly doubtful it will drive useful traffic (if any) or improve your link popularity. They are often feeding grounds for email harvesting bots.
• 6) If your site is already in the major indexes, submitting it again doesn't help anything. Once your page is indexed, it really doesn't need to be indexed again unless you significantly change the content. Good internal linking should be enough to make sure new and updated pages are found and updated.

Submitting Services Prey on the Unknown

Too many business owners with new sites, the claims of submission services sound like a reasonable answer to their web marketing needs. For much less than full SEO services, they get the "comfort" of knowing they are actively promoting their site. Many fall into the too-good-to-be-true trap, simply because they don't have time to do much research.

Often, they will gain some other links during this period that DO actually get them listed in the search engines and they start to see some traffic. Unwittingly, they attribute this "success" to their submitting service and happily continue to pay their $29 a month, while telling all their friends how well it's working for them. Thus the cycle continues and the submitting services continue to not only thrive, but replicate through the industry!

SUBMITTING YOUR SITE TO CRAWLING SEARCH ENGINES DOES NOT DO ANYTHING.

So stop spending money on that bogus submission service and instead invest in some high-quality directory links or other industry advertising. The effect will be long-term and actually bring in more traffic and sales, not just more offers for low cost drugs, logo designs, and incredible mortgage rates!