Web Hosts Might Be Forced To Snoop Customers’ Activities
April 30, 2006
US goverment would go after the EU by implementing a policy that force Internet service providers to retain records of their customers activities. The idea of snooping the internet surfers activity gained traction in the U.S. Congress, last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (R), gave a speech saying that data retention by Internet service providers is an “issue that must be addressed.”
CNet’s web site News.com reported Gonzales warned child pornography investigations have been “hampered” because data might be routinely deleted. Democratic party members propose similiar actions and preparing to introduce an amendment that would make such data deletion illegal. Congressmen from both parties said any Internet service that “enables users to access content” must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify users.
The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the customer’s account was closed. It’s not clear at this time whether that requirement would be limited to e-mail providers and ISP’s only or it would make web hosting companies to keep data about e-mail correspondence sent and received from their servers.
An expansive reading of Colorado Republican Diana DeGette’s proposal would require every website owner to retain those records. Any details related to new bill’s enforcement would be left to the Federal Communications Commission.
Pay Per Click Advertising. Worth The Money?
April 27, 2006
Pay per click (cost per click) advertising is a mutimillion dollar business. Once Google stepped the on the scene everybody pointed at Adwords when they talked about pay per click. Let me first say a few words about PPC advertising. if you have enough time to spend on research, my advice is never go for PPC. Especially in web hosting when everybody wants to their web site to be visited from someone who are in search of hosting service or product.
I’ve tried many PPC search engines – Enhance.com, Findwhat (Now Miva), Kanoodle, Goclick, Turbo10, Mirago, Ask.com, LookSmart, Brainfox etc. – and I’m not satisfied of anyone. I can say that FindWhat, Turbo10, Enhance worked for some time but all of them sent a large number of invalid and virtual clicks. Looksmart was fine and i can not say nothing bad about them. But Brainfox is really awlful. This PPC engine produced a large number of fraud. The same way gone Enhance and Findwhat after changed their name to Miva.
PPC with all those has brought bad results. Once Enhance even placed web hosting keywords on Turkish language mp3 website and when I called them on behalf my client they lied or just didn’t know they have someting to do with the Turkish mp3 site.
So no one is surprised PPC business has been “monopolized” by Google. But don’t expect me to praise G. Not at all. I’ve made routine campaign check yesterday for a client of mine and found that Google ads are not so targeted as they claim. the advertiser is a web hosting company that mainains their own Adwodrs campaign and I do research and analytical job for them. Once i checked their campaign I found that Google places their Adwords web hosting related listings at web sites like these – free2w.com, tinypic.com, filefactory.com, rapidshare.de, keepmyfile.com.
You may come and say “Thank you” within a few days to the author that directed your attention to a web host that offers free image or file hosting. At the same time my client haven’t appreciate at all that Google ads related to paid web hosting services have ben placed in a free web hosting service web site. This happen even my client excluded keywords and combinations that include “free” from their campaign.
I asked them to contact Google and to ask why do they receive irrelevant results. the answer from Adwords support was “If you feel that these sites do not provide beneficial traffic to your site I recommend applying the AdWords site exclusion feature to prevent your ads from appearing on these sites. With site exclusion, you can enjoy the benefits of advertising on the content network while still precisely controlling your targeting.”
From my point of view that mean Google accepts it does not provide relevant listings across their “content targeting” partner network. Web sites such free2w.com, tinypic.com have nothing to do with web hosting, others that provide free hosting just snatched money in clicks. The whole cost of the campaign is about $1500 and those money have been spent for 3 weeks.
I’m not saying my client spent their money with Google Adwords for nothing. But I’ve seen they received a large number of non targeted visitors from a PPC system that claims reliability. That’s why I suggest you to make sure PPC works from you and not to count on the PPC provider. Try to find websites that are relevant to your service area and advertise with them.
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