INTERNET INJUSTICE - THE FINAL STORY

By Roberto Gourlay
Posted Thursday, October 21, 2004

Unbeknown to most of you, the famous World Wide Web has a very serious and damaging flaw that can affect everyone who places WEB SITES or WEB PAGES on the Internet.

Once again, don't flip this page over to the sports section thinking..."Here goes another Einstein quantum-Physics HTML browser Meta tag slurp dot COM ramble!" No!

Read on! I promise to keep it simple!

The easiest way to explain this disaster is to use a practical example.

Having the privilege of writing an article in the Mallorca Daily Bulletin might allow me to take advantage of the situation by shamelessly, fat-headedly promoting my wonderful, blimp-like, quality, reliable, marvellous, bright, fantabulous, incredible, dynamic, colourful, brilliant, way-out, stupendous, magnificent, unbelievable, cool, bloated, super egoistic plump web site!.....And it makes coffee too!

Well, maybe so, but knowing the Editor, if I DID that, chances are next week you'll be reading an astounding article on lower-Slobovian basket weaving by your on-site reporter - namely me - in outer Mongolia!

So, let us use an imaginary Web Site!

You are a company in Mallorca that makes Dildoes. You see the tremendous potential of making up a very nice stiff web site with pages of photos, details, up-market, arousing descriptions, different vibrant models, as well as easy-to-use order forms and automatic E-Mail reply notes, everything to give some HARD competition to your rivals!

To do this, either you must be well schooled in the art of Web site page design, or you must hire someone to do all the work for you. To do a complete, well-organised site with fonts, frames, banners, logos, photos, colour, links and automatic reply things etc., you can spend months and thousands and thousands of pesetas in getting it all set up.

So: After 4 months of blood sweat and tears, your polished web site with its comprehensive, erotic pages on all the models of your battery-operated product is ready to be placed "On The Web".

To do this, you merely submit your web site to the many search engines that abound. Examples are Yahoo!, Altavista, HotBot, Lycos, Delta, Direct Hit, and many more. If you are NOT on any important search engines, your web site and its pages will not be seen or found by anyone outside of your "circle" - that is, people who know specifically your site address. It is like being omitted from the Yellow Pages phone book, with only your immediate friends knowing your number.

The idea is to get your web site listed in these places so that customers around the world searching the Internet for Dildoes will come across your up-lifting page - hopefully ranked high enough to be on the first sheet that comes on the screen. It is in this way many companies make their millions, some operating from a warehouse or their home! Basically, the Internet boils down to one giant mail order house - at least as far as business is concerned.

Now - here is the disaster: Let us say your site is called:

(www.mallorca-dildoes.com), and inside the site your E-Mail address is dildoes@ocea.es

You spend months and dollars (some search engines like Go To.com charge $ to list your site!) submitting your pages. There are listing services that for a nice fat fee will put your site on 300 search engines.

So finally you're up and running! You've made it into the big search engines like Yahoo! (Getting into YAHOO! Is like having a 5-minute TV advert during the Superbowl game!). You are getting calls and e-mails. All of a sudden - WHAM! Your site has DISAPPEARED from 4 of the major search engines - and you're FURIOUS! (WWW.Mallorcan-Dildoes.com) is in a slump! Business drops to a limp - and you don't know why.

Mysteriously, this has been happening to me EVERY MONTH on YAHOO! For 3 weeks I´m on, then PRESTO! Totally wiped OFF the map. @$%&"!?¿?! I have to endure another FLURRY of hectic, time wasting RE-SUBMITTING my site to everyone on the planet in hopes of getting back on to Yahoo! Finally, after some weeks, I´m on again....then a week or so goes by then - BOOT! I´m out left field again! Why? Read on for the possible answer!

Enter the injustice of the system - namely the COMPETITION! Along comes (www.mallorcan music-dildoes.com) who does not like seeing YOU on the web!

Your competitor knows your web site URL or address, (www.mallorcan-dildoes.com) and your E-Mail address - so, one afternoon, he has nothing else to do, so he RE-SUBMITS YOUR SITE TO ALL THE MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES! He does this over and over, so that the major players in the web "yellow pages phone book" think YOU are forcing them to push your site - and repeated submissions constitutes "SPAMMING" - flooding search engines with a web site in hopes that it will be the top one on the first page! The big computer-robot-operated engines do not know WHO is sending in your site, they merely get cheezed off with YOU and "POOF" - you are dropped - zapped-vaporised!

Don't believe me? Go to (http://deadlock.com/promote/search-engines/submit.html). On page two - I quote: "Re-submit it! Get the URL of your competitors document and submit it again. The robot (of the major search engines) will visit, realise it's SPAMMED, penalise it and it gets moved to the bottom of the pile, which means YOU MOVE UP!"

This little paragraph could spell disaster for businesses new and old wanting to fairly compete on the Internet. The injustice is that ANYONE in the world who doesn't like your face could arrange to have your entire web site reduced to virtual ashes.

SOLUTION: Search engines and Internet Directories should be ordered that ALL web site submissions be accompanied by a PIN number, ID number or a password - something very common these days on a myriad of services and sites on the web. This way, only YOU can change, re-submit or delete your site. There are even some search engines that have a DELETE feature where if you know the URL address of a site and their E-Mail address - something easy to do - YOU could delete THEIR pages!

ACTION: Send an E-Mail to friends and family, asking them to send notes to these engines and directories demanding that they solve this problem now!

Roberto Gourlay - robertog@ocea.es (www.mallorca-real-estate.com)

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