How do they keep tracking me down?!

[Stuart B]

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I consider myself a pretty tech-savvy chap but one thing which blows my mind is how quickly the people peddling “1st page google rankings” seem to be able to track down new targets.

I launched Tube Academy not long ago and literally haven’t posted it ANYWHERE (well except here). In the past I figured they find new sites to target by watching directories like true local or yellow pages online and then just go from there.

But I was surprised to see that within a few short weeks of the launch the first SEO pitch came through to my email.

I’m not bothered by it, actually I’m kind of impressed really. They just get flagged as junk and then I never see them again so the irritation is minimal but I am really curious as to how they locate their targets in the first place.

Is it using some kind of crawler software like Google?

[Gizmo]

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There could be many ways

I can think of a couple but am concerned sharing it here would only make more of that junk should someone find it

[JohnTranter]

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Stuart B, post: 225445, member: 10757 wrote:

But I was surprised to see that within a few short weeks of the launch the first SEO pitch came through to my email.

A little bit of irony there.

“We noticed that no one can find your website”

[Jake Gardner]

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A lot of them use automated crawlers that will go through the Whois registry and find your email. They will also target generic email accounts on the domain such as info@ admin@ etc.

[bb1]

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As Jake said, whenever I register a new domain within days I get a letter offering web hosting, registration for that and other similar domains. You know like the one that looks like an invoice but isnt really. They just get binned, but there is no hiding in this world.

[JohnW]

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I love the emails that start with:

“We were checking your website and while its design is great, it is not ranking well for the important keyword searches”.

I’ve dialled back to a one page site with only my contact details listed on it for a couple of years now.

I would receive around 5 emails like the above everyday. So its obvious to me that they are robot and/or spam email garbage.

There is more robot traffic on the web than real people AND most folk would not believe the number of Aust domain sites set up these days to funnel work overseas.

I was trying to find a list of four experienced Sydney-based WordPress developers for a client a week ago and I found that 9 out of 10 supposed Au sites were fronts for overseas companies.

It was only when I got down to the level of insisting that I needed to talk with their designers/developers before I would ask them to quote that some eventually conceded they were overseas based.

I’ve nothing against the competence of overseas designers/developers but they are at a disadvantage when you need face-face discussions in the same time zone.

If they try to hide their location or lie about it, they should be prosecuted under the Au Trade Practices Act, IMHO!
Regs,
JohnW

[Author]

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